Messaging: it's the new work

Colin is the sales and marketing manager for an internationaltranet, pagers, even post-it notes ... the average UK worker receives over 171 messages a day. Modern messaging has become more than a new way of working - it's the new work, writes Catherine Toole. software company. Yesterday morning he sent and received over 50 emails. Most were from international colleagues, commenting on a new strategic marketing plan, which each local market is poised to adopt. In addition, he had several messages from the sales force updating him on advancements in various sales cycles; queries from the company's remote-working PR manager and several messages relating to a forthcoming presentation to the board.

Colin's fixed-phone voicemail contained 17 new messages, mostly from suppliers. His mobile contained another five: two urgent queries, two personal calls and a detailed plan for a new product marketing brief.

Five years ago, Colin, and the many UK-based marketeers like him, would have depended largely on real-time telephone conversations and face-to-face contact to agree strategy and advance projects. Several days of intense preparation would be followed by a meeting in which colleagues would give input and make group decisions.

Now, opinions are canvassed, refined, and strategy reviewed, via a constant stream of largely asynchronous (delayed time) messages. Each recipient inputs according to their individual specialisation and projects are completed in piecemeal fashion. In order to be productive, Colin and his team have had to develop expert messaging skills.

A new study by informed mail and messaging management company Pitney Bowes, Messaging Practices in the Knowledge Economy, concludes that in the modern working environment, the 'knowledge worker' is king. For what is affecting poor Colin's productivity, bombarded on every side by real and delayed time demands as he is, is not actually the actual volume of messages he receives but the fragmentation of his working day. Colin is left feeling constantly interrupted, unable to plan each day's work and constantly shifting priorities in order to react to messages. The Pitney Bowes-defined 'knowledge worker', however, is an expert messager - someone who is able to move within the distributed environment, communicating effectively through his or her mastery of efficient messaging techniques.

The key to this appears to be to stop reacting and take control. According to Pitney Bowes, 49 per cent of UK workers and 45 per cent of US workers say they are interrupted every 10 minutes. However, 38 per cent of UK workers claim to be 'very distracted' by interruptions, compared with the US figure of 27 per cent. This may be because UK workers aren't employing filtering and layering techniques as freely as their more technically-enabled US counterparts.

'Filtering is the first and most important principle for message management and efficiency,' states the Pitney Bowes report. Put simply, learn to label and flag messages effectively and formally request colleagues do the same (by far the majority of messaging is between co-workers). 'Filters are not static,' continues the report. 'They change according to work contexts such as distance project phases.' In other words, at the start of a project, agree which messaging systems the team will employ, how they will be filtered and, most importantly, establish a shorthand to enable recipients to see instantly the priority status of each message.

'Layering' is the way to avoid information overload and increase understanding of a project. Some messaging systems, especially email, seem to encourage individuals to send every piece of project-related information to every team member. Keep your team focused by layering information, coding it and matching content only to the task at hand.

As with filtering, you should agree rules at the beginning of each project, or even at each project stage. If you're managing a team, insist these rules are kept to, otherwise productivity will drop as individuals attempt to react to a constant flow of messaging.

Key to the success of modern project management is the ability to exploit new technology but to know when old methods are best. So using shared electronic space, such as a personal Website, to build knowledge or provide updates accessible to each team member's own timetable is a great use of modern technology and a good team-building device. However, face-to-face meetings are still best for brainstorming, re-negotiations and most customer-centric activities. The 'knowledge worker' knows when to take team members for lunch!

Another advantage of shared messaging systems is the use of what Pitney Bowes terms 'social capital'. This refers to each individual's personal and professional contacts. Messaging systems can be used to develop and maintain them, so that knowledge and experience can be easily shared. Pitney Bowes advises managers to encourage staff to develop and share these contact networks, and also to share their own.

Sometimes the mastery of efficient messaging means leaving it all behind.

As one manager in the study said: "I can't control the flow of messages, but I can control the time at which I respond to that flow." So rather than allowing messaging to fragment your day and set your priorities, make it work for you. Have a refuge at work away from messaging systems, and use messaging systems to inform callers of your availability, using prompted email and voicemail directives.

The Pitney Bowes study, which was conducted across Fortune 500 companies in the US, Canada, UK and Germany, also threw up some interesting regional trends. While the UK and Germany were adopting new technology rapidly, workers still tended to favour real-time methods, such as the telephone, fax and mail, especially for customer contact. North American companies preferred asynchronous methods such as email and voicemail, with 90 per cent using voicemail on a daily basis compared with 58 per cent of UK companies and 32 per cent of German firms.

There's a big difference in the way messaging systems are used, too.

US workers will happily leave detailed voicemail messages, while European workers tend to use voicemail as a verbal message slip.

Mobile telephony is much more widely relied upon in Europe than in the US, however. Forty-six per cent of UK workers use a mobile phone every day, compared with only 27 per cent in the US and 20 per cent of Canadian workers. Although these figures are driven largely by economics, such as lower fixed telephony charges in the US, there seems to be a cultural influence too - European workers still feel the need to be available in real time.

As yet, there is no reason to believe that European working practices won't grow to emulate those in the US and that messaging usage will evolve to become an even more fundamental element of daily working life, transforming team working. Indeed, 42 per cent of UK workers only started using email in the last year and corporate use of Internet and intranet has grown in the UK by 11 per cent in the same time.

Whatever set pattern emerges, Pitney Bowes' vice president of corporate marketing, Meredith Fischer, warns that UK companies slow to take on board modern messaging practices and to make them work productively, will be left behind. "Without this expertise, information remains data, not knowledge," states Fischer. "Efficient trade in knowledge equals business success."

For more information, see www.pitneybowes.com.

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