How to manage the mountain of emails when returning from vacation?

After the summer holiday period, for most French workers it is time to open their professional mailbox, often filled with hundreds of emails to process.

It’s a gesture that risks erasing all the benefits of vacation in a single “click”: opening your professional email inbox. For many workers, returning to work also means returning to a daily routine punctuated by dozens, even hundreds of emails received per week.

According to the 2023 benchmark of the Observatory of Infobesity and Digital Collaboration, we receive an average of 144 professional emails each week. But this figure should be qualified depending on the professional category: for an employee, for example, we are talking about 100 emails per week on average. For managers, this figure climbs to 194 emails, and executives receive an average of 331 emails each week.

Distribute the task over several days

A very large quantity of emails, therefore, which accumulated over several weeks of absence can give rise to dizzying numbers of emails to process… and represent a real source of stress, as soon as you return to the office.

“We can talk about a real cognitive overload,” explains Émeric Lebreton, psychologist, president and founder of the Orient’action group. The Avec Vous expert therefore advises spreading this tedious task over several days or even a week.

“If you want to get back to work gently, you have to do things you enjoy. It’s better to spread out reading your emails over a few days, to divide up the task,” explains the psychologist.

So no more days dedicated exclusively to processing emails: you should instead organize yourself in advance to distribute the workload optimally, going so far as to reserve slots in your diary to process pending mail.

“To return with complete peace of mind, you need to set a time slot for a limited period of time,” explains Fedoua El Ayoubi, Finegan’s human resources director. “For example, you can set aside one hour a day for a week.”

Know how to sort and delegate

When you go through your mailbox, you may notice that some emails…are no longer current.

“You have to know how to sort through it!” recalls Émeric Lebreton. “We are overwhelmed with information. When you hold a position of responsibility, this ability is particularly important.”

Prioritization is therefore one of the keys to successfully processing all pending mail efficiently. “You have to prioritize, deal with unprocessed emergencies first, to be efficient and give the right answers,” explains Fedoua El Ayoubi.

With one essential detail: some files that were urgent when the email was sent may no longer be. Especially if our colleagues have taken over during our absence, recalls Finegan’s human resources director: “we must organize ourselves with our teams in advance, leave it to a colleague to manage current activities in our absence.”

Eliminate the problem at the root

Last tip, more radical but also very effective: simply reduce the number of emails received. “I ask my colleagues not to send me emails during my absences, except in case of emergency,” explains Émeric Lebreton.

And if our colleagues really can’t do without sending us a copy of all their mail, we can also wonder about the health of our team…

“Too many emails are often symptomatic of a corporate culture,” explains Boutayna Burkel, founder of HR data firm The Helpr.

“Often, putting everyone in CC means that we need to protect ourselves, to leave things in writing. We can therefore ask ourselves the question: why do our teams send us so many emails? It could be a signal of dysfunction,” concludes the HR expert from Avec Vous.