Better Communications Technology doesn’t necessarily mean better communications

Yvonne Guérineau, Client Services Director at HR Consultancy Jaluch discusses how advances in IT can sometimes hinder good teamwork.

Statistics show that 50 billion emails are sent out on a daily basis, and most office workers can probably recall days when they’ve felt like every one of those 50 billion has been sent straight to their inbox. A recent survey highlighted in Paul Hemp’s essay on Information Overload suggested that most office workers deem nearly a third of all emails they receive to be unnecessary, and that they spend up to two hours each day processing them. All of these statistics don’t even factor in information from RSS feeds, twitter updates and phone calls, all of which can cause a further distraction. It is estimated that it takes on average 24 minutes to return to a suspended task after the intrusion of a message and that adds up to a lot of time to be wasting over a week, and the effect on employee performance and morale can be profound. The important thing to remember is that these media are tools for communication, but they’re not the only tools that managers have, and that they should be employed only when they’re fit for purpose. A medium such as email gives the opportunity to disseminate large volumes of information quickly and easily, but the important thing to consider is that just because you can use email in this way, doesn’t mean you should. At Jaluch we work with a range of organisations that are looking to improve their internal communications, and email is often cited as the number one culprit when it comes to problems with communication. Some of the advice we give is things that we all know but can be tempted to fall back on from time to time – not sending long emails when the bare facts will do, not typing in anger and further enflaming a delicate situation – and part of the strategy for good team communication is to keep these standards in place. However, it’s more than just issuing guidelines and asking people to keep to them. You need to organise your team, and develop a culture in such a way that information is free flowing when it needs to be, but that no individual is overloaded with information. Taking this approach means a more holistic approach to team working and team communications, and it means looking at the process of internal communications as a whole. There is no point in cutting down the volume of emails if the end result is a full day team meeting which keeps employees away from their primary role, for example. Furthermore, it’s important to recognise that different individuals will appreciate different methods of communication. For some, email is a way to process information in their own time and a phone call would seem intrusive, for others the phone call would suggest a personal touch that email lacks. It’s important to work together on establishing what your aims are, and what the best tools will be to achieve those aims. Often our work at Jaluch involves getting people together to talk through what they need, and then helping them find a way to achieve it. Another interesting statistic is that research reported that the IQ scores of people distracted by email and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points – twice the decline recorded for those smoking marijuana. So next time you’re tempted to send a 1000 word email to your team, remember that you might as well cut all lines of communication and buy the team a very stiff drink for the same impact on their performance. Ends Words: 595

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