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Love them or hate them, emails are a quick and convenient way to communicate. But managing the flood of messages streaming in from clients and colleagues can cause problems. For PAs, looking after their managers’ emails as well as their own, it can be a real headache.

The best way to manage and organise a busy and chaotic inbox is a topic that pops up regularly, with PAs seeking ways to be more effective when handling emails or encouraging their manager to grant unfettered access to Outlook.

Survey

In the Today’s PA survey, we asked the question “Do you manage your manager’s inbox?”, and were pleased to see that around 65% of our respondents look after and organise their manager’s emails.

The remainder (approximately 35%) answered “no”. This was for a variety of different reasons, ranging from individual management style to company policy. One PA said that their manager preferred answering their own emails, feeling that it offered a more personal approach. Another commented that although this had been done in the past, it was now felt that with a younger and more IT literate workforce, managers could manage their own emails. A third respondent said that within their organisation, PAs working for managers at a certain level were not granted access to their manager’s inbox.

When asked the follow up question “Does this work well for you?”, the answer was an overwhelming “yes!”.  In total, 200 of the 241 PAs who managed their manager’s inbox said they were happy with the arrangement.  Having full access to all emails allowed them to stay up to date with various projects and deal with any actions necessary.

Unfortunately, for some of our PAs, this did not work out quite so well. A few felt inundated by the sheer number of messages and wondered how effective they were being in dealing with emails, having received little guidance from their manager.

But the most common complaint was being ‘out of the loop’, and managers failing to copy PAs in on relevant emails. This resulted in time spent reading through long email chains and checking the ‘sent’ items just to try to keep up to date. Not marking messages as ‘read’ or archiving those that had been dealt with led to more time being wasted and emails either being actioned twice (once by PA, once by manager) or not at all.

Help or Hindrance?

Our next question asked if PAs would find it easier if they were to manage their managers’ inbox. Whilst many felt that this would make a huge difference (for example, allowing them to stay up to date with projects and see overall picture) the majority of respondents answered “no” to this question.

Asked why not, the most frequent answer was that PAs had more than enough to do and yet another time-consuming task would take them away from other important aspects of their work. Further respondents’ comments ranged from emails being of a highly technical nature requiring specialist knowledge to deal with appropriately, to managers having multiple accounts making emails almost impossible to monitor, to managers receiving personal as well as business emails in their company inbox. (One PA said that although seeing personal messages may have been a concern at first – after a while, it ceased to be a problem!)

From the answers and comments received, it’s clear that (overall) PAs are happy to look after their manager’s emails, and in most organisations this is certainly the most efficient approach.

However, it seems that, with a few exceptions, managing inboxes is all a matter of personal preference – with PAs, as always, having to adapt themselves to their manager’s individual way of working.

Today’s PA Microsoft Outlook Masterclass can significantly improve your email management skills.