Recognize any of these people? The colleague who doesn’t reply to emails in a timely fashion. The office-mate whose cellphone constantly chirps as texts pour in. The remote worker whose paper rustling disrupts every conference call.
When it comes to our colleagues and technology, we all have our individual pet peeves. But one thing everybody can probably agree on: Our frustrations with workplace technology often aren’t because the technology is intrinsically annoying. They’re because people are intrinsically annoying. And as technology expands into every available corner and crevice of the workplace, so does our co-workers’ ability to use that technology in ways that bug us.
While all these things may be mildly (or not so mildly) annoying on their own, they add up to something much bigger. For one thing, they make work a lot less pleasurable and a lot more stressful. But perhaps more significant, they make us less effective at our jobs. They create tension in the workplace and reduce collaboration. They interrupt our workflow and intrude on our attention. In fact, if workplace technology has largely failed to deliver on its promise of productivity gains, the gaps and conflicts in how we each use tech at work may be a major contributor to that disappointment.
Most of us, of course, assume that the problem is with the other person. But perhaps as we come to understand the most common workplace tech peeves, we can recognize where our own tech usage may fall short of considerate collegiality.
So in the interest of fostering self-awareness, I asked people to share their biggest workplace tech peeves, the things that drive them crazy. Here are the top complaints they offered.
CC insanity
When cc’s required the hassle of creating physical, carbon copies, people were cautious about adding others to a correspondence. Today, email programs make it so easy to copy people on an email thread—I mean, that cc field is just sitting there, begging you for an address or two or seven—that it’s often abused. Rather than asking whether it’s crucial to include someone in an email thread, we throw them into the cc field, just in case. As a result, our inboxes are overburdened with a zillion copied emails. Even worse is when we find ourselves struggling to make sense of a long email thread to which we have only just been added.
Before you respond to an email that has been cc’ed to multiple recipients, think about whether you can remove anyone from the thread.
Illustration: wren mcdonaldBefore you respond to an email that has been cc’ed to multiple recipients, think about whether you can remove anyone from the thread. (Does every individual meeting attendee need to know that yes, you’d like the vegan lunch option?) If you’re adding someone to a thread, take the time to give them a quick summary and some context on why you’re adding them. And please don’t cc people when bcc-ing is called for, and don’t bcc people when no cc-ing is just fine.
Radio silence
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that so many of our colleagues sometimes fail to reply to an email. Or a Slack message, tweet, DM, text message, Facebook message, voice mail….
But however understandable, it’s still frustrating to send out a communication and get no reply, especially if that reply is necessary to move your own work forward. We are in a collective bind: We can’t expect a universal commitment to speedy replies as long as we keep cc-ing everybody and inundating them with emails, but as long as we don’t get speedy replies, we may need to keep sending out reminders so that eventually we might get a response.
The solution involves a mix of communication and restraint. The restraint comes first: If you email or text your colleagues constantly, they may ignore you out of necessity. That’s especially true if you’re prone to lengthy messages. In a previous job, I discovered that I was legendary for the length of my emails—something I discovered only when a few colleagues started joking around, in my presence, about who had received the longest message. That taught me to be a lot more disciplined about condensing my communications.
It’s frustrating to send out a communication and get no reply, especially if that reply is necessary to move your own work forward.
Illustration: wren mcdonaldNow, when I’m dealing with overloaded correspondents, I put the action item in the first line of my email (so it’s visible even before my colleague opens the message), and then follow it with context, so a message might begin, “Please tell me whether I can send the Yeung brief without your further feedback,” before proceeding to summarize the issues where feedback might be provided.
Once you’ve done your part to become a more efficient and less demanding correspondent, ask your colleague, client or manager how they’d like you to handle your communications, and how they’d like you to proceed if you don’t get a timely response. Would your client prefer a weekly email message, or do they like seeing your daily updates, even if they don’t reply? Would your manager prefer to be updated on Slack, instead of email? And can you take silence as license to proceed with the direction you’ve outlined in a text message or email, or should you follow up by phone to get positive assent? A little upfront communication about communication can make radio silence less frustrating, and less frequent.
Too many of us know the pain of conference calls where background noise interferes with our ability to follow the conversation.
Illustration: wren mcdonaldChannel hopping
Here’s how not to handle radio silence: channel hopping. When I asked people for their tech peeves, I heard a lot of complaints about co-workers who chase them from channel to channel, following an email with a Slack message, and a Slack message with a text. That kind of channel hopping contributes to overall communications overload, makes it hard for colleagues to know where and how to respond, and complicates the job of keeping track of a conversation thread.
If you’re being chased across channels by a colleague—which can happen even if you’re not delinquent in your replies—it’s best to tackle the problem head-on. Go back to the place the conversation started, whether that’s on Slack, email or a Google Doc, and let your colleague know that you need the conversation to stay in one place so that you can keep track of it. If you have a preferred way to stay in touch, this is the moment to share that preference.
Tangled threads
I heard lots of complaints about co-workers who don’t understand how to thread their comments on Slack or email, or who start new threads when there’s already a channel or conversation under way. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then it’s very likely you’re annoying a lot of your fellow workers.
Even those who are at least vaguely aware of the idea of threading can sometimes be careless about following the structure of a conversation, instead starting a new thread, or dropping their comment in the wrong place, simply because they don’t want to invest the time or effort in figuring out where it belongs.
If you find yourself the victim of an email tangent (or even a single but overly extended email thread), your best bet is email surgery: Copy and paste the most relevant portion of the thread into a new email, and then start a new thread with a more accurate subject line.
Ding, ding, ding, ding…
When I die, I want to be buried with a giant battery and a perpetually ringing phone loud enough to echo through the cemetery, just to get revenge on every person who has ever subjected me to their switched-on ringers in meetings, coffee shops, conference hotel rooms or open offices.
If my research is any indication, there will be lots of dings and rings and chirps in lots of cemeteries from office workers who feel the way I do.
This is one of the most perplexing workplace irritants, because notification overload is as taxing to intended recipients as it is to all their nearby colleagues. It’s also relatively easy to solve, or at least ameliorate: Set your phone to silent, and you can annoy your colleagues with intermittent vibrations instead of your Avengers-themed ringtone. (Or you can be really considerate, and take your phone with you when you wander away from your desk—or at least leave it on a padded surface that will render its vibrations truly silent.)
Tech resistance
Then there are the colleagues who are annoying not in the way they use technology, but in the ways they refuse to use technology. People who won’t use collaborative task management. People who won’t use Google Drive and Google Docs. People who won’t use cloud storage and file sharing. As one person told me, “People who spend longer moaning that a tool is garbage rather than bothering to work out how to use it.”
Precisely because there seems to be a new, must-have technology every week, people who don’t love the process of configuring new devices and software may end up digging in their heels when they’re asked to sign on to the latest workplace apps. While it’s reasonable to be cautious before jumping on the latest bandwagon, these late adopters should note when a tool has become part of their team’s day-to-day workflow. It’s one thing to steer clear of the chat network or task-management app that has a quarter of the office gasping with excitement; once three-quarters are using it, however, a stubborn resistance will slow down the whole team.
But a note to my fellow tech nerds: We need to be more patient with the tech resistance. They’re the people who save us from investing an excessive amount of time or money in platforms that aren’t going to survive for the long haul. And when we really are sure that a tech is here to stay, surely it’s no skin off our nose to make a bit of effort to help our less geeky colleagues. Instead of complaining about that reluctant adopter, try offering your lunch hour as a coaching session so that you can help them get up and running.
Smiley faces!
If you read that heading with glee, you may be contributing to another workplace hazard: emoji overload.
It’s not only about emojis. People complain about GIF overload, too. Yes, emojis and GIFs are common on social media, and a well-chosen GIF can be a useful response to a direct message or a Slack message that seems to have no diplomatic answer.
But at work? People complain they’re unprofessional. And if you think that text-based exchanges are rife with opportunity for misunderstanding, just imagine all the ways things can go awry in GIF- and emoji-land, particularly when there are still plenty of people who don’t actually know that certain fruit and vegetable emojis are meant to convey things that are borderline obscene.
People don’t need to abandon them entirely, but here’s a useful rule of thumb: Use text to convey meaning, and emojis or GIFs to convey sentiment or context. And if you aren’t absolutely sure what an emoji means, it’s probably better not to use it at all.
Subject lines
Subject lines are often a source of great workplace frustration. Between emails that have drifted from their original subject line, subject lines that don’t accurately reflect message content, subject lines that are too long and the entire email, subject lines that are too short and say little—or nothing at all—there is a lot to complain about.
My opinion: Your subject line should be no more than five to 10 words, clearly summarize the topic of the message, and reflect any time sensitivity or action required. If your email is too complex to distill into an effective 10-word summary, it may be a sign that you’re conflating multiple email threads into a single catchall message. You’re better off breaking these into separate emails with appropriate subject lines.
Here’s another related annoyance: People who send a blank email with the subject line “call me.” If you just want someone to call you, then why not call them? If you’re treating email as a substitute for voice mail, then the least you can do is include a short note with your phone number, the best times to reach you and some indication of the call subject and urgency.
Noisy callers
“And our fourth-quarter numbers are—” “Woof!” “…each of us circle back with our—” (rustle, rustle).
Too many of us know the pain of conference calls where background noise interferes with our ability to follow the conversation. It’s one thing if your doorbell or phone rings while you’re on the line; it’s another to take your call from a crowded coffee shop or (judging from the calls I’ve been on recently) dog pound. Even flipping through papers or typing on your computer can be incredibly loud and distracting when other people have to listen to it.
Is it really that hard to use the mute button? You should probably mute your phone or computer microphone from the outset, and leave it muted for the duration of the call, except when you have something specific to say.
I know, I know: You’re afraid you’ll come off as disengaged if you can’t throw in the occasional “Uh huh” or enthusiastic “Yes!” But the loss of that little bit of feedback is well worth it, when it results in a clear conversation everyone can hear and follow.
Time piracy
Yes, you could ignore that 10:23 p.m. email from your boss, asking a bunch of questions about tomorrow morning’s meeting. But if you make the mistake of checking your phone on the way to bed, you’ll probably find yourself reopening your computer, and sending an update that marks you as the Good and Responsive Employee.
That sense of obligation is why so many people complain about after-hours or weekend communications. Sure, you could wait until the next business day. Maybe. Because how are you to know if your client or boss expects an immediate answer? What if your insistence on responding only during business hours makes you the bottleneck for the whole team?
After-hours messaging is a natural byproduct of online work, and especially workplaces that include home-based workers (who may trade evening work for daytime flexibility) and remote workers (who may be in different time zones). While there’s nothing intrinsically evil about sending a Slack message at 11 p.m., it becomes a problem when people are unclear about expectations for responsiveness or availability.
Those of us on the West Coast will tell you that there is little worse than all the East Coast people who send you same-day meeting invitations for calls that start at 11 a.m. Eastern and then wonder why we’re not there. It’s because your meeting’s started before we’ve even checked our email! But in fairness, I also hear from East Coast people about the annoyance of us West Coasters emailing with time-sensitive questions in the middle of our afternoon—also known as the end of the day in New York, Boston and Atlanta.
Companies can set policies that specify expectations around after-hours availability.
Illustration: wren mcdonaldTechnology, policy and communication can all help bridge the gap. Some companies turn email or Slack off after business hours; individual workers can use email features that delay delivery of their 11 p.m. emails to the next morning. Companies can set policies (or write client contracts) that specify expectations around after-hours availability. And a simple conversation with your boss, client or colleagues can help clarify whether your late-night messages will be welcome or, conversely, whether and when you need to reply to theirs.
Better yet, if seeing a 9 p.m. message makes you anxious, here’s another solution: Don’t check your email after 6 p.m.
Virtually forgotten
Those of us who work remotely share a common gripe: Stop ignoring us!
Yes, it’s a little awkward to run a hybrid meeting in which some people are gathered around a conference table while one or two are dialing in via phone or web conference. But if you need those remote people to be part of your conversation, it’s up to the folks in the room to ensure they’re actually included. That means clustering around the speaker in the middle of the table, instead of plopping down at the far end of the room, where the people calling in won’t be able to hear you. It means ensuring at least one person connects a computer to the web conferencing line, so you can share your screen and slides. And it means keeping an eye on the chat window or video screen, so you can see if we’re trying to make a contribution (or asking you to speak up).
Just say something
Nobody wants to be the person who drives the rest of the office bananas. But most of us will never know we do it unless somebody tells us.
In other words, communication about communication is the answer here, but I’ll admit that is no small challenge: If these annoyances persist, it’s because they’re incredibly awkward to discuss. Indeed, even though this entire story was inspired by a colleague who often sends emails in ALL CAPS, I never worked up the courage to make a simple request: Stop.
Dr. Samuel is a technology researcher and the author of “Work Smarter With Social Media.” Email her at reports@wsj.com.
Share Your Thoughts
What are your pet peeves around the use or misuse of technology at work? Join the conversation below.
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"colleague" - Google News
March 06, 2020 at 10:05AM
https://ift.tt/32YueK2
The Tech Habits of Co-Workers That Drive Us Crazy - The Wall Street Journal
"colleague" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Uvr5Ps
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment