Communicating in real-time at work

DWG’s research report “Communicating in real-time at work: the promise and the perils” explores the ways organizations and teams use real-time communication tools in their work.

Real-time communications, such as instant messaging, voice over internet protocol (VOIP) calling and teleconferencing have become central to how people communicate and work inside organizations. During the Coronavirus crisis these tools have assumed even more importance.

However, without strategy or governance, these channels can risk confusion among team members around which option to use and potentially cause dilution of messages, inefficiency in searching for information and data security breaches.

This research report explores how the capabilities to communicate in real-time in the workplace are changing the way we work. It looks at the current state of such tools, the benefits and challenges of how we use them, and present approaches and tactics for how to optimize their implementation, adoption and use by employees.

The report also includes a number of examples from organizations, and also includes an in-depth case study from Diabetes UK focusing on how they used real-time communication and collaboration to help retain a high-quality team.