Multinational IT giant Atos has pledged to become a zero email company in a bid to help its 80,000 employees cope with information overload.

Switching off emails between employees in the 42 countries it operates will help stop the "pollution of the working environment" said Atos CEO Thierry Breton at a conference in February 2011.

More than six months later, internal emails have dropped by twenty per cent.

Instead, workers are encouraged to use social media to communicate with each other, using programmes such as Office Communicator like a workplace Facebook chat or MSN messenger.

Breton said Atos managers spent up to two working days just answering emails and information overload statistics showed that 1 in 5 emails were spam.

“Email is on the way out as the best way to run a company and do business,” Breton said.

An "email awareness" programme was set up to help employees appreciate the way other tools can be used as a fresher alternative to email.

As part of the email overhaul, Atos is looking at a number of ideas sharing platforms instead including Atos Wiki, its own version of wikipedia, and a number of video conferencing and file sharing tools instead, including office communicator, Livelink and FISH (Fresh Ideas Start Here)

Breton said he had already replaced email with different forms of communication: "If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message. Emails cannot replace the spoken word."