ADITYA PUTRA

1465004 / 65 INT
Communicating in the Digital Age

EMAILS BANNED IN AUSTRALIA

BUSINESS
Communication is part of humans interaction. As Kreitner & Kinicki (2010)
quoted from A Primer on Organizational Behavior by Bowditch & Buono,
communication could be defined as the exchange of information between
a sender and a receiver, and the interference (perception) of meaning
between the individuals involved. The main point here is how to deliver
the same exact meaning of a message from the sender to the receiver
through a medium. The medium itself has so many forms, ranging from
the very basic, like body language and voices, to the more complex form,
like encrypted codes.
In further changed of communication medium, technology has a huge role
in revolutionizing its form. Technology has been updated at incredibly
speed for the last decade, especially Internet. This condition actually
marks a new era of digital communication. At the beginning of its
application, Internet introduced a new way of communication through
electronic mail (e-mail). This feature was like a leap to the modern world
to solve the mail problems. Now, e-mail is adopted in wide array of
sectors, including business and office, to help people communicate with
each other.
There has been a debate about pros and cons on using email at work.
What makes it more interesting is there are several companies in Australia
banned using email in workplace (Tan, 2015 and Lee, 2015). Of course this
kind of action raised new question, why did they do that? Nathan
Schokker, Director of TALIO facilities management services provider,
mentioned
that
email
could
lead
to
misunderstanding
and
miscommunication, like when someone send out an email, two different
people would read it in two different tones of voice. In response to that,
Mr. Schokker suggested the employee to use face-to-face interaction or at
least make an effort for personal communication like phone call (Tan,
2015). In another opinion, Matt Braithwaite-Young, CEO of website
optimization company Quasion, thought that email is not suitable for
internal communication. He found the right way to communicate in a
simple manner within the workplace by using instant messaging. Young
also sensed emails can be very intrusive to staff who are not in the office
at the time. With instant messaging, he hoped that workers have flexibility
to respond whenever they are back in the office (Lee, 2015).
If we refer back to the theory of the basic communication, there are some
factors that caused the misunderstanding and miscommunication in
emailing process. But in this article, Mr. Schokker focused more on
encoding and decoding barriers because just as he told us earlier one
email could has different intonation based on the receiver. This condition
might actually exist because of poor language skills, poor word of choice,
unable to comprehend information, or even lack of slang or humor
understanding (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010). Both of sender and receiver have
equal possibility on getting this issue, thats why internal use of email
could be disastrous if the company have multi-cultural platform. Mr.

ADITYA PUTRA
1465004 / 65 INT
Communicating in the Digital Age
Schokker also admitted that he lost his time and resources just to fix a
misunderstanding issues caused by emails.
All of these problems actually match with the statement in the book that
says email drives the behavior of decreasing the communication forms,
like greetings and informal conversation, communicating with less
emotional attachment, and poor connection between coworkers. But
besides any of that, in some particular conditions email is still popular and
used as the communication medium. Both of the executive managers that
I explained before, Mr. Schokker and Mr. Young admitted still using email to
communicate with their clients (Tan, 2015 and Lee, 2015). Perhaps
because email could act as substitute of traditional mail and also has a
proof receipt. Thats the important consideration in business world where
trust and laws are needed to form a relation. The important notes here is
how to reduce all of the barriers that might disturb the communication
process to external parties.
Personally, I agree with the companies decision to reduce email use for
internal matters and prefer using face-to-face approach instead. This is
quite good to improve the overall communication form in the companies
itself. I believe the workers also prefer a more casual conversation like the
one in instant messaging for internal communication than the formal email
type. Email put pressure to the workers to respond formally and also waste
some times to work on it. In addition, group discussion through email
could also be inconvenience to follow since its not optimized for that
purpose. You will get emails notification every time someone makes a
comment on the mailing list, of course it is very distracting at work. As Mr.
Young said before, it is time to move for more supported platform in
instant messaging era with more personal, natural, flexible responses, and
also more like face-to-face communication style.

REFERENCES
Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2010). Organizational Behavior (9th Edition ed.).
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lee, S. (2015, March 27). Confusion, communication breakdown and work
which never stops: Why Australian companies are banning emails .
Retrieved April 28, 2015, from Mail Online:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3013691/Confusioncommunication-breakdown-work-never-stops-Australiancompanies-banning-emails.html
Tan, S.-L. (2015, March 27). Communication breakdown? Emails are the
culprit. Retrieved April 28, 2015, from Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technologynews/communication-breakdown-emails-are-the-culprit-201503261m8sr2.html