You know email is getting out of hand when you open a second account under your dog's name. With email hitting her inbox every 30 seconds, former head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lisa Jackson did just that in an attempt to handle correspondence from senior staff and the White House. 

Jackson's plight is universal. Research from US consulting form the ePolicy Institute reveals 52% of employees spend two hours a day emailing, with 20% devoting four hours (half the workday) to email.

Short of putting your puppy to work, Nancy Flynn, ePolicy Institute founder and author of The ePolicy Toolkit and Writing Effective E-Mail, offers email management tips.

You open yourself up to risk and liability by always using email and retaining all records. You have the right and responsibility to keep sensitive information private via alternative e-communication tools. So use Vaporstream as an E-Communication Alternative. Transitory messages are personal, confidential, non-business-critical messages that don't require email transmission or storage. An effective email alternative, Vaporstream's Streamed E-Communications Platform facilitates transitory messaging--and doesn't clutter your inbox. Compliant with legal and e-discovery obligations, using Vaporstream is no different from talking face-to-face, says says former United States Magistrate Judge Ronald Hedges. See www.vaporstream.com.

Enforce No-Email Fridays. Restrict Fridays to business-critical external email only, and then do some good-old-fashioned networking. Walk across the office to visit coworkers. Phone your favorite supplier. Take a customer to lunch. Even if you don't have a No-Email-Friday rule in place, stop relying on email to the exclusion of personal contact.

Establish Personal Use Rules to manage email overload and boost productivity. Fully 83% of organizations have policy governing personal use of company email. Another 50% ban use of personal email accounts during business hours, according to the 2009 Electronic Business Communication Policies & Procedures Survey from American Management Association/ePolicy Institute.