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IM best-practices in the workplace

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.

eigenhombre's picture

Invaluable

My colleagues and I use Skype (text) chat on a daily basis to coordinate activities on a physics experiment at the South Pole. At any given time we are working from up to three or four continents. IM is especially valuable when working in real time, in a low-bandwidth environment. It's also handy if you're troubleshooting something and just want to cut-and-paste error messages or snippets of code.

It's also handy while working with someone during phone meetings or even in physical meetings where you're sitting in the same room but don't want to disturb the other people (who might actually be paying attention to the speaker).

It's one of those things that, once you try it, it's hard to figure out how you lived without it for so long.

Of course, you have to firewall your attention with IM, the same as e-mail or the telephone.

 
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