Management Toolkit

Phones 4U bans staff from email

Jo Best silicon.com

Published: 19 Sep 2003 09:45 BST

John Caudwell, CEO of high street mobile retailers Phones 4U, announced on Thursday that he'll be banning all his staff from using email across the business.

The reasoning behind the total ban is apparently to improve productivity by reducing the time Phones 4U employees spend unnecessarily on email -- which Caudwell estimates will save the company £1m a month.

The ban will apply to Phones 4U's 2,500+ staff, who Caudwell believes will find themselves with an extra three hours a day on their hands. He said he introduced no email policy after seeing staff becoming chained to their computers, rather than talking to colleagues or customers in person.

Caudwell said in a statement: "I saw that email was insidiously invading Phones 4U so I banned it immediately. Management and staff at HQ and in the stores were beginning to show signs of being constrained by email proliferation... Phones 4U staff have been told to get off the keyboards, get face-to-face or on to the phone to colleagues. The quality and efficiency of communication have been increased tremendously in one fell swoop; things are getting done, people aren't tied to their PCs."