Instant messaging is like email on steroids. It is the ultimate in instant gratification. It's a virtual aphrodisiac for people who get distracted easily.
IM is also a problem at work.
On the plus side, IM at work creates "zero excuse" for missing communications from clients or colleagues. Directives to employees, questions to superiors and colleagues, are all instantly there -- right before your eyes, on your PDA. And a tone isn't enough. The message actually jolts you with a physical vibration. In case that doesn't work, you'll see a light flashing from green to red.
As a workplace tool (e.g., the boss or a colleague is on the phone or in a meeting and they need to share some up-to-date information with you), IM is great. Someone may want to tell you, “Our biggest client is on the phone,” or "We just got the huge order from XYZ company,” while you are on a phone call or in a meeting, so you see it at once.
How can you beat that? In cases like these, IM is akin to the earpiece that television news anchors have long worn.
On the other hand, IM is addicting, and using it too much or in the wrong way at work can be damaging to your career and your reputation.
Here are a few tips to summarize the risks:
If you use IM at work, you must live up to the expectations you set. Using “email on steroids” sets the expectation among your customers, colleagues, and bosses that you are continuously available. After all, it's called "instant" messaging for a reason. The Internet has made it impossible to excuse communication gaffs. Instant message, instant reply.
Don't assume your IM is private. Instant messaging on any workplace-owned device (be that a laptop, computer, PDA, BlackBerry, Iphone, or even your cellphone) is company property. The content of your messages is as traceable as your email
IM doesn't belong to you at work. Whether you get your IM from your employer’s service provider or via your employer’s PDA device, everything and anything you put in IM belongs to the company and can be read by them. I always have had two devices and recommend that for everyone. One’s mine for personal use, and one is for business. Never the twain shall meet.
Bosses are sensitive about IM. IM used by employees at work for personal communications is the No. 1 distraction in the workplace today. It can be the modern-day equivalent of the “personal phone call” dilemma of years past. Indeed, some bosses equate personally IM-ing to stealing company time, so turn off your personal PDA at work and never have it on your screen there.
Be aware of the impression you make. If you hate watching your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, or kids "text" while you are with them, just think how your boss feels watching you do it (even if it's work related)! The idea of an employee being able to communicate in secret or silence is especially annoying to bosses, even when it is business related. They hate it. It’s better to hear one half of a phone call then none at all -- business or personal. Be aware of how your IM use will appear to the rest of the office.
All that said, if you do opt to use IM at work, be prepared with a PDA that is charged and ready to reply. Juggling incoming messages requiring instant responses with efforts to ensure you don't detract from your workplace performance -- or your boss or colleagues' perception of that performance -- requires multitasking. Enjoy!
— Stephen Viscusi is the author of Bulletproof Your Job: 4 Simple Strategies to Ride Out the Rough Times and Come Out On Top at Work (HarperCollins)
Have to agree with you! Being a bit of a batch-processor, I realize that I formulate a better response to a more 'involved' email if I let it percolate for a bit. I think it's better to have a less-timely email response than an embarrassing one!
We have IM at work and I almost never sign into it. I'd rather just pick up the phone and ask someone a quick question that way.
It's also a form of politeness to turn off all your 'toast' when someone comes into the office to talk in person. It's both annoying and amusing to watch someone when things are popping up on their screen. Amusing is when you see them trying to ignore, annoying is when they interrupt the conversation to reply!
I think the words are preserved and used in lawsuits and will continue to be. I think people are naive to the fact that the "carrier " actually keeps them. You are 100% right.
Stephen Viscusi
Author of "BULLETPROOF YOUR JOB: 4Simple Strategies to Ride Out the Rough Times and Come Out on Top at Work" (HarperCollins)
There's a place for everything. Even microblogging could be useful in some cases - we can't rule out IMs because people talk about their plans for the weekend. We are not robots, either. Getting a break from work is productive... but like always, people can take advantage of it.
Block IM? block YouTube? block Facebook?... then we are losing another basic skill, trust.
I agree that if people used the communication tools they had at their disposal properly, then they would agree that IM was just unncessary. Who has coffee breaks anyways? Don't you just go get a cup of coffee and bring it back to your space and continue working? I couldn't imagine actually breaking to do chats over IM with my coffee. There aren't enough hours in a day without adding inane banter to the mix.
I worked in a regional management office a few years ago, and had to communicate with various other regional offices in different time zones on high level issues. Communication by phone and email worked just fine. No one ever died because of a time delay in receiving communication. I found the only proponents of IM were the folks in the regional sales and marketing office. These guys were all talk anyways. They liked to blow their own horn, shoot out lots of ideas that were not well thought out, and create lots of lists of work for everyone else to do, so they could get credit for having lots of ideas. Their wacked out notion of work was creating lots of goose chases so it would look like a flurry of productivity was coming from their office. They were annoying enough without having instant access to interrupt the actual work I was trying to do. All in my office fiegned technological ignorance to avoid their senseless disruptions.
I grew up ADHD and can see now that I was just ahead of my time.
I shut off all IM tools when I want to get work done. When ICQ was in it's infancy I saw the problem, you get online to get some work done and someone sees you're online and has to interrupt you for "watercooler" chat.
With all of the instantaneous "crackberry" addicts how are you supposed to get long term projects done? I know, we'll have to have another slurry of time management seminars. Lesson one, turn it off!
One of the reasons why email isn't answered right away is because the recipient doesn't want to, he/she wants to think and not shoot from the hip. Hasty decisions quite often are bad decisions.
One of my kids was caught using IM during class hours at school, I took the phone away for a week. Where we're meeting for lunch isn't as important as algebra.
The problem with IM is that is doesn’t work like email nor a clear "oh that's what you meant" phone conversation. It doesn’t autosave like an email; you can’t go back to an IM w/o manually saving them and organizing them – email does all of that automatically for you, including auto archiving (depending on your email client settings). In a phone conversation - your brain sets audible words better into your gray matter (brain) than visual words do. IM doesn’t get a point across with an attachment, diagrams, sound etc…it takes too long to use in a “one on one” way. The issue is that people aren’t using email correctly, nor are they using the telephone or Voice mail correctly anymore (let alone face to face communication correctly!); hence IM and texting are depersonalizing communication even more than email is and are creeping into the business culture encroaching on email, phone conversation and person to person (face to face) communication! I think that’s a damn shame! Email can be a great tool, but it’s a bit over rated because of the misuse of other great tools - the telephone, the vocal cords, the eyes and the ears. Now IM & texting are arising out of misuse of email. If you need to instantaneously communicate w/ someone - pick up the damn phone! (Course ppl don't answer the phone like they should anymore; and they also screen calls etc). Somebody grab the reins! Let’s get back to basics and use the vocal cords & eyes & ears!
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