WhyChatRocks

From IckyWiki

This is an extension of WhyTelecommute

How can you encourage team work and collaboration, even if your work group is geographically diverse or consists entirely of telecommuters?

Simple, have your IT group set up a chat server, whether it be IRC or one of the newer IM protocols that allows chatrooms. I know what you're thinking, because people who have so far only used email for electronic communication usually say something like this...'I set up IM a long time ago and I don't use it much. How is this any improvement over email or regular IM?' Because, for one thing, you probably haven't used dedicated chatrooms or encouraged entire groups of people to do so.

How are chatrooms qualitatively different from people individually IM'ing each other, or emailing them, or calling them on the phone? Because in a chatroom, using any decent client such as X-Chat for IRC, you get an entire group of people who, if they choose to be present, can participate in group conversations with anyone who chooses to join their channel (usually set up along the lines of reporting structure, or projects, or programs, or whatever might interest a group of workers). This means that if someone has a question, they can be pointed at a whole group of people to ask, rather than individually pinging people who may or may not be involved, and who may be busy with something else at the time they are asked. This is not to say you can't use an IM client to do chatrooms; most do allow for chatrooms. I prefer irc, since it allows you to get a listing of all public channels available on the server at any given time, making it easier to find the group you're looking for. The best part about group communications is that it allows people with comments or questions to target the whole group at once; very often, people who aren't actively participating in the conversation do watch it and end up with a much wider body of experience about the work going on within their group and within the company as a whole. It allows workers to have a live window on their co-workers, various projects, whatever, giving employees both a stronger sense of group identity and a greater understanding of what's going on, even outside their own range of responsibilities. It has all the advantages of having a group mailing list in email (everyone sees the ensuing conversations)--group participation and sharing of knowledge, etc.; without the disadvantages of having to weed through a large amount of email to find the interesting stuff. Best of all, participants have the choice of simply ignoring the program for extended periods while working, yet be able to pull conversations out of the 'scrollback' or their own local logs of conversations so they don't miss anything important.

It's analogous to having a constantly running conference call going all day; anyone can ask a question, anyone can answer it. But the distinct advantages over conference calling are that:

• you can monitor many conversations running simultaneously about different subjects
• you can easily ignore some of what's going on
• if you did concentrate only on one conversation for awhile, you can easily retrieve other conversations that were going on simultaneously

Surely, you say, that having employees physically co-located is the only way to promote group consciousness and allow projects to progress? Not even remotely. There are groups that physically occupy the same office who do not know their co-workers or their projects nearly as well as those who use chat (in conjunction with regular group meetings, email, and other communications) even while not in the office at all. Even when physically colocated, if you are not using chat, if you want a group conversation you must gather people together and interrupt everyone's work day. Using chat, you can constantly have at least part of the group's attention without interrupting everyone's day (and if it does turn out that an individual not currently paying attention to chat is needed, it's very quickly determined and they can be contacted). In some cases, it allows certain questions to be answered by people that do happen to have the time currently to answer such questions, without bothering individuals who are busy with other projects. By watching irc at convenient times, all participating employees tend to gain more knowledge, and thus, making it less important to find an individual employee to answer certain questions.

But maybe your security group has an objection to using public IM and irc servers? That's why it is suggested that you set up work-based servers. It would be foolhardy to suggest using public servers to discuss your company's private information. In addition it could serve as an auditing trail, since the company could have access to the logs for those servers.

Of course, chatrooms are not much use if only a few people choose to participate. Really, they work best once you start getting whole groups to join and make it known what channels such groups normally occupy, so they can be easily found. But once people get used to the idea and are set up properly, using chat does not waste anyone's time. In addition, for those groups that telecommute or are located in disparate locations, it gives them an electronic meeting place, reducing the sense of isolation, misunderstanding, or even competition that can occur when such communication is not taking place.