The Era of No Reply
That silence in your inbox is no fluke, with workers not opening a third of corporate emails.
The manager emailed his team, and didn’t hear back from two employees. His boss had emailed him that morning, also to no response. The manager emailed two of his team members directly. One replied a day later. The other never replied.
If this seems like outlandish workplace behavior, it’s not: employees today don’t open a third of corporate emails, according to a study of 2 billion corporate emails sent to nearly 11 million global employees, according to data from email platform PoliteMail. And as the behavior grows, experts say productivity lags, in a number of ways that frustrate leaders.
“Employees are doing a lot of I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-can screening,” says engagement expert Mark Royal, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry. “It can be both disengagement and prioritization.”
Although many are not critical, emails can be the lifeblood of communication for critical projects and innovation. Yet a shocking 40% of internal emails are glanced at for just 1-3 seconds, according to figures from ContactMonkey; only a third are read for more than nine seconds. When receiving a work email, just 10% of employees will click on internal links, according to the PoliteMail data.
To be sure, employee drive is an issue; global employee engagement is in a post-pandemic slump, with just 20% of employees reporting engagement, according to Gallup figures. What’s more, communication overload is mounting. A typical white-collar worker receives 117 emails per day and 153 messages, according to 2025 data from Microsoft. Of those, 14 monthly emails are directly from the company, with an average read time of 33 minutes, according to PoliteMail figures. “For some, there’s so much email coming in that it’s freezing people from opening, let alone responding,” says Renee Whalen, North America Market Leader for Professional Search at Korn Ferry.
Organizations’ sky-high communication stacks are adding to the problem. Over two thirds of firms add communication tools to their technology stack annually, according to figures from voice-to-text maker Speakwise. This leads to employees jumping from app to app, rather than prioritizing one communication stream. Which medium deserves immediate attention becomes mysterious. “The preferred and appropriate channels are becoming more diluted,” says Janet Mertens, managing director for research at Korn Ferry's AMS business.
GenZ workers are particularly unlikely to respond to emails: they are 82 percent more likely than GenXers to avoid emails that require action, according to a report from online document platform Sign.com. The report highlights that these behaviors compound slow-downs across teams. But the lack of response among GenZers is widespread: 40% say they’ve recently avoided an inbox item that requires administrative action (compared to 22% of GenX and Boomers), and 58% admit to ghosting on documents altogether (compared to 38% of GenX and Boomers).
In general, employees over 40 tend to opt for email, while GenZ employees do not necessarily share that preference. To them, “email sends the broader signal that this is something you should know and eventually respond on,” says Royal.
The onus is on organizations to signal to employees which emails, pings, texts, voice memos and document tags need to be prioritized. “Firms can set some real guardrails around what belongs in email or chat, and what actually requires a response,” says Karrin Randle, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Culture, Change and Communication practice.
For managers who would still like more email responsiveness, the key comes in setting norms—for employees of all ages. Employees should be able to easily recite the expected response times for responding to individual and group emails and messages from bosses, colleagues and the company, on different channels. For example, a team leader might decide that pings need to be replied to within an hour, and emails within a day. “There’s an opportunity here for more accountability,” says Scott Sette, sector leader for children’s healthcare at Korn Ferry.
Engagement experts note that emails that don’t receive replies are often lacking basic hygiene, such as a clear action stated in the subject line, and a call to action in the first lines of the email. Punchiness helps, as does brevity. If those emails still don’t garner responses, it’s safe to assume that perhaps another channel, such as direct communication, might be superior. “You might ask yourself whether the lack of response in some way stems from you,” says Royal.
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