Opinion

Time to Twitter?

Finance | John Tate | 23 Feb 2009

Technology is meant to improve efficiency, says John Tate.

I gave a couple of talks last month to finance directors in the commercial sector on the future of IT. In my sessions I asked two questions.

Firstly, how many of you work for organisations where the senior management consistently replies to staff emails? Of the 100 or so delegates only 2 or 3 put their hands up.

Secondly, how many of your organisations have an ‘open door’ policy which is actually implemented in practice? Of the 100 or so delegates, most said that their organisations claim to have this but only 2 or 3 put their hands up to say that this applies in practice.

Frightening statistics. If staff reach out to their bosses via email and do not get a reply what is the impact? Are there important business issues that are being ignored? Are decisions being delayed? If an open door policy is preached but not practiced there is a danger that communication is going back-wards, not forwards.

Do staff feel respected and valued when this happens? Are we starting to rebuild an ‘us and them culture’? Are we building barriers that organisational behaviourists have been trying to break down for decades?

I asked the delegates why they and their management acted in this way. Top of the list of reasons was lack of time. Much of this is down to the increased hours they spend dealing with electronic communications.

Technology has done much for the business world, driving out cost from transaction processing and improving reporting. Charities are also finding new ways to engage with stakeholders, for example to raise money.

Twitter is one case of a technology that is creating real interest. It is a ‘microblogging’ service that allows people to communicate and stay in touch through the exchange of short messages. These can be sent by text from a mobile phone/PDA, instant message or the web. Examples of use in the charity sector include Save the Children www.twitter.com/savethechildren and Oxfam www.twit-ter.com/oxfam. Over the last few months several charities have used this media to promote campaigns and to raise money for their cause.

So technology is continuing to facilitate ‘communication’ between people. Instant messaging, email, texting/Blackberries, blog-ging sites, discussion forums, social network-ing and RSS feeds as well as Twitter continue to grow in use.

These technologies are being applied by charities with increasing vigour. Sounds good in theory but there is a catch.These technologies are creating an ever-increasing volume of communications traffic to our desktops/mobile devices and in many cases are clogging up our lives. We have so much to read and respond to. This is taking up an ever increasing slice of our working day and is spilling over into our personal lives. Blackberries at times seem to be more important than  discussions with our families/friends and time out from work. So what is to be done?

Firstly, managers need to recognise the problem. Whilst technology can do much for the charity sector it can also damage the way we communicate and break down trust.

Secondly, we need to revisit how we ourselves work with new media and re-establish a working pattern that tackles the issue. Human personal assistants for senior staff are coming back into vogue to support email activity and the need to respond to more and more electronic communication. This is somewhat ironic as technology has been heralded as a mechanism to do away with much of the admin support required by management.

Thirdly, measure the electronic communications in the workplace. How many emails are staff sending/receiving per day? How much time are people spending on the internet and what are they doing? Ask staff how effective they feel communication is and what the barriers are to improving this.

Fourthly, set a clear email/communications policy for your charity. Decide if you will allow access to social networking sites. Consider reducing electronic communication internally and book more time for face-to-face meetings.

Finally, if you are considering launching a new initiative with technology, make sure you assess the full impact of this on your people. Twittering may sound like a great idea but do you have the time to manage it effectively?

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Directory: Oxfam | Save the Children
Who's Who: John Tate