09/01/2023

Are Collaboration Tools Overwhelming Your Team?

Today’s workers feel numbed by an overwhelming collection of collaboration tools

The typical worker checks their email 77 times and receives 121 new emails each day. While doing that, many are also toggling back and forth between applications, bouncing between pings on apps like Slack and Teams, comments on shared documents, and notifications from an array of company web portals.

It's no surprise then that today's workers feel numbed by a fragmented, unpredictable and overwhelming collection of collaboration tools — trapped by the very things advertised to boost their productivity. They know they're overloaded and feel exhausted but believe there is little or nothing they can do to slow the onslaught of communication.

We explored how collaboration technology bloat impacts employees and tried to help people take control over their work. We called our intervention the "collaboration cleanse." Here we'll explore our findings (spoiler: there is good news and bad) and outline what leaders should do to simplify employees' collaboration tool use.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Harvard Business Review.