We haven't talked about women and work email in a while — and it occurred to me that we really haven't discussed all the other forms of written and online communication in the working world. So, what are your thoughts on work communication etiquette in 2023? What rules have you established to make your work communication reflect your personal brand (e.g., tone? grammar?), and what rules have you established for purposes of work-life boundaries?

So, some questions for everyone:

• In work email, what is your preferred signoff? When do you use last names and honorifics vs. first names? Do you have rules about when to CC vs. BCC someone? How do you pay attention to tone in your emails, if at all? (Do you have personal rules for when you check emails, or which emails you get notifications for on your screen or phone?)
• In messages on MS Teams, Slack, or other dedicated messaging apps, how proper is your grammar, capitalization, and spelling? Are you a fan of emojis or gifs? Do you feel like there's an etiquette around @-ing someone to bring them into the conversation, or about silencing your notifications in a way that is obvious to your coworkers? In general, do you prefer to be “always available” via messaging apps, or do you have set times each day when you check to see new conversations and weigh in on older ones?
• Text messages and work-related communications: Do you do it, and if so how often? (Does it matter if you have a dedicated phone for work-related communiques?) How proper is your grammar, etc., in texting? Group texts: yea or nay?
• (related: in Zooms and video communications, do you always have your camera on? How proper is your grammar, etc., in private DMs with coworkers as well as when asking a written question or giving a general statement?)

(And for all of this: Do you notice any sort of divide among your coworkers, bosses, and subordinates, whether generational or otherwise?)

My Rules around Work Communications

For my own $.02, I feel like a lot of these work communications come down to boundaries — but also office culture!

For emails, I keep seeing the meme (and relating to it hard) about how “I have said something serious, so I am putting a period. But we're friendly so I'm going to follow it with an exclamation! Signing off in the friendliest possible way, xx.” So I still do feel weird about tone, but maybe that's me. (My go-to signoff is generally “Best,” but a lot of times work-related emails are without greetings or signoffs these days.)

We at Corporette use Slack, and I don't have too many rules around it — I use proper grammar sometimes but I frequently just use lowercase thoughts. I do like emojis for tone (and yes, I totally overuse the sideways laughing emoji face), but I'll only use a gif if I'm thinking of something very specific and can find it quickly.

For text messages, I've always held that at the farthest distance from me for work-life boundaries — I have texted with coworkers, even back in my lawyer days, but for work-related things I prefer to keep communications relatively minimal. I also feel like text messages should have a measure of urgency (but obviously not as much as an actual phone call).

For Zooms, if I'm one of many people on a call, then I'll usually turn my camera off if possible — if and when I write anything in the chat, it tends to be more on the casual side.

Readers, how about you? What are your thoughts on the etiquette around work communication these days? What rules have you established to make your work communication reflect your personal brand (e.g., tone? grammar?), and what rules have you established for purposes of work-life boundaries?

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I've written before about how I am, in general, drowning in information overload, and my email inboxes are historically very symbolic of that. Not only has my work email somehow landed on every random PR company's news blast list (grrr), and my personal email wound up on every politician's news blast list (double grrr), but with my personal email I end up signing up for all sorts of newsletters that come anywhere from 5–15 times a week.

I've written before about my attempts to organize my personal email into folders, and use Unroll.Me to unsubscribe, and so forth — but as of a few days ago I had something like 6,000 unread messages in my “to be deleted” folder, and like 1,000 STARRED messages (meaning, things I would like to read! someday!) in my “newsletters” folder. Not good, Bob!

So I read about Sanebox somewhere (fine, I heard about it on TikTok), and it sounded like a game changer because it can automatically “handle” your email once it reaches a certain age. GAMECHANGER.

I have set it up to outright delete some folder contents after a certain time point (sale alerts from brands get 7 days grace period, news from the NYT and WSJ and Atlantic get deleted after 14 days), while other folder contents just get archived after 3 months. They also have features called Sanebox Later and Sanebox Blackhole — to distinguish between email that hits your Inbox — where the Sanebox Later stuff is less important, and the Blackhole is stuff you NEVER want to deal with and is deleted after 7 days. (While I was setting it up I was unsubscribing from some things, but I plan on sticking emails in the Blackhole if it's a list I never asked to be put on in the first place. It's kind of like your spam folder, but without the negative ramifications for the email owner about being flagged as spam.)

The 2-week trial is free, and the smallest plan (“appetizer”) starts at $24 a year, but they have lots of other plans with more robust features, or more email accounts. (I'm on the “lunch” plan, which gives me 2 email accounts and 5 optional features, and I paid for two years upfront because it looked like a better deal at $169.) There are also discounts for educational, nonprofit, and government agencies, although of course if you're using it for a work email you should check with your IT department before setting anything up.

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Sales of note for 7.19.24

• Nordstrom – The Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is now open to everybody! Here are all of our picks, and here are reader favorites.
• Ann Taylor – Semi-annual sale, extra 50% off markdowns + 20% off everything!
• Banana Republic Factory – 40-60% off everything, take an extra 20% off your purchase
• Eloquii – 50% off select styles
• Everlane – Up to 70% off
• J.Crew – End of Season Sale, extra 50% off sale styles
• J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off everything
• Lo & Sons – Summer sale, up to 50% off
• Madewell – End of season sale, up to 70% off with code.
• M.M.LaFleur – Save 25% sitewide. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the biggest sitewide discount I've ever seen…)
• Rothy's – Lots of great finds in the “final few” section
• Talbots – Semi-annual red door sale, extra 40% off markdowns

The post Coffee Break: Sanebox Review appeared first on Corporette.com.

Readers, what are your tips on how to organize your personal email(s)? Do you use tools like Unroll.Me to keep clutter low, a ton of Gmail filters, or some other trick or hack? Do you practice a zero inbox policy with personal emails — and how do you keep from getting overwhelmed? (Psst: I know a lot of you use Outlook for work — have any great Outlook tips or hacks to share? We're working on a separate post and will compile them all. Do you like to use a program like Outlook to handle personal email as well, or do you just visit the websites or use the apps?)

I'm totally overwhelmed myself, so I'm not sure I'm the best to share my tips and tricks — still, this is how I set up my various Gmail accounts (all four of them…)

{update: here's my Sanebox review, which I'm using to automatically “handle” older emails by deleting/archiving some}

1. I have separate email addresses for different things:

• Email A: Personal email address that I use with my friends and family.
• Email B: Work email address.
• Email C: “Anonymous” email address that I use to sign up for newsletters.
• Email D: Family email address — it's amazing, for reasons I wrote about over at CorporetteMoms, our blog for working moms.

I have several other email addresses for various things, but those four are the main ones.

2. I only really use two inboxes, even though I have four main email addresses. Email C forwards to Email A but the messages are filtered to skip my inbox and go directly to a folder I call “TDE” — to delete eventually. I regularly have 500+ unread emails in that folder — I do mass deletions by just highlighting 50 of them at once, unchecking and starring anything I actually want to look at, and deleting the rest based on subject line or sender. Email D (family email address) also forwards to Email A, as well as to my husband's main email address so that both of us see all school- and kid-related emails.

Email B (work email) is its own beast that I kind of stink at figuring out — I get a lot of random companies signing me up for newsletters, a lot of poorly-worded cold emails re SEO, guest posting, etc. Of the hundreds of affiliate relationships I have for Corporette, unless I affirmatively opt out, I get series of emails that go like: “Retailer X is having a sale next week!” followed by “Retailer X wants to remind you about the sale next week!” followed by “Retailer X is changing the sale next week!” followed by “Retailer X is having a sale tomorrow!” followed by “Retailer X is having a sale now!” — all of which I generally ignore because a) it's a lot of noise and b) if it's a big sale that's worth noting to you guys, I'll hear about it somewhere else.

3. Regarding sale emails: I just set up a separate folder for Covvet emails (mentioned in last year's post on shopping apps), which I always love to get, but otherwise all sale emails (personal ones, at least) go to my TDE folder in my personal inbox. In years past, I had ALL of the sale emails go to a separate folder because, let's face it, you either have time to shop the sale that day or you don't, and it's kind of a bummer to find out four days later that your favorite store had a big sale.

4. While in the past I would only give you Email A if I actually know you, that's changed a little. I DID recently switch some robot emails from Email C to Email A just so that they definitely hit my inbox, like important(ish) ones such as boarding passes and library notices.

How about you guys? What are your best systems, hacks, and tips on how to organize your personal email? How do you balance the need to “not be overwhelmed” with the desire to be informed? Do you practice Inbox Zero? Are you in need of Email Debt Forgiveness Day?

Pictured: Shutterstock / iprostocks.

The post How to Organize Your Personal Email appeared first on Corporette.com.

What do you do with your company email after you quit your job? When you go on vacation, most of you probably set up an out-of-office message to tell anyone who sends you an email that you'll be back soon — but do you do an OOO message for when you've quit? We've also discussed what to say in a goodbye email, but this is slightly different…

Reader M is heading to a new firm and wonders what will happen to incoming messages after she's gone:

I am an attorney and am leaving my firm next week to go to a new firm. I conduct a lot of email correspondence with not only opposing counsel(s), but clients and vendors. It is not possible for me to notify everybody I correspond with that I am leaving, but my fear is they will email me after I leave and get no response. Is there a way for me to fix this problem? Should I post an autoreply? If so, what should it say? I don't think my firm will pull down my email address immediately.

We've talked about how to quit gracefully, and what to say in a maternity leave email, but we haven't covered goodbye or “I no longer work here” messages. I'm curious what the readers say here, because I suspect this is going to vary widely by company, as well as maybe region and practice area. Some ideas:

Psst: Some of our main fashion articles that might be of interest include our Ultimate Guide to Business Casual, Wardrobe Essentials for Work, and The Corporette Guide to Comfortable Heels — all constantly updated! If you're just starting out or on a budget, check out our Affordable Office Clothes roundup — and if you're plus-sized, check out our Plus-Size Picks for Work.

How to Deal with Email When You Quit: Call HR

Call HR and ask their advice. Their words will trump anything I or anyone else here will say.

Ask the IT Department: What Happens to My Emails After I Quit?

Call your IT team and see where your emails will go after you leave. Will they be forwarded to another attorney? To your secretary? To no one?

(This is good to know in general, so that you can avoid your Zappos order confirmations ending up in someone else's inbox… yet another good reason to separate your work/personal lives!)

Autoresponder Emails For When You Quit

If all else fails, yes, I'd say the default here is to set up an autoresponder reply.

Use something simple like “Thank you for reaching out! As of ___, Reader M has left the firm. Please call 212-555-1234 for more information on who is handling this matter.”

If you have a secretary who can handle this kind of query, I'd include his or her number — otherwise I'd consider just putting the main phone number for your firm.

Readers, how do you usually see this dealt with? What do you think are “best practices” for dealing with email correspondence from people outside the firm after you've left?

Psst: These are some of our favorite books if you're considering changing your career

Pictured: 20_17_01, originally uploaded to Flickr by Jordan Dawe. All other images via Stencil.

The post Emails and Quitting: What to Do About Your Email When You Leave a Job appeared first on Corporette.com.