Is your organization trying to figure out how to make remote work “work”? When flexibility and remote arrangements are the topics, the conversation invariably turns to how to bridge the gap when communicating across a distributed workforce to ensure that people can work effectively.
Despite the fact that the productivity benefits of remote work have been well established, detractors of flexible arrangements often express concerns about communication with remote workers, worrying that if teams aren’t sandwiched shoulder to shoulder on site, people will lose the ability to collaborate effectively. However, concrete evidence of effective collaboration tools and technologies helps to erase the concept of the “collaboration problem” when it comes to productivity. New data just released by RingCentral sheds light on what works best from the workers’ perspective.
Team Messaging as One of the Most Effective Communication Tools
The study, which surveyed 2,500 workers worldwide on their experience in the digital workplace, identified team messaging as the most productive communications tool. While many organizations still rely on the old standbys of emails, unscheduled meetings, and phone calls to share information internally, employees surveyed said that these actually caused the most disruption to their workflow. What’s more, the research noted that “app overload” is becoming a serious problem in the work environment, and that the preference for team messaging is growing out of the desire to use a single platform for collaboration rather than a panoply of interruptive tools.
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“While the tech world prides itself on being ‘disruptive,’ people don’t want to be constantly disrupted,” explains Mike Pugh, vice president of collaboration at RingCentral. “Team messaging is growing quickly in popularity in response to this need, beating out legacy solutions by eliminating the time wasted toggling between emails, chats, and calls.”
To Pugh’s point, the survey found that over two-thirds (67%) of workers would prefer to trade in their app overload for a single platform—one that includes phone calls, chat functionality, and email—in essence creating a communications “home base.” Employees believe this would help be more productive at work (65%), make work feel less chaotic (62%), and make working remotely easier (61%).
Generational Differences
Pugh also explained some of the demographic shifts that are ushering in team messaging, such as the fact that the current wave of millennials entering the workforce brings with them a more text-centric and tech-savvy background than their baby boomer counterparts. “Millennials like to initiate conversations in a concise, digital, real-time setting like chat and then transition to higher-overhead channels as needed,” said Pugh. He added that more broadly, the majority of today’s employees find team messaging less intrusive to their day because most all-encompassing solutions now meld calls, video conferencing, calendars, and tasks right into the platform. This makes it make sense to consolidate day-to-day messaging in one place to speed up collaboration, while email takes a backseat to play the role of periodic, formal communication.
Why don’t more companies just make the switch to prioritize team messaging and single-platform tools over legacy communication styles like email? According to the study, more than half (51%) of workers age 45 and older still prefer email as their primary means of communicating. Pugh notes that many C-level executives fall into this group, which can cause delays in adopting more effective tech tools. “While they are the company shot callers, the C-suite is often a step or two behind when it comes to cultural shifts like the adoption of team messaging or chat apps,” explains Pugh.
The latter half of gen Xers, on the other hand, join millennials as the most manic team messengers, with 43% of workers between the ages of 18 and 44 spending up to an hour chatting via team messenger apps each day. “These future leaders prefer chat-first tools because they’re quick, to-the-point, and mirror an outside-the-office communications experience similar to text messaging or tweeting,” says Pugh.
This growing number points to a future of work in which tools that consolidate app overload and help employees message and communicate via a single platform become even more the norm for workplace collaboration.
Photo Credit: bigstockphoto.com
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