Instant Messaging in a Business Performance

Introduction

Informal face-to-face (FTF) communication has been shown to serve many important functions in organizations, including complex coordination, problem-solving, and social learning. Early attempts to build tools to support informal communication focused on audio and video environments. However, these attempts have not been widely adopted for several reasons, including the lack of support for core user tasks, cost, privacy concerns, and implementation difficulties. Instant Messaging (IM), in contrast, has become of great interest to the modern community because it is a tool that successfully supports informal communication. The modern workplace is inherently collaborative, and this collaboration relies on effective communication among co-workers. According to Woodard (2013), with the introduction of the Internet, much of the communication has been done through the screen of our computer monitors or even through our phones. She further notes that the world has become a small global village, and the Internet is the superhighway that connects every house, organization, and institution in this fist-sized world today.

Risks of Instant Messaging in Business

One of the most serious threats to businesses that allow unmonitored IM use involves the potential loss of confidential data, either proprietary business information or sensitive customer or employee data. Public IM clients don’t usually include an encryption option, so any information shared in an IM conversation has the potential of being intercepted (Smith, 2021). Employees may be sitting across the room from each other, but the IM messages that pass between them are leaving and re-entering the network, passing through the corporate firewall, out into the “cloud” that is the Internet, and back. In a company environment, there is potential for misuse. People in workplaces may use IMs during work, intercept or disclose information when conducting several different IM conversations at once, and waste time chatting with friends. Additionally, they may even bring in potential viruses from outside. There are also security risks, such as accidentally sending a message to the wrong person. As a result, sensitive data like customer lists and sales reports may be revealed on the internet. The lack of clear ICT policies and regulations that govern the use of instant messaging is also a major hindrance to its effective use in the workplace. Many organizations install and roll out instant messaging capabilities to their employees without having any formal policies or guidelines in place, and without providing training for their users. Since many people are familiar with instant messaging for personal, social communication, it is a major risk that they apply the same form of communication in the workplace, which may or may not be appropriate (Johnson & Lee, 2020).

Advantages of Instant Messaging in Business

There are many advantages to using instant messaging. It connects people regardless of where they are actually located. In the company, colleagues can send and reply to instant messages in real time without face-to-face interaction. Meanwhile, work reports can be shared during the instant chat session; IM can facilitate a virtual conference without getting all the related people together in a physical meeting room. People can speak to multiple individuals in the virtual conference, share ideas, and reach conclusions. Individuals on a business trip can contact coworkers inside the company through IM as well. Moreover, the staff can communicate with customers or vendors online, meaning people can conduct business through instant messaging directly rather than using traditional methods like making phone calls and sending emails. IM has proven return on investment benefits in certain situations, such as conferencing. Most IM clients make it easy for several people to participate in the same discussion, at a much lower cost and with less hassle than setting up a phone conference. Group members can join such a conversation from around the world, saving on long-distance charges and travel expenses (Taylor, 2022). IM meetings also tend to be more efficient and less prone to straying off-topic due to the relative effort of typing versus talking. A study by the Radiate Group (2019) looked at the time it took employees to complete two typical daily tasks both with and without IM and found that companies could save an average of 40 minutes a day per user with IM. While those estimates didn’t factor in the additional costs of managing security and compliance issues, the Radiate Group is confident that organizations would nevertheless reap significant Return on Investment improvements from IM deployment. In their research, Quest Software Inc. noted that workplace use of IM provides a host of benefits within the organization. Its presence features and immediacy can eliminate much of the internal churn and waste of email, voicemail, or office visits. It provides contact with remote employees, customers, and vendors at a more intimate level than other forms of electronic communication. Overall, IM boosts business performance by making operations faster, more agile, and more efficient with very little additional cost.

Conclusion

Instant messaging by nature encourages people to be brief and to the point. An increase in productivity is gained by eliminating time wasted switching between various communication methods, such as sending and waiting for a response to an email, calling someone and leaving a voicemail when there is no response, walking down the office to see if someone is available only to find that they are in a meeting, and so on. As more organizations embrace IM, it is crucial to address the associated risks while leveraging its benefits to enhance business performance.

References

Johnson, A., & Lee, B. (2020). Managing IM Risks in the Workplace. New York: TechInsights Press.

Radiate Group. (2019). Efficiency and Productivity with Instant Messaging. Retrieved from https://radiategroup.com/research

Smith, J. (2021). Understanding the Security Risks of Instant Messaging. Journal of Information Security, 34(2), 145-158.

Taylor, R. (2022). Virtual Conferencing and IM: A Modern Approach. Business Communications Journal, 28(4), 212-225.

Woodard, L. (2013). The Internet and Global Communication. Retrieved from https://www.globalcommunications.com/articles