Timing is everything when it comes to getting reply to your e-mail— and obviously sending one on a Sunday afternoon will most likely get a reaction from your team.
It is according to recent research who found that the best time to send an internal email is Sunday between 3 and 6 p.m
After studying 8.7 million emails, communications software company Axios HQ found that those sent during that time frame had a 94% chance of being opened, compared to the usual 50 to 76% chance of being opened during the rest of the week .
Meanwhile, the second most effective time to contact your team is Sunday from 6pm to 9pm, the researchers said, when emails have an 86% open rate.
Messages sent at this time benefit from “low competition” because they are not competing for workers’ attention with Monday morning meetings and the constant stream of emails that follow.
But don’t mistake employee response for luck: While emails sent on a Sunday afternoon have a better response rate than during a busy work day, they’re unlikely to get a positive response.
Previous research has warned that weekend emails are the worst – if you care about workers’ mental health
Technology is becoming increasingly intrusive in people’s lives outside of the workday, and previous research has shown that workers are struggling switch off and getting Sunday night anxiety because they are always available.
dr. Matthew Davis, associate professor at the University of Leeds Business School, calls this modern phenomenon the “techno invasion”.
He said the Times (UK) that “it is associated with people feeling more stressed, less satisfied with their work and their work-life balance.”
“I worry if people see this and think I’m going to start sending them routinely on weekends,” he added. “Because for some people that’s fine … but there’s a good proportion of people (for whom) this is going to add that sense of burden.”
dr. Laura Giurge, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at the London School of Economics, reiterated in her 2021 out-of-hours e-mail report that it is likely to make workers feel like they have to work around the clock.
“Senders underestimate how stressful after-hours emails can be for recipients,” she wrote. “Put another way, when we view our inbox as senders, we seem to underestimate the impact our off-hours behavior can have on the well-being of others.”
But it’s clear from Axios’ research that people probably already know that sending an email on a Sunday night won’t go down well with employees or colleagues, as data shows that they generally avoid doing it except in an emergency.
Despite the speed of responses, the weekend is the least popular time to send email: researchers found that emails sent on Saturdays and Sundays tend to be “essential communications” and account for just 2% of emails sent that week.
There is a difference between being open and being read
The report also highlighted that there is a risk of emails being opened but then ignored due to employee anger at the time of sending the message.
“Sending windows do not always equal reading windows,” the researchers acknowledged, adding that the percentage of employees who opened an email did not reflect whether it was properly read or responded to.
Ultimately, managers who really need a response to an urgent email should take Giurge’s advice and make that clear in the subject line of their email. “In order to help others protect their well-being, it is important to clearly define the time frames of our requests,” she emphasized.
Likewise, those who send non-urgent emails on Sundays should also make it clear in order to benefit from fast open rates without compromising worker well-being.
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on August 4, 2023.
