Leveraging asynchronous communication tech in our always-on work world

Like many of my colleagues, I’m an asynchronous person working in a synchronous world. Smartphones and live videoconferencing platforms like Zoom and Teams mean we’re always reachable at a moment’s notice. In some cases, like a natural disaster, synchronous – or real-time – communication is invaluable to quickly reach employees who may be in danger.

But the business world appears to be collectively rethinking just how far synchronicity has been taken. There’s a conditioning that affects most of us when we hear the ping of an email or chat notification — a reflex that we should responded immediately. It’s become almost Pavlovian that a certain reaction is expected when the chime sounds. But at what cost?

Humans are naturally wired for #synchronouscommunication. From our early days, we relied on immediate, instinctual reactions: fight, flight, or feign. Say a saber-toothed cat crept out of the trees. My real-time response might have been to fight if I had a spear, run if I didn’t, or play dead (and hope for the best). I had to make the most productive decision in a split second, based on the circumstances as they unfolded.?

The life-and-death analogy of our ancestors doesn’t literally translate to business decisions today. A proverbial wild predator doesn’t set up a Microsoft Teams call for the attack. Instead, company leaders are faced with decisions about revenue, consumer loyalty, stock prices, and productivity. The latter can be significantly impacted by how and when leadership, managers, and employees communicate.

Synchronous communication is a must-have in any business environment. Decisions often are made in the moment with the information known at the time, and there’s tremendous value in dropping by someone’s office to discuss a new idea or solve a problem. Where it gets tricky is when the expectation to immediately respond or have answers becomes the norm.

Phone calls and #videoconferencing aside, business leaders realized the value of #asynchronouscommunication when employees were forced into remote settings over the last couple years. Email, chat, and content collaboration on platforms like Google Docs and Teams Channels proved a boon to productivity.

Why? The simple answer is lag time and the benefits it allows. Asynchronous channels permit recipients the time to receive, process, and form a robust answer before responding. Lag time creates a space for more productive conversations by allowing the prioritization of demands so colleagues can respond appropriately. I’m sure we’d all agree our preference is to provide thoughtful input or feedback and not toss out the first answer that comes to mind.?

And an increasingly important benefit to asynchronous workflow is that it helps to level the playing field a bit. When workgroups include people across different time zones, it provides the expectation there’s a process for everyone’s input to be captured and considered.?

Asynchronous workflows also support work/life balance — however this may look — further enabling people the response time needed while prioritizing professional and personal obligations. This could be more time to think about the response or catching a child’s mid-afternoon soccer game that would have previously been missed.

Asynchronous workflows also create a record of conversations and documents that may be invaluable for long-term projects where numerous meetings, multiple content files, and feedback require careful monitoring. Email chains, chat transcripts, and review/version control of key documents reduce manual notetaking and allow for greater accuracy and consistency as time goes on.

The foundation of asynchronous communication is technology — specifically high-quality video capture and display. Audio and visual quality impacts everything from replay quality to the ability to generate accurate transcriptions and now translations. Bose Professional recently posted an?article on our Insights page?that outlines why a unified communications strategy is critical for asynchronous workflows.

How critical is asynchronous connections to your business and do you find it valuable to meeting equity? Is your company finding a technological balance for synchronous and asynchronous communications? Comment below.

#boseprofessional #bosevideobar #meetingequity #audiovisual