I've been in IT for 25 years and I think email is a very disruptive technology but at the same time it saves most workers from having to have a secretary and it does provide a nice historical reference for referring back to later on for information.

The problem with email is that it tends to push people to stay glued to their inbox and feel compelled to stop their current train of thought and concentration and deal with the email message. That is very disruptive to productivity in most (but not all) companies. It's not a big problem at most firms but some firms have real problems dealing with it and some don't even realize it's a problem.

I've worked with a lot of companies that do recognize it's a problem and there are several solutions that can be implemented in stages to break the hold that email has. First, you can force a policy down to all desktops and phones that turns off any sound or popup notification of an incoming email. This is the first step in breaking the lure for employees to drop everything and look at their inbox all day long. Beyond that, you can train your staff to set aside a set time to answer emails - for instance every day at 4pm - or maybe twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. This forces urgent matters to be elevated to phone calls or video conferencing and employees can leave their email client closed throughout the day and focus their attention on their work.

Another plan I've helped design and put in place at some companies brings back the role of a group secretary. A secretary serving a group of anywhere from 5 to 10 employees seems to be the ideal size and if implemented the right way, you can make that workgroup more productive and more profitable and they will all use much less email. But they still use email, you just break the slavery aspects of it and the secretary streamlines the communications.

Email started out as a way to supplement and speed up the typing and sending of letters sent through the postal system. In the days of letter writing, people took time to carefully choose their words and think through what they were writing. Once you get a corporate culture where email is a rapid fire short message system, the "well thought out" part of messaging goes out the window. Ideally a company will put in place training and procedures that returns some sanity to corporate communications and that usually involves using much less email but not a complete rejection of it.