Wednesday, April 3, 2019
![Finger pointing at email icon](/corporate-research-partnerships/sites/default/files/uploads/images/or_news_images_29.png)
The first formalized study of “email deferral” in the workplace, conducted by a University of Waterloo PhD candidate, outlines the primary reasons people tend to put off responding to online correspondence.
While there are a “wide range of characteristics regarding emails” that impact decisions to defer handling, the research has found these can be grouped into five main considerations: time or effort involved in handling the email; identity of the sender; number of recipients on the thread; user’s workload and context; and the urgency of the email message.