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Tech Firm Implements Employee Zero Email Policy

By Susanna Kim | ABC News

You ve got mail not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned from sending

emails under the company s new zero email policy.

CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10

percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent

is spam. That s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18

months, forcing the company s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other

via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is

focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and

partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent

in six months.

When asked how employees have responded to the policy, Crouch told ABC News the

overall response has been positive with strong take up of alternative tools.

Breton, the French finance minister from 2005 to 2007, told the Wall Street

Journal he has not sent an email in the three years since he became chairman

and CEO of Atos in November 2008.

We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working

environments and also encroaching into our personal lives, he said in a

statement when first announcing the policy in Feburary. At [Atos] we are

taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to

reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.

Atos had revenue last year of of EUR 8.6 billion, or $11.5 billion, and has

offices in 42 countries, according to the company website.

The company says by 2013, more than half of all new digital content will be the

result of updates to, and editing of existing information. Middle managers

spend more than 25 percent of their time searching for information, according

to the company.

Crouch said Atos is evaluating a number of new tools to replace internal email

including collaborative and social media tools. Those include the Atos Wiki,

which allows all employees to communicate by contributing or modifying online

content, and Office Communicator, the company s online chat system which allows

video conferencing, and file and application sharing.