In an effort aimed to boost efficiency, Nielsen, the ratings company, decided to remove Microsoft Outlook's reply to all function. The feature allows the sender to reply to all recipients.

In a company memo, Nielsen's Chief Information Officer, Andrew Cawood, described what steps employees responding to emails should take if they wish to send the email to more than one recipient.

Those steps include selecting each recipient individually or by using a distribution list. While some naysayers have already denounced the plan, saying that it will actually waste time, this can actually work.

Let's consider a team of 10 working on a project together. John sends an email to all 10 members of the team. All 10 members actually need to know about the contents of this particular email, because it has the team's next meeting agenda. Jane remembers that John needs to stop by her office to pick up important documents for his part of the project. However, Jane sends the email to everyone on the team. All nine team members spend about 10 seconds reviewing the email, so Jane just cost the team and company 80 seconds (1 minute and 20 seconds).

While this may not seem like much time, let's remember that the point of this experiment was to prove that Nielsen is ultimately saving time. But, it's not all about the amount of time that Nielsen is concerned about. The company is also wanting to free up server space.

The memo appears below.

"REPLY TO ALL" FUNCTION TO BE DISABLED

A Message from Andrew Cawood

In December, the Nielsen Executive Council (NEC) held an Act Now! event to review suggestions from across the business that would eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency. Beginning Thursday, January 29, we will implement one of the approved recommendations: removing the “Reply to All” functionality from Microsoft Outlook.

We have noticed that the “Reply to All” functionality results in unnecessary inbox clutter. Beginning Thursday we will eliminate this function, allowing you to reply only to the sender. Responders who want to copy all can do so by selecting the names or using a distribution list.

Eliminating the “Reply to All” function will:

• Require us to copy only those who need to be involved in an e-mail conversation
• Reduce non-essential messages in mailboxes, freeing up our time as well as server space

This is one of the many changes being implemented as a result of the NEC Act Now! initiative. If you have any suggestions on how we can continue to improve the way we work, please send your comments to Nielsen Communications [mailto: REDACTED].

Andrew Cawood
Chief Information Officer