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Digital Workplace: Will Collaboration Tools Ever be able to Replace Email?
Digital technology should be changing the landscape of the business office. Despite that, when asked what workers say wastes most of their time at work, employees say that meetings and emails top their list of time wasters. Probably the same answer you’d have seen 20-25 years ago. Workers say that they’re only able to spend about 44 percent of their workweek doing their job’s primary duty.
And the number one complaint about email is the time spent trying to find information that you know was in an email that you previously read.
While email has been identified as a major time waster for years and vendors have been pumping out alternative tools for collaboration for more than a decade, no one tool has been able to replace emails. Emails still reign as the tool of choice. It is the lowest common denominator when it comes to communication — everyone has an email address, regardless of the platform or software that is used for computing.
Collaboration tool vendors continue to try, and possibly alternative will be found that catches on. More likely though, project-specific solutions may begin to slowly edge out email as the dominant communication tool.
Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront, said that “we studied worker’s perception of the ‘office of the future,’ and found 63 percent of respondents said they anticipate ’employers will encourage greater use of collaboration technology (Slack, Yammer, social media, work management software).’”
