Email in the workplace is credited for both increasing productivity — and hindering it. Most of us groan about hours and hours of answering email, and analysis shows that most communication that happens via email is unproductive. In 2010, organizations lost about $1,250 per user a year in productivity due to spam, and up to $4,100 per year due to emails which were written poorly.

However, as the Economic Development Administration recently discovered, it is not so easy to get by without email either. A computer virus took out the agency’s entire computer network for a total of 81 days, forcing employees to rely on fax and ‘snail mail’ for paper communications. Though workers at the agency found ways around the lack of email, they did find it challenging. Keep reading →