from ‘I hope you are well’ for ‘happy friday!’ navigating the modern office inbox can seem like a minefield. There are unspoken rules for everything.
But there’s one phrase in particular that seems to be troubling professionals.
‘Friendly Remembrance.’
Software company ZeroBounce analyzed more than 1.6 million real emails to find out which phrases professionals use most to apologize and soften communication, and ‘friendly reminder’ tops the list.
It seems harmless and widely used, but it could actually be rubbing your colleagues the wrong way. Because let’s be honest, is it actually friendly? Or is it your colleague who follows you when you are already stressed?
Natalie Sutton shares strategic communications and transformation consultant subway: ‘Professionals use it because they try to be polite and direct, but they succeed at neither. It signals urgency by pretending it doesn’t, which is confusing and irritating for the reader.’
Liz Sebag-Montefiore, a CEO and HR expert, believes the phrase is so overused in professional communication that ‘people often focus more on the implied criticism than the actual message’.
‘The problem is that the “friendly reminder” is often not perceived as friendly at all. In many cases, the recipient hears, ‘I’m following you again’ or ‘you failed to do something’, which can cause defensiveness rather than cooperation.’
What do the professionals think?
ACTIvE Redditpeople had strong opinions.
Summerisle7 calls it ‘passive-aggressive’, while Sinlightion calls the phrase ‘extremely derogatory’ and recommends that ‘your opinion it may be better received if you state it politely without this strange arrangement’.
Similarly, SunshineGirl45 says ‘it sounds like you’re scolding a child and it pisses me off’.
Maleficent-Talk6831 said: ‘I feel that the person may be passive aggressive, or trying to stand and gain his peacock knowledge. Both features I dislike, extremely. If you call someone out for saying the phrase, you’ll either be wrong about their intentions, or you’ll be right and they’ll gas you. Either way, you lose a battle that was unwinnable in the first place. You will feel more motivated than before.’
The ‘friendly’ reminders in the group seemed to irritate the professionals the most, as people feel called out in front of others.
“Nothing worse than seeing a work email with a ‘friendly reminder’ to the whole team and you know you’re the reason for the email,” one person quipped.
However, some people insisted on good intentions. Plenkr noted that they use it as “a deterrent to avoid conflict,” explaining, “Because “I’m autisticI try to go out of my way to clarify my intent and mood in complicated online conversations because I’m afraid.’
So which phrase is a better alternative?
Instead of using ‘friendly reminders’ Natalie recommends being more direct.
‘Can you confirm by Friday?’
‘I wanted to make sure this didn’t get buried’
These alternatives are much better as they are ‘specific, respect the other’s time and don’t have that slightly teacher-y sound that ‘friendly reminders’ carry.
Similarly, Petra Wilton, director of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Management, recommends the following:
“Just checking this”
“When you have a moment, can you update me?”
In general, experts lean more toward being direct, keeping it clear and concise, and refraining from terms that may come across as patronizing.
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