As the debate about whether office chat is a boon or an albatross to workplace productivity rages on, the technology at the center of the billion-dollar dilemma continues to shift and evolve. Earlier this month, Google introduced a new location for Hangouts to go with its platform-wide design overhaul; the popular chat client has now earned its own URL: hangouts.google.com. The new Hangouts doesn’t aim to replace the desktop app, the browser extension, or the GMail window, but instead provides users yet another way to (mis?)manage their work day as they see fit.
The familiar stark greens and whites are gone from this new iteration, having been replaced by rotating photography that should be familiar to Chromecast users. There are buttons for video and voice calling, but the messaging function is of primary interest to the workplace. The good news is: it remains the same. The bad news? Well, it remains the same.
As Bloomberg Business writes,
“[R]ecent research out of Harvard Business School found that while group chat can help generate ideas, it delays problem solving and execution. Virtual teams can also experience more personal conflict.“
And if group chatting makes us less productive or more acrimonious, why on Earth are we all so addicted to it? What is it about the jingling tones of a new message alert or the siren-like flashes of a plaintive pop-up window that makes our jobs – the actual, tangible workflow we are all ostensibly supposed to be participating in – seem utterly unimportant by comparison?
Perhaps it’s Pavlovian conditioning, or just plain procrastination. Or maybe, according to Slate, it’s because work is fun now:
“It used to be that the mark of a “fun” office was a foosball table crammed into the break room. But Slack makes the workspace itself feel like a game.
[…]
Workers can play Jeopardy! in Slack, or host Pokémon battles there. Slack also connects seamlessly with an animated search engine called Giphy; just plug in a keyword (like work) and enjoy a related GIF (like Homer Simpson spinning his office chair around and around in a nuclear power plant).”
Whatever the reason for the group chat explosion, if Google and Slack and Campfire, etc. have anything to say about it, its meteoric rise will only continue. Rather than trying to fight against it, our precious time may be better spent embracing our new normal, and focusing our energy on boosting productivity in other ways.
After all, is asking for lunch orders in a group Slack channel any different than a company-wide email, from a time-wasting perspective? Is a Google Hangout grousing session much worse than a private chat in an empty hallway? In the long run, probably not – and at least when chatting, employees remain at their desks, where work is at least theoretically on their minds. It’s a good test of the incremental theory of productivity, at any rate.
