Communication has become a lot less personal as the internet has become more popular. It seems like one of the most common internet usages is email. E-mail allows people to send messages, information, and pictures to others much cheaper and faster than using standard mail. Because of the ease of email communication, it seems like even though people may be computer illiterate, they are still capable of sending emails.
Because e-mails can be sent out so quickly and people send out so many e-mails throughout the day, things get mis-communicated. It is difficult to relay emotion in emails, so that is often the cause of the misunderstanding. Something that someone intended as a joke may be interpreted as an insult by the recipient because there is no tone of voice.
Email communication gives us access to a medium that doesn't allow for tone or nuance. It is very fast, and we often use I impulsively to communicate. Sometimes e-mails go back a forth over 10 times between two people, and sometimes e-mails serve as the only communication. An example of this occurred at my work – a chemistry lab. We became so dependant on email that our department basically stopped talking to each other.
I use e-mail throughout the day with my supervisors and my coworkers. Sometimes e-mails are sent to people and cc’ed to others in the department. When this occurs, I think it is appropriate etiquette to keep everyone cc’ed on the email communication until the matter is resolved. My boss recently sent out an email to everyone in my department asking us to perform an inventory of various products in our company. It was a task that combined computer work, paper work and lab work – and more importantly it took up a lot of time. About an hour into the task, I noticed that some of my coworkers looked like they were doing the same thing as I was. It turns out that my boss had sent us each the same e-mail, asking us to perform the same tasks, but had sent it to each of us individually. Instead of sending one email and listing multiple recipients, he sent it to each of us alone. No one had any idea that we had all been asked to do the same thing.
and it's a fast, often impulsive way to communicate, which can be great – except when it isn't.
This issue blew up into a slew of frustrated and angry e-mails between coworkers and managers and could have been avoided. We all sit within 40 feet of each other, so we could have easily had a meeting or split up the task. Eventually the matter was resolved, and general email etiquette was discussed.
When talking about relationships between coworkers Woods and Smith say, “As these systems become increasingly more common as part of the working experience, it becomes easier to take for granted the effect they have on human communication” (91). This is very true, and hopefully we recognize that working relationships need to be given attention in response to cyber communication. We can not forget to maintain “real” communication with coworkers rather than relying only on e-mail.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It sounds like your miscommunication through e-mail could have been fixed before it began. The dependence on e-mail in your department that you talked about seems like the most primary problem, because like you said, a meeting could have easily encouraged a greater amount of face-to-face communication. I think that there are many workplaces like your own, and that this trend has more bad implications than good ones. Is everyone scared to talk face-to-face, or are they just too lazy?
ReplyDeleteI remember when I used to work in an office with cubicle after cubicle. Nobody talked to each other, and it seemed like talking was taboo in the office. It was nothing like anything I had ever experienced up to this point in my life. I think that better productivity could be achieved at most workplaces if people got along better and chatted face-to-face about their work. Isn't the expression "Two heads are better than one?"
This is a true story. My adult niece is married to a guy who tends to be a very poor communicator. Both she and her husband along with their two kids were sitting around in the family room while they were each at their perspective laptops and my niece got an IM from her husband who was sitting 5 feet away! This was not a joke on his part he intended to carry on a conversation this way. She sent a message back and he continued using the computer. This is a story with an ironic twist. There was no misunderstanding here since they were in the room together. The fact that he was using the internet to communicate made a very clear statement about communication. In other words, he didn't want to!
ReplyDelete