All staff email

[Liam]

Sorry if this has been covered but I couldn't find anything when I looked.

 

All staff emails are beginning to really annoy me if I'm honest. I understand the need sometimes for certain people but with groups for everything I'm wondering if we should think about putting restrictions in place.

 

Just wondering what you all do?

It's got to a point whereby I pretty much put a rule in place.. If recipient is all staff then delete..

 

I am thinking about the possibility of just allowing a number of people like slt and maybe a couple of other teams.

 

Any suggestions would be great. I think this would then make my emails that are really important stand half a chance of being read.

[GREED]

When All Staff is used and it is not really for all staff, or a general waste of time, just reply with cc to SLT saying 'are you sure this was relevant to all staff?'

[elsiegee40]

All staff is probably only of use to your support staff and SLT.

 

Pastoral managers, office staff and you invariably need it. Your common or garden teacher won't need it, but probably uses it

[unixman_again]

We have All Staff, All Teaching Staff, All Support Staff, All SMT, All Students, All Lower Students and All Upper Students. Who can actually use them is heavily restricted. Teachers can send to any of the student groups, but not the staff groups. Heck, the students get annoyed with emails from one particular teacher, who sends to all students, but doesn't include a subject, and I can only imagine what happens if this went to everybody. I see emails to all the groups, except SMT, and a few other groups as well, such as H&S, enquiries from outside, etc. This is so I know that the email server hasn't crashed. Only a select few can send to really all, and I am one. This power is used used sparingly.

[MatthewL]

We locked ours down to only certain people, mainly senior managers as it was been abused!

[dblight]

We have restrictions on who can send to the group. The group is hidden also from the GAL and is only used in the BCC field when it's used.

[witch]

All staff is rarely used other than in genuine cases. The HT and I use it all the time but others only use it to ask or tell everyone something. I do NOT see them abusing it at all. The staff have created their own groups and use those to talk amongst themselves.

We've never had a problem in either school - perhaps we are very lucky

[twin--turbo]

if its exchange put message moderation on and have some moderators.

 

TT

[CyberNerd]

In GAFE staff can elect to receive the email as a digest once per day, immediately, or not at all (and look at the group).

Having explain this to SLT I'm not sure they understood the concept and instead elected to punish people for sending too many emails. We now have a system where emails are sent to a central person (admin) who collates them and sends them all twice weekly.

I think that if I came in as an independent consultant and recommended the first suggestion they would have gone for it.

 

At least we get to employ someone for a few hours per day to do this.

[WithoutMotive]

What works for me is, if I start receiving a lot of allstaff emails meant for the same group of people regularly, I suggest to the sender that a new group is created. This has worked so far and reduced the amount of email flying around.

[Poults]

We restrict it after a major outbreak of for sale items, now its just slt, office staff and it support that can use it. They could use mail teachers and mail support staff but no one seems to have clocked on yet.

[psydii]

The head disapproves of all staff email.

 

Sending one is a career limiting move.

 

No technical controls required.

[sister_annex]

we just use message delivery restrictions in exchange (2010) - create a (hidden) distribution group add in the people/other groups that can email the 'All staff Group' and go from there... dead easy

[rickjames]

We don't have one, what with being a rather large university. Just billions of distribution groups and then an IT Admin one from which general 'stuff' goes out; largely irrelevant as the news they post is generally to do with one site whilst I'm at another

[seustice]

I think we should just reply 'UNSUBSCRIBE' to the ones that we consider irrelevant and encourage others to do the same. That's the kind of passive-aggressive stance that makes people think!

 

We have one member of staff that sends crappy e-cards to the All-Staff list, I'm considering blocking the web-site it links to!

[Liam]

Lol, sounds like it's not just me then.. I'll have to suggest some of these idea when we return after Easter.

 

What are your emails about though? So and so is missing have you seen them? Joe blogs is truanting , I have a villa in Spain does anyone want to rent it? Isolation?

[cherd84]

Our restrictions were enforced fairly recently after the head complained that there were too many getting sent. Hardly anybody was reading them.

 

We sent out numerous reminders as the deadline approached (also to all staff). When the deadline passed, lots of teachers asking why they can't send to all staff any more, thus proving that nobody read them to start with!

 

My recommendation would be that if you're going to bring a restriction in, get SLT on board and strictly enforce it. The number of all staff e-mails going round our place is still too many IMO because certain staff have cottoned on to talking nice to the front office team who will then forward to all staff on their behalf.

[Trannie_harry]

We have the restriction on our school so only SLT and selected office staff can send them. The only disadvantage we have seen to this is staff sending all teaching staff emails and all admin and support emiails which covers all staff.

[ITGURU]

We've had All Staff locked down for a number of years to try cut down on the mass emails. Others don't see it necessary but does help and only those who need permission are added to allow sending to it.

[mullet_man]

No restrictions here, but staff know they aren't allowed to send all staff emails. We have a weekly bulletin for notices and staff know messages go in this.

[mthomas08]

Our HT had already told everyone to cut down the emails.

 

62 emails in the space of 10 days. The majority could have been sent to Teaching and not Everyone.

[thebatman]

We have All Teaching Staff, All Support Staff, then each year group. Only SLT, Pupil Services (Admin) and our selfs can send to the staff groups and all staff can send to year groups. One things bug me off all the time, is they send emails to both staff groups all the time when it only affects one group.

[GuyJD]

We have 5 people that can send out an email to the "All Staff" group, myself, the Head, Deputy, SAO and Business Manager. If anyone wants to send an email to all staff it has to go via one of us and if we don't agree that it needs to go to all staff then it doesn't get sent.

[AJWhite1970]

All our email distribution lists are unrestricted for staff but heavily moderated and restricted for students.

 

We went through some tough love staff training about 3 years ago regarding using the distribution lists and apart from one member of staff who insisted on replying to any all staff email with a pun sent back to all staff (I disabled their account a few times now although since their written warning they have stopped doing it...) our distribution lists are used properly 99% of the time. We also have a "For Sale" distribution list but you only get "caravan for sale" emails if you have emailed me to opt-in to the list. You would be amazed of the rubbish that's on that list though...

 

[jimmy_2k]

We had a SLT member who was assigned to tell off the senders of unnecessary all staff emails. This really helped. They did creep up and then went back down again. The best way to sort this is get an SLT member on side with it and let them deal with the senders!