Research Outline

Communication Tools in the Workplace

Goals

To find out the typical number of communication tools that an enterprise uses today throughout their workforce and whether the deployment of more and more such tools has a negative impact on the workforce.

Early Findings

  • In 2019, 3.56 organizational communication tools were used on average by enterprises headquartered in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
  • Apart from the deployment of communication tools, 52 percent of large sized organizations reported plans to increase spending in the enterprise human resources (HR) system in 2019.
  • However, in the United States, the deployment of new communication and collaboration technologies are low at less than 30 percent overall.
  • Old school communication methods of emails, phone calls and texts still make up 75 percent of all communications with co-workers in a typical US workplace.
  • For the age group of workers under 45, the number is 71 percent with emails and voice calls making up 58 percent.
  • From a device perspective, company-owned desktop PC is used for 48 percent of all workplace communication related work, which is significantly higher compared to personally-owned smartphones that are only used for 7.5 percent of total work on average.
  • In terms of collaborating with colleagues, emailing documents back and forth is still the most common method of communication with 35 percent of the US workforce preferring it.
  • The usage of cloud-based storage services as a workplace communication tool is only 8 percent with co-workers and 7 percent with colleagues from other organizations.
  • Real-time collaboration tools, such as Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google Docs are used by only 19 percent of respondents surveyed in the US workplace.
  • According to surveys, more than fifty percent of employees feel overwhelmed by having to use multiple communication platforms in the workplace.
  • According to behavioral designer Mr. Nir Eyal, for many employees, keeping up with the communication demands of the workspace means work spilling out of the office into their personal life.

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