16 May 2017

Despite chat and IM being embedded in everyday consumer devices, low adoption in the workplace suggests enterprises are not offering a cohesive comms experience.

What’s been described as “sub-standard” communications and collaboration practices are costing UK businesses around £8,000 per employee every year, and up to £4m annually for a company of 500 employees.

In an independent study carried out on behalf of Mitel, Webtorials and Opinium surveyed more than 250 business professionals across the UK and analysed the ways in which they interact both inside and outside their organisations. It revealed an “over-reliance” on traditional communications tools which are costing businesses thousands of pounds each year in lost productivity. 

For instance, the study found that employees lose nearly one day a week from poor communications capabilities, and that “ineffective” use of email alone costs £2,000 per worker annually. Staff lose on average 20 per cent of their workday writing and responding to emails, yet 80 per cent believe it is still an efficient form of communications.

Commenting on the results, Nick Beardsley at Olive Communications says: “Email overload is certainly something our customers consistently reference as a productivity killer. Too often, people default to email for conversational collaboration. Simply taking this sort of communication out of email and into a unified application enables teams to realise the productivity benefits of real-time collaboration.”

The survey found that 44 per cent of workers over 40 “choose to hide” behind email over all other methods of communicating, while 80 per cent of respondents under the age of 30 prefer using the telephone for communicating at work. Additionally, chat and collaboration tools appear to be overlooked with just nine per cent using them regularly.