The digital workplace of the future?
How will the tools look like?
How will the tool box look like?
Since all successful tools are focused on a specific task, we need many different tools both at home and at work. How will the tool box which integrates all these applications into a digital workplace look like?
The answer is simple: it will look exactly the same as it always has. From the first Mac in 1983 and Windows 1.0 in 1985 to today’s PC’s, smartphones and tablets: They all start with a plain digital space with icons for every e.g. app, which is called desktop in computers and home screen in smartphones.
That’s why Just Social also provides you with such a digital surface as a start page for your intranet. It integrates the six Just Social apps as well as all your other apps in one place – finally. You can also use drag & drop to personalize the order of your apps, just like you do with your PC and smartphone. Wonderful.
Is the E-Mail dead?
In our private life, we rarely (if ever) ask ourselves when to use social networks, chat and email. Instead, we intuitively use these tools whenever we need them for the use cases they are designed for:
- Email = Formal communication
- Chat = Informal communication & collaboration
- Social network = Information of large groups
In the workplace, email are often used for all three of these use cases which leads to losses in productivity and frustration of employees.
The word email is short for electronic mail which already points to the use case: It is the electronic version of the good old letter and made for formal communication. Today we rarely use email in our private life since we do not communicate formally with our family and friends except for e.g. invitations to weddings.
In our workplaces, formal communication with email is more common, especially when corresponding with external parties such as customers. For internal communication, however, emails are often neither needed nor efficient:
Sending electronic mails back and forth to communicate informally or collaborate on e.g. a project is slow and messy. The right tool in this case is chat. Just as we all use chat tools like WhatsApp to stay in touch with our family, friends, sports team etc., we need to use chat tools like Just Connect for communication & collaboration in our workplaces.
Moreover, sending email for pushing information (e.g. newsletters) to the entire organization disrupts employees in their work and does not allow for any feedback and discussions – at least not without sending around more emails to everybody. In this case, internal social networks like Just News are the medium of choice, in which everybody can select the news they want to receive – and interact with the content via likes and comments without distracting the entire organization.
In sum:
- Informal communication and team collaboration should take place in chat tools like Just Connect.
- Information for the entire company should be posted via internal social networks like Just News.
- Internal emails should only be used when formal communication is truly needed such as in the case of e.g. internal applications.