Virtual communication tools – Employees worldwide are unhappy with the information technologies used in companies. Alcatel-Lucent’s study titled “Changing the Conversation in the Workplace” finds that employees are increasingly unhappy with the virtual collaboration tools available to them.
Communicating and collaborating with others has become essential for performance in the work place, with 93% of workers polled by Alcatel-Lucent agreeing. The “Changing the Conversation in the Workplace” study of 2,000 knowledge workers and more than 750 IT managers in 51 countries shows that 74% of respondents are today convinced that advanced communication technologies could increase their engagement and productivity. Popular tools include unified communications, videoconferencing, video collaboration and instant messaging.
Only 33% of respondents had access to virtual meeting and collaboration tools, however. Arnaud Kraaijvanger, Vice-President of Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise , observes that “Today, employees are clearly frustrated with the means available to them.”
Overly complex IT systems
Florent Francoeur, President and CEO of the Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés, comments that “Employees in Canadian firms are confronted with a multitude of information and tools. There is too much data and too many different channels.” Alcatel-Lucent study respondents agree; half said that communications management is not adapted, and that the various channels are not well integrated. Forty-six percent of respondents said they lose more than 30 minutes every day in searching for information. “The real problem is that there is no appropriate management tool to group together and select information effectively and productively,” Florent Francoeur adds.
The study says that this phenomenon is largely the result of the complexity of existing infrastructure and the increasing difficulty of computer departments in managing ever more vast networks. Only forty percent of IT managers said they had sufficiently effective tools for managing the performance of their organization’s various applications.
Profound change in the work world
The study also highlights another basic trend: “Until the arrival of new technologies, innovation came from within the company itself, for things like computers, cell phones or software,” Arnaud Kraaijvanger observes. “Communication strategies determined the tools available to workers. It was a much more centralized organization.”
The Vice-President of Marketing for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise says that today, everything is different, and employees have become “consumer-workers” who choose the tools that meet their needs and then use them for work. “It is now commonplace to see employees use personal phones at work, and more than 50% of iPad owners have gotten their companies to let them be used for work as the preferred communications tool.”
This phenomenon could greatly change the order of things in the corporate world: “These new communication tools can create a much more productive work environment,” Arnaud Kraaijvanger says. “First, because employees have chosen them and know how to use them, and second, because they offer more services for employees and by extension, for the company.”