First formalized study of email deferral in the workplace

Ever wonder why people seem to be ignoring your emails?

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.