20% of UK workers in the UK spend 32 days every year or more managing their email, according to a recent survey.

Over 1,000 workers were questioned by communications business Star, with the typical respondent sending or receiving 100 emails a day.

20% said that they spent more than an hour a day clearing their inboxes; the equivalent of 32 days a year.

42% of respondents said they do not use automated filing ‘rules’ or allocated folders to organise email, with 14% saying they felt they were "drowning in emails".

Martino Corbelli, MD at Star, said: "The issue of email management, and particularly email retrieval, is about more than just efficiency and productivity, or even managing stress levels. There are legal requirements stipulating not only the retention and protection of email but also requirements which oblige businesses to make email records available within a given timescale.

 "It’s vital that companies do more to help employees manage this unstructured data, not only to help them feel less swamped by their inboxes, but also to ensure that, should they need to, they could comply with legal obligations to produce email correspondence."