Dealing with email. Email is one of the largest sources of information you will have to deal with on a daily basis. Email is a useful tool if handled properly. It is common practice for an administrative assistant to be in charge of their manager’s inbox. This means you, as an assistant, have to monitor twice as much email, and typically managers tend to have more emails than regular employees. Although having email makes communication much easier, it does present some issues when it comes to organization. Determining which emails are important or should be deleted places you in the position of making decisions for both you and your manager. You cannot approach your manager to ask if this email is important or not. That is why you are there. Having a technique that enables you to process email systematically allows for faster decision-making and organizing. Below is a quick and easy technique you should use to process emails more effectively. The READ Technique allows you to process emails in the following manner: read, evaluate, act, delete. The act step in the process is the most important. Here, you determine the following: Do you reply to the sender? Do you relay this information to your manager? Do you resource this information for future reference? Do you reject the email and delete it?
