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IM best-practices in the workplace
Brian McCaffrey | Sep 28 2007
What is IM used for in the workplace? My office mates and I figured out this week that we have an IM client on our corporate workstations. Novices to the world of corporate IM, we don't really know what it's used for. I've used IM clients at home, of course, but never at work and we're all at a bit of a loss on how this would be useful, if at all. A quick session of searching 43f reveals that most of the discussion up until this point has been about managing the distractions of IM and managing your coworkers' expectations of your responses. But I'm wondering, what's IM used for in business? So far in my office, people have started chat sessions with entire work teams present online and left the session open all day. Team members will post questions or comments or requests to review edits on shared documents. In one of our groups, the director has moved some of his communication to the chat room, with the expectation that his team members will read this message during the next hour or two. Is this a typical use? How about one-on-one chats with colleagues? Tell me what IM looks like at your workplace. 46 Comments
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 SalesSubmitted by owl_tn on September 29, 2007 - 7:31am.
I work in a phone sales environment. This means that when I'm not working on perfecting my golf swing (apparently), I'm on the phone with customers - mainly IT professionals - discussing new equipment they need in their datacenters. This means it's next to impossible for a coworker to reach me by phone or vice versa. Hence, IM. Most of the time it's an extremely useful communication tool, like when we have multiple people from a sales team across several sites on a conference call with the IT Director and CFO of a business client. It's better to pass along tidbits like "the CFO's name is Bill" or "here's quote XXX for the proposal" over IM than rudely interrupt the customer saying it out loud. There are, of course, times when I want to put a blowtorch to our IM program, but they are few. I mostly get this urge when an account manager I support floods my IM with "I need you on the phone NOW with this customer" when I'm in the middle of what passes for knowledge work around here, like doing research on datacenter cooling. In those instances I remind myself that it's not the IM program's fault, grab my golf club in a menacing fashion, and walk over to said person's desk. In my dreams. » POSTED IN:
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