This is the best time to email your co-workers, according to research

Researchers warn that the ‘ideal time’ may negatively impact wellbeing

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Figuring out the best time to send work emails should be straightforward, yet it can sometimes be a minefield.

Now, research has revealed the best time to email co-workers in order to get an improved response rate. However, the results may not be popular among colleagues.

According to a study by Axios HQ, the best time to send internal emails comes on Sunday afternoons, between 3pm and 6pm.

The research analysed 8.7 million emails and found that messages sent during this period had an average open rate of 94 per cent.

Meanwhile, sending emails on Sunday evenings between 6pm to 9pm had only a slightly lower open rate of 86 per cent.

Emails sent during these times had low “competition”, and were not fighting with marketing and other non-essential messages for the recipient’s attention, the study deduced.

Axios HQ found that the worst time to send a work email to colleagues is on Saturdays between 6am to 12pm, with these emails getting an average open rate of just 21 per cent.

However, the study warned that “send windows do not always equate to reading windows” and urged senders to “take all the daily distractions, work obligations and metrics into account” in order to ensure colleagues receive emails at an optimal time.

Other studies have previously found that sending out-of-hours emails elicits faster responses from recipients. However, this is not necessarily a positive thing.

Dr Laura Giurge, assistant professor at the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, said workers who receive out-of-hours emails are more likely to feel like they have to work at any time.

The researcher published a paper in 2021 regarding the experiences of sending and receiving out-of-hours emails, and found that it prompted an “email urgency bias” that made people feel like they had to be available to work.

“Notably, in our research we also find a wellbeing gap; senders underestimate how stressful off-hour emails are for receivers,” she added.

“Put differently, when we look at our inbox as senders, we seem to underestimate the impact that our off-hour behaviour can have on others’ wellbeing.”

She urged email senders to “take responsibility for how and when we make requests of others” in order to protect one another’s wellbeing in the workplace.

The phenomenon has also been called a “techno-invasion” by researchers, because it gives a “sense of work technology creeping into your personal life”.

Dr Matthew Davis, associate professor at Leeds University Business School, toldThe Times: “My worry would be if people see this and think, ‘I’ll start sending these more routinely on a weekend’. Because for some people, it’s fine… but there is a good proportion of people that this will add to that sense of a burden.”