Growing up in the pre-digital world of Southern California, my early role models for effective communication came from three places: the football field, the locker room and my father, who taught me to be honest, forthright and occasionally blunt.
Fast-forward a couple of decades. As the Internet and cloud-based businesses have disrupted many of our traditional industries, they’ve also changed how we work – and how we talk to each other when we work.
Take a look at your desk today, and you’ll see what I mean. For starters, I’ll bet the desk in your office isn’t the only place where you work. Technology now enables employees to work remotely, untethered from the traditional office setting. When I got my first office job, a desktop computer and desk phone were the norm. Today, the average worker is likely to use a combination of mobile screens — laptop, tablet, and smartphone – on a daily basis. In fact, a recent survey found that half of employees use their mobile phone even while sitting right next to their desk phone. It’s clear we’re nearing the end of the era of the desk phone as we know it.
The lines between personal and business devices and apps have blurred significantly. People want to use the same cloud-based collaborative tools, such as Evernote, Box and Google Apps, at work as at home. Corporate IT departments have long resisted the BYOD (or “bring your own device”) trend, but we’re now at a point where companies have been forced to adapt to workers’ needs for flexibility and functionality.
Another change brought on by our mobile technology is shorter language and brevity in our work conversations. We’re starting to see the rise of new social-based business communications services, such as business text or WhatsApp. There’s growing acceptance of shorthand across all business communications, from email to enterprise social collaboration platforms. On the upside, this move to brevity can facilitate faster collaboration, especially among teams who speak the same language — whether it’s English, Russian, Chinese or “txtspeak.” Business applications that enable thinking with fewer swipes and clicks enable this move toward more concise conversations.
Among millennial workers especially, abbreviations like OMG, LOL and TTYL have entered into the daily vernacular, crossing over from pop culture into work (see the Jimmy Fallon #hashtag sketch with Justin Timberlake). Millennials make up more than a third of the workforce already and will represent almost half by 2020. It’s clear the rest of the workforce is already adapting to accommodate digital natives whose preferred method of communication is quick, brief and collaborative (think texts and social media) rather than analog and face-to-face.
Another related trend highlighted by a recent American Psychological Association study found that more than half of Americans are “always on” with their technology usage. This constant connection — especially by millennials — to our devices is translating into a significant shift in the traditional 9-to-5 work day. As a new wave of workers stay online longer or complete certain tasks at different times during the day, employees across the organization will have to shift their communications style. It will be up to IT departments to provide the tools that enable workers to flexibly communicate how and when they want according to workflow.
New technology has driven a major shift in the nature of how we communicate and collaborate in the workplace — and that’s a good thing.
I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where I’ll be signing off with “YOLO,” but I’m excited for a new office of the future. Soon, workers of all generations will be able to collaborate together to achieve new levels of productivity adapted to our “always on” lives. Where technology is often blamed for keeping workers too connected, we can hopefully realize the opposite. A new clear and concise communications workflow and seamless processes designed to get business done more quickly and efficiently — while hopefully also providing greater flexibility to enjoy personal time.
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