What split of internal communication do you guys use between email and IM?
I’m probably at 80% Teams 20% e-mail.
It’s well known that if you email me you should probably message me to check my email.
Probably about 50/50 email/Slack.
Perhaps it makes me old, but I hate when critical info that I may need to reference later - an analysis, a presentation, etc. - is shared via IM. I find search functionality cumbersome, and no I don’t remember which of the 17 different channels/DMs with someone contains what I’m looking for. So if I’m trying to create a record or have something I can file away, I’ll try and do it via email.
Probably 98% slack 2% email.
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For me it’s got to be about 90/10 messages vs. email. Email is not an effective short term communication technique, I do a lot more messages on our IM system. And a lot of my IMs are “can you join my Zoom quick, I have a question” because I’ve been working for 20+ years and learned how to talk to people on the phone to get things done.
I think I’m pretty even. I have a dedicated chat channel for my counterparts in different territories where we fling “Does anyone know how…” or “Does anyone have a customer that…” type broadcasts, and if I have a brief, specific communication for someone, I’ll often use chat. On the other hand, I often am involved in conversations coordinating people in different roles, or we’ll have an internal talk branching from an external email to many of us. Those are usually emails.
I’m probably 80/20 emails to IMs, mostly because my agency is still fucking around trying to decide how we should use teams so we’re stuck with Zoom. If we were using teams, I think that ratio would change significantly.
Also, because I work at a public agency, a lot of the emails contain a CYA component so the ratio is still likely going to be skewed to the email side moreso than a private company.
we use gchat/gsuite, i actually like it quite a bit. it integrates and plays nicely with everything else, and I like how you can press a button and start a video meeting in 2 seconds, although I imagine most software can do that nowadays. Back when I used slack though, it couldn’t.
I actively refuse to sign into our messaging system, I don’t want to be on call especially for more junior people.
Yes, this is a dynamic I dislike as well. I think there’s an expectation that a DM receives a prompt response, which is impossible since otherwise nobody would actually get anything done because there are so many messages during the day.
I slacked someone on my team something a few weeks ago…and 40 mins later he was like “Oh, I’m sorry…I was doing xyz…” Had to say it’s ok if you don’t respond to a Slack message in 2 mins (if I’m not clearly asking for something urgently).
the expectation is you respond immediately - I had a big project that took me a year to roll out and touched every team in the company, who all had to be onboarded. I had plenty of docs and training but you cant force idiots to read stuff, so of course what happened is after I “finish” my part of it, and management declares it done, I’m still spending 10-20 hours of my week debugging stupid things that are 99% user error, and it was all chat driven and every message was VERY urgent due to management being idiots about the project, it actually was pretty urgent for a lot of them. plus we have so many overseas teams I’d frequently get these messages at like 2:30 am. they absolutely couldnt be ignored or you’d get some donkey team lead @‘ing you and every manager in the fucking chain of command saying he’s blocked and you’re the reason.
nowadays I let them sit for a day or two and they figure it out on their own usually.
Im in IT and if I have to solve a user problem they’ve learned IM is a way to get things fixed in <10 minutes unless they really want 37 back and forth emails about the thing over there on the other thing that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.
Some people do want that though. Those emails get unread for several hours. If it was important they’d just message me.
Related to all of this, do you people have a calendar that’s visible to other people, and use that feature to automatically schedule meetings? That sounds miserable to me, but I also hate the process of “Let’s create a doodle poll to find out when this group can all meet”.
We don’t automatically schedule meetings, but we do look at the attendees calendars to find a time that works for everyone.
If you have to do a poll (calendars aren’t visible or you’re meeting with people outside your organization), I can highly recommend using the Outlook plugin FindTime. That plugin saved me so much time at my old job where I was scheduling meetings for people in multiple orgs.
https://findtime.microsoft.com/
Should be available as a free plug in if you’re on O365.
I use the visible calendar but often let it be filled with bullshit meetings that I have no intention of attending or I just create private appointments to do work so I have a lot of busy time that I could open up for something or someone important, or I have 1:1 meetings that are easy to move around. This can be a great tactic because it also makes you look flexible when you volunteer to be the one to reschedule your conflict most of the time.
In terms of scheduling there’s an art to knowing whose availability you have to schedule around and whose you can ignore (this is always some balance between their importance, their interest in the topic, and their personal flexibility, their relationship to you, whether they could delegate, etc.)
I have noticed that people (sensibly) have just started blacking out huge chunks of their calendars to prevent people from putting meetings on them. There is one guy I work with whose Outlook calendar is ALWAYS 100% full for the next several weeks. But if I have my admin assistant call his admin assistant because I need to talk to him then she just says “Oh no problem, he’s free tomorrow at 9:30. I’ll send you an invitation to his Zoom.” Mind you, he’s a Managing Director and he has a lot of demands on his time. But the system is clearly not working if can only have meetings if you have access to the shadowy admin assistants cabal who know the secret handshakes and have access to the real calendars.
Counterpoint: sounds like the system is working great for him.
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My “system” is to leave my calendar open but decline all the meeting invitations. “Why do I have to be there” is apparently a huge stumper question. I am nice enough to not follow up with “Then why did you invite me”.
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I have absolutely had to do this when I have reported to SVP-level people. I was constantly making sure I knew what sort of chocolate or wine or coffee or whatever their admins like, so that when I do need 15 minutes on short notice I can always get squeezed in.
And I definitely will block out focus time chunks so that I can spend 2 hours uninterrupted on a project but still be available for a true emergency.
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