We‘ve all done it! There has come at least one time in your career for sure that you’ve been tasked with sending out an important message via email. You likely found yourself looking for a quick and easy solution to hold the recipients accountable, stumbled across the read receipt feature, and didn't think twice about attaching it to the email.
At first glance, it seems like a win-win resolution. I get it! From personal experience, I have utilized this feature quite frequently in the past, reasoning that it wouldn’t be enabled if improper to use... right? As a Project Manager, a big part of what I do to establish governance around any process is to hold my team accountable for actions they own. That is how I keep any project on track and ensure that deliverables are completed per schedule. However, I will say that read receipts are not the most effective way to assign accountability for an action... even for driving a simple result such as an email response.
First, it’s all about tone! It can be hard to set the appropriate tone by email as it is. Read receipts make this twice as difficult. You want to be confident each time you send a work email that your audience will react the way you expect them to. In all honesty, read receipts are so impersonal. They are auto-generated replies that imply to the recipient you don’t trust them to respond in a timely fashion. I find that in most cases this feature is viewed as rude and disrespectful. It typically annoys the audience more often than it accomplishes its intended purpose.
Second, many of your colleagues have the read receipt function “blocked” (yes, you can do this... lol). It could even be that their software does not support it.
Last but not least, it’s an unreliable measurement. What you may not realize, I admittedly didn’t at first, is that you will only get a read receipt in return if the recipient wants you to. This feature gives the audience a choice whether or not to send it. Furthermore, if they do decide to send one to you, it only confirms that they received the email. It DOES NOT confirm whether or not they actually read it. More effective ways of establishing email accountability are captured below:
(1) Follow up. The best way to determine if someone read and understood your email is to ask them! Now-a-days, especially with many working remote, the average employee can receive up to 80 emails a day. If the email was of importance, and you need to keep a close eye, I strongly just recommend taking the time to follow up a day or two afterwards.
(2) Establish a timeline. Be transparent around your expectations for the reply back. If it is time sensitive, state that in the body of the email. Tag the subject line with keywords that promote a sense of urgency around the matter.
(3) Another sure way to delay a response is by not sending a clear message to your audience. If they are confused about the ask, and cannot readily respond right away without giving it a lot of thought, the concern may be pushed aside to be handled at a time more favorable for them. Streamline your communications, get to the point quickly, and be consistent.
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