When it comes to email at work, we’ve all received forwarded jokes or those chain letters that tell you to forward to 10 people or else. I suspect we may have also sent out a few at some time or other. What is the email etiquette regarding these types of correspondence? Just don’t do it! Don’t send jokes or non-business related e-mails on company time while using your business e-mail address and/or company resources especially if you are going to send it to another persons business email address. What you do on your personal email address is entirely up to you but business e-mail addresses should be used for business communications.
Think about it, can you be 100% sure the person reading your joke on the priest and farmer shares your quirky sense of humor? It may be funniest thing you have read since our MP’s decided to increase their salaries but will the person on the receiving end find the topic as compelling as you do to want to read it during their busy business day. If someone persists in sending you inappropriate jokes and emails, it is well within your right to politely ask them to either send them to your personal email or say something along the lines of “Kamau, thanks for this but you're going to have to stop sending me these types of jokes or chain emails because I’m so busy at work that I don’t have time to keep up with them.”
Studies have shown how much time and money is being wasted on unnecessary emails even within organizations so don’t pass them along to your colleagues at work either thinking you are lightening the mood at work. The last thing you want to do is compromise how others think about how seriously you take your job. For many emails have become one of the primary sources of communication and form the first impression and lasting impression people have of us.
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