Remote working tools: are they still fit for purpose?

Zoom, Teams, Skype, Slack, Yam­mer… Wel­come to the new lex­i­con of the work­place. From the moment we went into lock­down and adopt­ed new ways of work­ing, such tools have become as famil­iar as the type­writer and Tipp-Ex were to pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. Many pre­date the pan­dem­ic, but people’s urgent need to stay con­nect­ed with sim­i­lar­ly iso­lat­ed col­leagues and sup­pli­ers required employ­ers to open new com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. 

New plat­forms have pro­lif­er­at­ed, offer­ing myr­i­ad, and often con­fus­ing, choic­es. While all of them offer the same basic func­tion – help­ing peo­ple to stay in touch – these sys­tems have dif­fer­ent strengths and weak­ness­es, depend­ing on their users’ require­ments. 

Most of us will have become famil­iar with at least one of Microsoft Teams and Zoom by now. These are the most pop­u­lar video­con­fer­enc­ing solu­tions avail­able. They share many fea­tures, includ­ing screen and app shar­ing, white­boards, chat, voice call­ing, cus­tomised back­grounds and break-out rooms. They also both offer free plans, which are great for small­er busi­ness­es. There’s lit­tle to choose between the two. Gen­er­al­ly, Zoom gets the thumbs-up for its user-friend­li­ness and the qual­i­ty of its video­con­fer­enc­ing, while Teams is pre­ferred by the many peo­ple who are accus­tomed to using the Microsoft Office suite. 

Marks and Spencer is a Teams adher­ent, hav­ing estab­lished a cor­po­rate part­ner­ship with Microsoft before the pan­dem­ic. Stephen Bolton, Microsoft Teams pro­gramme man­ag­er at M&S, says: “Teams was the tool that’s sup­port­ed our staff to con­tin­ue work­ing from home amid the pan­dem­ic. We now have 95% of store col­leagues using Teams. It’s the col­lab­o­ra­tive work­space that every­one here uses dai­ly to com­mu­ni­cate, solve prob­lems, ideate and get work done.”

Teams has evolved beyond a com­mu­ni­ca­tions tool for M&S. For instance, a sched­ul­ing app that works through Teams makes it eas­i­er for employ­ees to swap shifts, while the direct mes­sag­ing func­tion helps stores to respond to spikes in demand for par­tic­u­lar prod­uct lines. 

The company’s head of tech­nol­o­gy, col­league expe­ri­ence and retail plat­forms is Andrew Red­man. He notes that “peo­ple ini­tial­ly thought of Teams as a com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form only, but it’s since become an ecosys­tem that col­leagues use to oper­ate the store through a sin­gle inter­face. We have about 80 appli­ca­tions that might be used from time to time. By embed­ding these apps in Teams, we feel as though we have only one.”

Yam­mer is anoth­er pow­er­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool that offers fea­tures such as file-shar­ing and a con­text-based search facil­i­ty. It helps employ­ees in dif­fer­ent teams and loca­tions to both con­nect and col­lab­o­rate. This appli­ca­tion also comes under Microsoft­’s umbrel­la, mean­ing that it can eas­i­ly be inte­grat­ed with oth­er MS prod­ucts.

Then there’s the much-fan­cied Slack. It offers a clean, straight­for­ward inter­face with a few dif­fer­ent chan­nels. Chan­nels are used to group con­ver­sa­tions on dif­fer­ent top­ics. You can also use pri­vate mes­sages for direct, one-to-one com­mu­ni­ca­tion or cre­ate pri­vate chan­nels with a small num­ber of col­leagues. Slack Tech­nolo­gies was found­ed back in 2009, but the busi­ness has boomed dur­ing the Covid cri­sis. In July, it was acquired by US cloud soft­ware giant Sales­force for $27.7bn (£20.1bn). 

Social­Cho­rus has been win­ning plau­dits dur­ing the pan­dem­ic as an alter­na­tive comms plat­form. it is par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed for organ­i­sa­tions with a dis­persed work­force main­ly rely­ing on mobile devices to access infor­ma­tion. This year, waste man­age­ment com­pa­ny Renewi has been rolling out Social­Cho­rus to its 7,000 employ­ees, many of whom pre­vi­ous­ly relied on Yam­mer. 

The firm’s CFO, Toby Wool­rych, explains that “our comms team looked at numer­ous options before choos­ing Social­Cho­rus. It is high­ly intu­itive and easy to use. You can cre­ate as many com­mu­ni­ties as you like and send tar­get­ed mes­sages. I think it will be a pow­er­ful pan-Renewi tool. We’ve start­ed with it in our munic­i­pal divi­sion and the users’ feed­back has been very pos­i­tive so far.” 

But he adds: “You’ll nev­er com­plete­ly replace small What­sApp groups, while cer­tain things still need to be done by email. Employ­ee com­mu­ni­ca­tion has to be mul­ti­chan­nel.”

Peter Gilheany is an own­er and direc­tor of Forster Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a PR con­sul­tan­cy that advis­es organ­i­sa­tions on employ­ee engage­ment. He believes that the ease of use pro­vid­ed by the lat­est gen­er­a­tion of comms plat­forms have served to make organ­i­sa­tions more flex­i­ble and less hier­ar­chi­cal in their inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. 

But there is a down­side, he adds: “They have loos­ened the already ten­u­ous divi­sion between work and home, open­ing a route into pri­vate spaces, which can be uncom­fort­able and embar­rass­ing. They also offer no buffer. Relent­less calls can leave peo­ple exhaust­ed. They’re a tool, not a total solu­tion, so we need to focus on the flex­i­bil­i­ty and empow­er­ment they pro­vide, while guard­ing against their pow­er to eat into people’s lives out­side their jobs.”

Email intuition: a new school for an old tool

With so many new com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­forms on the mar­ket, tra­di­tion­al email can some­times feel obso­lete. But the real­i­ty is that we are still send­ing emails – and in huge vol­umes. IT mar­ket research firm the Rad­i­cati Group esti­mates that 306 bil­lion emails world­wide were sent dai­ly in 2020 and expects the total to exceed 376 bil­lion by 2025.

This might seem extra­or­di­nary when so many oth­er options are avail­able. But much of this glob­al growth is because the inter­net is still gain­ing mil­lions of new users each year. 

When it comes to the com­mer­cial use of email in more mature mar­kets such as the UK and the US, the pic­ture is more com­plex. We are still using it, of course, but the ques­tion is whether the mes­sages we send are hav­ing much effect. Accord­ing to research by mar­ket­ing soft­ware firm Cam­paign Mon­i­tor, the pro­por­tion of emails received that were actu­al­ly opened last year fell to 16.4%. 

Impor­tant emails from employ­ers are often crowd­ed out by the sheer vol­ume of mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al that gets through spam fil­ters. This presents a chal­lenge for com­pa­nies, which gen­er­al­ly still pre­fer to use email to con­vey their most impor­tant mes­sages. Employ­ers and employ­ees gen­er­al­ly agree that it’s inap­pro­pri­ate to deal with weighty mat­ters on less for­mal plat­forms, such as What­sApp. 

This is why it’s impor­tant to craft com­pa­ny emails that will stand out and be imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous to time-pres­sured employ­ees. So says Catrin Lewis, head of glob­al engage­ment and inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions at HR soft­ware provider Reward Gate­way. 

“While there are oth­er tools out there, email is still an excel­lent way to engage your employ­ees,” she stress­es. “It’s a sol­id, favourable means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” 

Lewis’s tips for improv­ing email engage­ment include choos­ing a strong sub­ject line, a two-sen­tence sum­ma­ry and options to click through to the full sto­ry. Use the email to point read­ers to fur­ther con­tent online. A good image can also help, although to avoid get­ting it marked as spam, a 60:40 text-to-image ratio is rec­om­mend­ed. 

Also make your email the start of a dia­logue if that’s appro­pri­ate, she sug­gests. Peo­ple need to know how and when they can respond, so that they feel free to do so if they wish. You might not want a ‘reply all’ type of dis­cus­sion to ensue, so pro­vide clear sign­post­ing for any­one who wants to con­tin­ue a con­ver­sa­tion. 

And one last piece of advice: ensure that every intend­ed recip­i­ent of your impor­tant email can view it in its entire­ty on their mobile devices.