Communicate efficiently in an Asynchronous Working Environment Why you shouldn't
just start the Chat
with a “Hi” 👋

Suboptimal Communication and its negative Consequences

Suddenly stuck in the Chat Queue

Employees who start a chat conversation with “Hi” usually want to be polite and don’t want to immediately bombard the other person with their request. After all, you wouldn’t do that face-to-face or when you call someone - and of course this idea is absolutely sensible and justified!

But although you actually want to be nice with your “Hi”, you make the other person wait until you have sent them your question. And that can seriously impede productivity under certain circumstances.

This example makes this clear:

This way of communicating is comparable to calling someone, saying “Hi!” and then putting them on hold. 🤔 That’s not very nice, is it? And on top of that, more than fifteen minutes pass in which the colleague could perhaps have already dealt with the issue. It’s also a bit annoying.

No Deep Work possible

Another aspect: many employees like to write chats on the side while they are working on another task. This means they cannot concentrate 100% on both at the same time. In addition, they are repeatedly and suddenly torn away from their work when they receive a reply. This also does not contribute to an efficient way of working and can prevent highly concentrated work (deep work).

This is what Optimal Communication looks like - particularly important for Asynchronous Collaboration

You should never start a chat with a simple “Hi”. Instead, formulate your question directly like this:

In this case, it only takes a minute for you to receive an answer to your question - and everything is already clarified. It may be unusual at first, but if you ask your question directly without waiting for a greeting response from your colleague, this helps to ensure that asynchronous collaboration works in the company.

If the other person is not at work and you leave before they return, they can answer your question in your absence. Otherwise, they would just see a “Hi” and probably wonder what they missed.

If this seems too abrupt, pay even closer attention to the phrasing: always write politely and appropriately, then there’s nothing to complain about.

Possible text:

Further Tips for Asynchronous Communication

• Communicate clearly and precisely: formulate your messages as precisely and unambiguously as possible. You should always ask clear questions and give clear answers.

• Prioritize messages: in an asynchronous working environment, it is important to reply to messages according to urgency. If possible, use tags or color coding to categorize messages, for example.

• Avoid spam: don’t send unnecessary messages or information to your colleagues. Remember that chat messages can affect work productivity if overused.

• Use chat groups: set up channels in Microsoft Teams, for example, to organize relevant messages for specific projects, teams or topics. This gives communication more structure.

• Adhere to the “call etiquette”: don’t call your colleagues out of the blue. Remember that they are probably busy and could be concentrating on a task at the moment.

  Some employees send a “Hi” in the chat to find out whether the presence status displayed is correct. If so, they immediately initiate a call. You should not do this either. Just because someone replies to your chat message does not automatically mean that he or she is available to talk to you.

  Instead of a call request or the question “Hi, do you have time for a call?” - which is better, but not ideal - you can use the following text:

What do you achieve by doing this? You limit the request for your counterpart in terms of time and give the colleague a context, so that he or she already has a rough idea of what it is about. It also makes it easier for you to remember what you wanted to talk about if the person doesn’t reply until later and too much time has passed by then.

Effective Communication in an Asynchronous Working Environment ensures greater Productivity and Satisfaction

Even if you take the tips from this article to heart - chats are still not ideal for asynchronous work, but rather when you are chatting synchronously (i.e. in real time) with someone. In this case, however, you should not start with a simple “Hi” as described and take enough time to focus on the conversation.

Emails are very suitable for asynchronous collaboration. This is because you can write an email at your own pace. It then lands in the person’s inbox and they can process it when it fits into their individual schedule.

This type of communication allows your team to work together asynchronously. Effective communication in an asynchronous work environment requires discipline and clear agreements within the team. These rules are important to ensure productivity and that no important information is lost. When asynchronous communication is done right, it contributes to the satisfaction of all team members. 😊