A survey has found that almost a half of workers (43 per cent) get so many emails that they cannot empty their inbox in the course of a working day.

The study of 1,500 people by advice website, Pure Commercial Finance, also found that, for 42 per cent of workers, the size of their work emails inbox made them feel stressed and anxious.

Indeed, almost a third of workers said that they were losing sleep because of the sheer volume of work emails they received every day. This is perhaps not surprising given that the survey found that the average worker has about 650 unread messages in their inbox at any one time.

As a result, about 12 per cent of workers check their inbox first thing in the morning and last thing at night. One in 10 said that, as a result of doing so, it had caused a row at home.

Overall, 51 per cent of the people surveyed admitted that they had missed emails because their inbox was too full, while almost a fifth (17 per cent) had deleted emails that they had never got round to reading.

In addition, because they are so busy, workers send about 24 emails to the wrong person every year.

Nearly eight per cent of those surveyed admitted that they ended up facing a disciplinary issue because of a missed email, six per cent admitted they had cost the company money for the same issue, and three per cent had been fired because of the mail they overlooked.

Six per cent of workers admitted to having sent a sarcastic email and having it misread, while a further four per cent admitted to having sent an email direct to the person they were talking about.

Finally, over a third of workers (36 per cent) have fired off angry emails only to regret them once they had calmed down. And exactly a third have had an email argument with a colleague which they believe could have been solved if they had just talked face-to-face.

Neil Todd, of Thompsons Solicitors, commented: “This report chimes with a report produced by the TUC last year which highlighted that workers in the UK are putting in longer hours than their counterparts across Europe. That report noted that Britain’s “long-hour culture” was not having a positive impact on productivity and that workers in similar economies to our own who worked less hours, were much more productive for each hour that they did work. One of the reasons workers are doing longer hours in the UK stems from expectations placed upon them with regard to reading and responding to emails. However, denying workers a decent home life will ultimately lead only to an organisation having a disengaged and exhausted workforce.”

To read the results of the survey in full, go to: https://www.purecommercialfinance.co.uk/news/the-average-worker-has-651-unread-emails-in-their-inbox/