It makes some of the fastest cars on the planet, but the Italian manufacturer Ferrari is concerned that the indiscriminate use of emails in the office is slowing down its employees.

So, in a move likely to spark fresh debate about the intricacies of workplace netiquette, the company – one of Italy's leading luxury brands – has decided to clamp down on the number of group emails sent and remind staff that, as tiresome as it may be, they should perhaps "talk to each other more and write less".

The move, reported to have come straight from aristocratic chairman and sometime politician Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, was described as an attempt "to incentivise more efficient and direct communication" by placing "much stricter limits on the number of emails being sent".

A statement said: "From now on, each Ferrari employee will only be able to send the same email to three people in-house.". A spokesman said a mechanism would be used to prevent the addition of a fourth recipient.

The statement went on: "The injudicious sending of emails with dozens of recipients often on subjects with no relevance to most of the latter is one of the main causes of time wastage and inefficiency in the average working day in business.

"Ferrari has therefore decided to nip the problem in the bud by issuing a very clear and simple instruction to its employees: talk to each other more and write less."

Based in the northern town of Maranello, Ferrari employs more than 3,000 people. In April each of them found out they would be receiving a special bonus, thanks to what Di Montezemolo described in a letter to them as "record results [in 2012] after a triennium of continuous growth".