While more than half of the people surveyed (56%) use 2-3 messaging apps on a regular basis, 72% admit they prefer SMS texting. All of the back and forth on preferred business communication tools puts businesses at risk of overloading their employees. In fact 42% of survey respondents admitted feeling “communication overload” from time to time, with too many apps to check for messages on a daily basis. We believe the cause of it of this overload is digital communications fragmentation, the all-to-common situation of having too many communications and collaboration tools, in addition to too many emails received on a daily basis.
This employee feedback in our survey suggests the dire needs for companies to adopt the right business communication tools, policies and procedures to empower texting, calling, messaging, and online meetings—through more efficient communication platforms—at work. As new communication preferences emerge, employees and employers must devise a system that prevents communication and email overload, while enabling efficient communication both internally and externally. Preparing employees with the right tools to call, text or message one another should remain a top priority to help workplace productivity and efficiency.
Below is our infographic to highlight the latest findings:
To summarize the key takeaways of the infographic – across all generations and genders and at home and at work, the sheer number of text messages people send and receive is astonishing. Nearly one-third of respondents claim to receive 21-40 texts a day. Ten percent receive 60 or more text messages per day. But even more surprisingly, our habits with quick response time and text protocol are evolving and driving this change. Thirty-five percent of business professionals claim they can’t go over ten minutes without responding to a text. The survey also revealed alarming statistics about texting while driving– 20% of business professionals admitted to texting and driving that same day, while 8% of the general population said the same thing.
Employees are bringing habits from personal communication—like using emojis and voice to text dictation—to their texting habits at work. Seventy percent say they always or sometimes use emojis and images in texts for business communication, and 50% use voice to text dictation.
The takeaways are clear: Even though texting is preferred over messaging by many people, employees need to be better well-equipped to communicate with all modes of communication effectively. The issue of communications overload means there’s many gaps to fill and employers are still struggling to utilize proper communication platforms and enable today’s modern distributed, and highly mobile workforce productivity. Giving employees the flexibility to communicate with their preferred style is a top priority, and it’s important to not loose sight of the power of an integrated communications platform and the role that a cloud-solution such as RingCentral can play in driving a complete business communication strategy.
Our SVP of Strategy, Praful Shah, shares his six rules for texting etiquette which workers should follow when messaging with managers, peers, and clients. Do you text for work-related matters? Share your best practices in the comments below.
Originally published May 21, 2015, updated Apr 04, 2021
