Communication at Workplace

Communicating at our work places using social media tools at our disposal

The advent of social media has brought a disruptive change in the way we communicate. Organizations are adapting themselves to this change. Employees, exposed to social media, have discovered a completely different way of communication. The ease of communicating through the social media, to them, represents a stark contrast to the challenges of communicating at their workplace. Traditionally, organizations tend to be guarded and restrictive in their communications, as against the free flow of ideas and information in the social media. This difference, over the time, has the potential to frustrate the employees. This is particularly true in the context of communication between an employee and his/her:

1. manager
2. team, and
3. organizational departments

This hub builds a case for the various communication tools that could be used in today's work places and illustrates their utility in the three channels of communications listed above.

Social media may be defined as an aggregate of communication tools that are internet based and allow distribution of user generated content. There are two key differences between social media (e.g. www.youtube.com and www.twitter.com) and traditional media (like newspapers and television).

1. Source of content
2. Mode of delivery.

Socializing is a basic tenet of human beings. It can be said that the growth of human civilization, at its core, is nothing but our relentless pursuit to be together and make life better for each other. Throughout our history of civilization, we discovered and invented powerful tools to assist in socializing – communities, languages, art, religion, etc. In fact, one can argue that every human achievement is basically a step towards socializing more effectively.

Socializing is not new, nor is communication. Then, why is social media receiving such attention? The answer probably lies in the following three key attributes of communicating through social media.

1. Freedom of expression
2. Speed of transmission
3. Transparency

Communication always gets confusing when there is a lack of any of the above. If one is not free to express his views, communication is stifled. The speed at which the medium offers to take the content to its audience is also an important factor to the relevance of communication. Transparency makes communication reliable. Traditional media has always struggled in achieving these three objectives consistently all times. As a result, social media, which rides on these as its basic attributes, has had a far reaching effect in a short period of time. Communications within organizations are also beset by the same problems as traditional media. It is quite possible that it was the only way we knew to communicate – not expressing ourselves freely, delaying our responses and revealing information in parts. Social media has turned that around on its heads. Now we find ourselves communicating in a different way in social media platforms like facebook and twitter, and in a complete different way at our work places.

Face-to-face, telephonic, email and instant messaging (IM) are the traditionally well established means of communication between an employee and his manager, team or organization in today's workplace. New tools available which they can leverage are forums, blogs, microblogs, podcasts and file (audio/video) sharing. Each medium or tool has relevance in a particular situation and are not interchangeable. Prudent use of all these tools can result highly effective communication between the players. The following illustrates what would be a best situation to use each of these tools.

Face-to-face / Telephonic: Any distinction between face to face and telephonic discussions has almost completely disappeared. Both forms of communication, in a work place, give almost the same experience to the participants, and are equally effective. They are best used when response is required in real time, or when there is some degree of emotional content in the discussion.

Email: Detailed discussions between not more that 3-4 people, which can be concluded over a duration of a day to a week are best conducted over emails. If either of the two rules - number of participants or duration change - then email is probably not the best medium. Emails are also good way to notify and lead the participant to the real communication stage, like a forum or blog.

Forum: When either of the two rules listed for emails need to be broken, forums are the alternative. Multi-party discussions are best conducted in forums. They should always be moderated if anything useful is to be derived of a forum discussion.

Blogs: Only and only for one way communication (me to the world !). They are not meant to 'seek inputs'. They can be looked at as new age notice boards. Announcements, circulars, etc are best served through blogs.

Microblogs: One-way short notifications and quick updates are best suit microblogs. They can also be a very effective alternative to emails as means of notifying provided all intended participants are following each other.

Podcasts: They are audio versions of a blog and serve the same purpose. A thumb rule for choosing podcasts over blogs could be: If your blog entry gets longer then two pages, it should be a podcast.

File sharing: Primarily referring to video sharing, this is also at best a one-way communication tool (again, me to the world!). If sharing visual content is essential to a communication, then this is the obvious choice. This, however, is usually the most expensive of all mediums and one should examine if the investment is justified.

Employee - Manager

Emails for day to day communications, task assignments, approvals and notifications.
Forums for performance management, career planning, coaching, mentoring and R&D work.
Microblogs for notifying the following - absence (leaves, vacation, longer lunch-breaks), limited availability (travelling) and remote working (working from home, hotel, etc).
Blogs can used by managers to share project and organizational updates/notices to the employee

Employee - Team

Emails for day to day communications, collaboration on tasks, peer reviews and notifications.
Forums for team discussions, team event planning, collaboration on tasks and R&D work.
Microblogs for notifying the following - absence (leaves, vacation, longer lunch-breaks, etc), limited availability (travelling, etc) and remote working (working from home, hotel, etc).
Blogs for sharing work accomplishments (news of a proposal selected by client, etc), peer appreciation, personal updates (getting married!, etc)
Videos for recording team outings and celebrations.

Team - Manager

Emails for day to day communications, task assignments, approvals and notifications.
Forums for team discussions (should be work on this weekend or the next :(, etc).
Microblogs for notifying the following - absence (leaves, vacation, longer lunch-breaks), limited availability (travelling) and remote working (working from home, hotel, etc).
Blogs can used by managers to share project and organizational updates/notices to the employees. Very good tool to applaud employees and share information of their achievements with the team.

Employee - Organization

Emails for must-read organizational communications (introducing new senior manager, etc).
Forums for seeking employee inputs before making an organizational decision.
One of the uses of microblogs in the employee-organization context is to post quick updates ('a report on the company sales division in the 9 o'clock news tonight', etc).
Blogs can be used extensively and imaginatively by organizations. After all, they are the modern notice boards.

There is a strong case to promote the various alternates available to communicate in the workplace and not just rely on email, which these days is the primary medium. There are various software available, both open source (free!) and enterprise editions that organizations can use to build their communication infrastructure. It all depends on how well organizations want to use them.