Hello, I would like to propose a change in the format of the church Official Communication emails to ward leaders. Simply put, there is no good reason to make us log in to our church account to view the content of the vast majority of these emails. The content should just be included in the body of the email in html format, or if really necessary, as an attached pdf.
- The extra steps of logging in to the church account add up to an extra minute or so of my time each week. I know that doesn't sound like much, but that's less time I have each week to call a ward member or with my family. And because I'm stretched in many directions, every minute of the day counts.
- A few minutes per week multiplied by the number of ward leaders across the church adds up to literally thousands of hours per month in wasted consecrated time that could be used instead in ministering efforts.
- Because I have to quickly triage hundreds of emails per day for work, I often skip over the church communication emails, knowing that they take much longer to login, download, and review. Often I forget to return to the email and it gets overlooked. It turns out most of our ward council does the same, and so many don't ever bother to login and read the letters, assuming if it's important they'll hear through a different source.
- The communications often include important information I'd like to forward to other members of the bishopric or ward council. The only way to do this is to save the pdf, create a new email, and add the pdf attachment rather than just forward the original email with my comments. So most of the time I just try to remember the details to share in bishopric meeting or ward council, and that's not an ideal process.
- None of the hundreds of communications I have received so far have had any confidential or sensitive information, and so this is not a reason to keep the communications behind a "paywall." Obviously, I expect to log in to view ward finance reports. An update on FSY conferences or the next face-to-face event, however, should not need user authentication.
- If we really need to log which individuals are opening the communications, this could be accomplished nearly as well with email content tracking.
I have sent several emails and made several phone calls to the Church Communications Office over the past year and a half. All to no avail, so I don't think anyone there really cares. But this is the single reason why most of our ward council doesn't open their communication emails, and my guess is that's the case all across the church.
