In the first week of November 2020, I scoured my calendar in search of a time for a meeting request. I dragged the calendar to the beginning of December and nothing. There was no time slot that would harmonize the schedules of all the participants.
Almost convinced that there was no other solution, I tried one last alternative: couldn't this meeting be an email? In fact, couldn't a large part of this impossible agenda actually be replaced by emails?
This reflection made me consider the current state of affairs. Who reads e-mail? How long does it take someone to actually read - and reply to - an email? My mental model, adapted to the pandemic, led me to the following segmentation: is it important and does it need to be resolved within a few days? Meeting. Is it important and needs to be resolved in a few hours? Message on Teams. Is it important and needs to be resolved this minute? WhatsApp. Is it important but not urgent? Email. Not important? Try calling me.
E-mails were clearly on the wane in my day-to-day life. After all, what's not urgent? Calls, then... I can't remember the last time I answered an unknown number. But was this a similar reality in other companies? Or was it just a condition of mine?
I decided to ask this question in the groups I frequent and on LinkedIn. I got 107 respondents and these results don't allow us to make probabilistic inferences or draw general conclusions. Even so, as an indication, some of the figures were surprising. Let's get to them!
Starting with the obvious: to know if this affects someone's work routine, they need to be in a work routine. Here's a surprise: 9.35% of respondents (from my bubble) are currently unemployed. Although this figure is lower than the population average, I confess I was surprised. Most of the respondents are well-qualified professionals. 56% have held management and board positions with 15 or more years' experience - many with international experience and a career in large companies. This is the first indication: the pandemic is having a severe economic impact on all types of professionals.
The second question showed that, at that moment, 68% of my bubble was still 100% home-office, but 23% was already in a mix of home-office and face-to-face. This proportion indicates that the idea, widespread at the beginning of the pandemic, that we would see the end of the 'office' is already falling apart.
Next, I tried to understand how communication was going in times of pandemic. Here, no longer a surprise, but an observation: of the hours available for work, WhatsApp accounted for 25.6% of the time, while corporate instant messaging (Teams, Skype, etc.) accounted for another 28%. More than half of professionals' time was spent exchanging messages. That's a scary number!
At this point, I paused to get a qualitative understanding of what was going on. I spoke to 15 respondents who came up with an important insight: the fact that the sender can confirm receipt and reading has made instant messages especially relevant. This brings enormous pressure - according to the interviewees - for messages to be answered quickly. Unlike e-mail, which is answered in its own time, instant messages require you to stop now. On my priority scale, I reminded myself that "what's important and needs to be dealt with this minute" comes via instant messaging. But does 53.3% of everything a professional needs to address really have that level of urgency?
Although disturbing, the findings could be timeless and not directly impacted by the pandemic. That's why I decided to test how this dynamic was going before the arrival of Covid-19. To my surprise, respondents said that instant messaging had grown by 28.4%, comparing the pre-pandemic period with the current one. The use of emails, on the other hand, fell almost proportionally: 30.4%. The pandemic seems to have accelerated the need for immediate decisions.
However, this still didn't answer my initial question. Had the volume of meetings grown at the same rate as the use of emails? To my surprise, 37.8% of respondents said that the number of emails had remained stable. But, categorically, 89.3% said that the volume of meetings had increased dramatically compared to the pre-pandemic period. My feeling was therefore not borne out. The number of emails hasn't dropped, but the number of meetings has increased a lot. Perhaps it would have been better if the opposite had happened? More emails and fewer meetings? Perhaps a topic for the next survey.
Finally, one question remained: despite the anxiety generated by instant communications, in the opinion of those interviewed, is their use beneficial for interactions? A very significant majority - 75% - rated their agreement with this statement between 8 and 10 on a scale of 0 to 10!
At the end of this process, with so many insights and numbers, I came to the conclusion that there is room to rethink the frequency of meetings. However, in addition to this finding, I was certain of a direct consequence of the pandemic and remote working models: instant messaging has definitely replaced quick interactions in the hallway, over coffee and stopping by a colleague's desk. And for the majority of respondents, this type of communication has done a good job of speeding up decision-making.
We should always use it sparingly and with empathy, respecting the time of the interlocutor.
And for you? What lesson does 2020 bring and what should our next investigation be?
