Is it appropriate to use the salutation "Dear All" in a work email?

I have observed that in my work place, whenever a mail is sent to more than one person( like an information, meeting request or a notice etc.), the mail starts with the salutation "Dear All". This, somehow, doesn't seem correct to me. For me, a salutation should address the reader individually, at least in its singular form, as in "Dear Colleagues".

Am I correct in thinking that?

Solution 1:

To me, Dear all conveys laziness. A well-thought-out message should have a specific audience that the message applies to. Dear coworkers, Dear minions, Dear Death-Eaters, Dear residents, etc. is not that much more difficult to type. Then someone reading the message can more easily discern whether the message applies to them or not.

Solution 2:

Unless they are actually your colleagues (i.e. none of them are your bosses! or clients, or third-parties), I would stick with the neutral:

Dear All,

(quite common) or maybe:

Dear Everyone,

(less common)

I just checked by looking up the emails we (as a group) receive from the hierarchy above:
They all begin with 'Dear All' (translated in French by 'Bonjour à tous et à toutes', since the equivalent of 'all' is not gender-neutral in French.)

Solution 3:

Dear all is perfectably acceptable. So is Dear Colleagues. It depends on how formal or informal you want to be, and what is normal usage in your workplace. If in doubt, do what appears to be normal practice.

Solution 4:

I find that using a non-standard, but polite greeting in an email tends to be quite effective in getting people to actually read what you are writing. For instance, when writing to a group of people, it is quite common (in New Zealand) to write: