"Attacking Communications Overload: A Work in Progress" by Pamela Flores, Senior Consultant, HLB Communications.

Fortune 1000 employees receive approximately 190 communications per day, according to Inc. Magazine, and they file and never use 80 percent of them. But what price does a company pay when it allows this clutter to reach employees in the first place – in lost time and opportunity? And how can they ensure employees get the information they do need? When Sears, Roebuck and Co. learned that its store managers were being buried in messages, it embarked on an ambitious program to eliminate useless communications and improve remaining ones to ensure that frontline staff receive quality information in a timely manner. Sears' commitment to reducing communications overload has gone far beyond a one-time fix, with the company establishing systems to monitor volume and reduce "overload creep." Far-reaching results range from enhancing the quality of work life at Sears to improving skills to enhancing store managers' ability to serve customers.

To obtain a reprint of this article, please contact Kevin Lynch at klynch@hlbcomm.com.