How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work

Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by pc86 on Friday March 15, 2024 @08:06PM (#39722009)

Is this something the folks at Microsoft or Slack are actually saying "this is how our product is intended to be used" or is this just you saying "I wish these apps were different?" I ask because approximately 0% of the people I've met have ever used Teams/Slack/etc. as email, and approximately 100% of them use it as real-time synchronous chat first, and archive of past real-time chats second, and asynchronous chat a distant third.

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by maroonblazer on Friday March 15, 2024 @08:28PM (#39722135)

I, and nearly everyone I've worked with, use Teams/Slack as async comms. Most of my colleagues are incredibly busy, so there's no expectation that we'll get an immediate, real-time, response. Generally, if real-time comms is needed, and the other party didn't respond via chat immediately, we ask "Can you jump on a quick call?"

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by chasd00 on Saturday March 16, 2024 @12:24AM (#39723374)

That’s how I work. Email is basically just there for things that need to be in “writing” like approvals or various requests. Teams is where I communicate, I get msgs like “approval is in your email” because I only check email when asked to. If it’s urgent or requires a real conversation then it’s a teams call otherwise it’s all done through chat.

(I’ve been wfh for about a decade now)

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by ghaff on Friday March 15, 2024 @08:54PM (#39722294)

What I've seen over the past 2-3 years is (company) email increasingly devolve most, though not all of the time, into announcements, automated workflow, and other FYI. If you're actually looking for a personalized response, even not immediate, the channel is chat in some form.

I don't like it really. Email was a respond in a day medium. Chat is now at least same day/hours. In general, people don't call out of the blue any longer though so chat is inevitably repurposed for pretty soon. I'm having to readjust workflows to that.

>the other party didn't respond via chat immediately, we ask "Can you jump on a quick call?"

That still asssumes they're always monitoring chat in near-real-time.

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by scott_w on Saturday March 16, 2024 @02:45AM (#39723836)

Not exactly, the “can we call” is usually to create a space to have that sync communication with someone but doesn’t always need to be immediate.

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by ghaff on Saturday March 16, 2024 @05:16AM (#39724404)

Rarely, I get a "Is this a good time to call you on your cell?" More frequently, "can we set up a video call soonest?" My point was, I don't know the last time I've had someone from work just call me out of the blue on my phone. And, honestly, there are only a handful of people outside of doctors/service people/etc. who do.

Back in the day, the phone rang--if not constantly--very frequently.

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by scott_w on Saturday March 16, 2024 @12:50PM (#39727438)

I definitely prefer the current way of working

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by georgemcbay on Friday March 15, 2024 @09:35PM (#39722548)

Just throwing in some anecdata but this is how it has been used in the place I've worked at since the pandemic started.

Prior to remote work being basically the norm these tools were used more like traditional real-time chat in my personal experience (I'm sure it varies even still based on particular workplaces), but now its generally async with the possibility (but not expectation) of being synchronous if you happen to catch someone randomly available to be bothered at the specific time you send the message.

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by simoncion on Friday March 15, 2024 @08:33PM (#39722167)

> Is this something the folks at Microsoft or Slack are actually saying "this is how our product is intended to be used"...

What those folks have to say on the topic is pretty irrelevant. What is relevant is how specific people (or groups of people) are using these text-based-communication tools.

> I ask because approximately 0% of the people I've met have ever used Teams/Slack/etc. as email

I've been working at a largeish company with employees all over the globe. It's very common for its employees to have to get information from someone who will be reporting to work 4->16 hours after the information requestor has clocked out for the day. Phrasing requests for information "as email" is one of the most (if not the most) correct ways to structure these requests.

When RTT for a reply is measured in hours rather than minutes, you tend to pack a bunch of useful information in to your request. (As an added bonus, future searchers often only have to read one or two messages to understand what was being sought and and why, and whether or not it was found.)

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by Hrundi on Friday March 15, 2024 @09:42PM (#39722585)

A properly worded slack message is indistinguishable from an email, and can pretty much be treated as such

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Re:How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work by hosh on Friday March 15, 2024 @11:34PM (#39723148)

I remember Slack themselves seeing it as an email replacement, and not intended for remote work. It struck me as weird because I was on remote teams using it differently, and it felt as if Slack was out of touch with their own product. This was all before Covid.

I have also seen people camp their email and use it as chat. Some of them don’t like Slack.

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