A new study of enterprise workers suggests that workers rely on more traditional forms of communication than social media to drive results, as you might expect. Some 83 percent of professionals say email is “critical” or "very important" to their overall success and productivity, and 81 percent said the same for phone calls.Email and phone ranked the highest above all other forms of communication with audio conferences third at 61 percent. Sending or receiving an instant message rated as critical for only 38 percent of respondents while social media ranked last at 19 percent.
If a conversation is about closing a deal or making a mission-critical decision, 77 percent of those polled said they would prefer to do it in person. And of those polled, 65 percent said they preferred talking in person when discussing complicated technical concepts and
64 percent would rather do their brainstorming in person.
In fact, 53 percent of all respondents said that they spend 10 or more hours on the phone each week. How can that be if one-to-one phone calls have declined? It appears that more phone time is spent in audio conferences rather than one-to-one conversations.
About 83 percent of respondents said that they dial into an audio conference “frequently" or "all the time” for work. About 56 percent
said that most calls were made from a desk phone, followed by amobile phone (39 percent) and softphone (five percent).
Plantronics surveyed 1,800 enterprise employees in the US, UK, Germany, China, India and Australia. All work in medium or large size companies (100+ employees) and identified themselves as knowledge workers (people whose work centers on developing or working primarily with ideas and information) who use a variety of communications technologies to stay in touch with colleagues, partners and clients. The research was conducted in May and June of 2010.
