AI-Driven Language Processing Could Shorten Our Emails

Like many people in the early weeks of a new year, you may well be seeking ways to improve efficiencies in your company for the coming 12 months. Time wasted by office workers trawling through emails and documents could be one area for you to examine. Here's why: A recent report by McKinsey management consultants estimated that employees typically spend 28% of their working week on reading and answering emails, which works out to about 21/2 hours per day per staffer. Other studies suggest that there's an additional "interruption effect" that lasts as long as 23 minutes from the time your staffers hit the send button until they return to their original tasks. The distractions of that deluge of emails and documents aside, the environmental impact of fossil-fuel energy used in data centers and the internet to ferry emails to their digital destinations is becoming a major concern.