The way we communicate at work is all wrong. This is what needs to change

 
Whether it’s office email, collaborative apps or the break room noticeboard, internal workplace communications have the potential to go very wrong, very quickly.

Too much information?

Recent attempts to address this have focused on when we communicate at work, rather than how. It has been eight months since France passed the El Khomri “right to disconnect” law, making it illegal for employers to email staff out of office hours. The idea was to tackle work-related stress and bring an end to the “electronic leash” as one French lawmaker put it.

Six years before, Volkswagen agreed to stop emailing its employees outside of office hours. In 2014, Daimler, another German car manufacturer, introduced a voluntary policy that enabled staff to auto-delete emails they receive while on vacation. The sender instead received a variation of this response:

Competitive communicating

Most of us are guilty of checking in with work too often. Last year HR Magazine’s Reclaim Your Time survey found that 34% of employees check their email immediately after waking up and 38% do it every night just before they go to bed. A study by a UK cyber security consultancy found that two in ten office workers responded to work emails even after going to bed.

Some organisations encourage this toxic fixation. Erika Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports admitted texting employees on a Sunday just to see how quickly they responded.

Compelling employees to switch off is a good start. But there’s a long way to go.

A mindful approach

Gianluca Leone, director of myrooms.co.uk, a management company for flat-sharers in London, told one of my colleagues that his team have tried to find a middle-ground between disabling email and allowing free reign: “We have a system for monitoring our customer service email address and everyone knows who’s picking up those emails at any given time… During peak season we have support staff to serve clients in other time zones. Our staff know when we expect them to be offline and they to appreciate the clarity.”

The future of internal comms

Other channels bear consideration too. Email is losing popularity among younger people. Some 37% of startups no longer view it as their main comms channel, favouring collaborative platforms like Slack and Google Docs. These tools are ripe for overuse, designed to facilitate group-wide communication from a smartphone. What could go wrong?

Some businesses have already spotted the risks. One London fashion startup has an unusual way of discouraging extra-curricular Slack usage, assigning those guilty of it to the morning coffee run as punishment.

Overuse of workplace communication is linked to a reduction in mental well-being, so clear policies like those developed by VW and in France are essential. It means employees aren’t left guessing about what’s expected of them.

SOURCE: www.weforum.org