Millennials love to chat. Their personal lives rotate around messaging and instant gratification. From getting their pals’ views on a new t-shirt they are thinking of buying to sharing their new year resolutions publicly to make themselves more accountable. The Gen Z, which comprises the majority of the workforce today, lives an instant and synchronous life, one that is built on the foundations of consumerism.
It is only natural that people’s preferences at work mirror those of their personal lives. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the way people work. The asynchronous nature of email makes it one of the most hated forms of office communication today. Anyone who has ever tried to to ask a question, make a suggestion or request an approval on email will understand the anxiety and subsequent loss in productivity caused by an excess dependence on email.
Unfortunately it is the most relied upon medium of communication and it’s not like we can get anything done without communicating. Which brings us to the bigger underlying problem that plagues enterprises today, that of sub optimal collaboration. Collaboration is no longer the nice-to-have, it is the key behavior that gets the work done. The tools and software being used today needs to mimic this behavioral trend and supplement faster, better and more efficient collaboration. The time has come for the enterprise software industry to embrace the change and create consumer-oriented experiences to replace mundane tasks and workflows.
Popular communication platforms like Slack, Hipchat and the new Microsoft Teams that facilitate instant messaging in the workplace have a pivotal role to play in the future of our workplaces. By reducing the threshold to start a conversation or voice a concern,…