FOLLOW UP: How changing communication preferences are changing HR technologies

Last week on the blog I shared a chart on US teens' communication preferences which showed, (among a few other interesting things), that when it comes to interactions with their friends, email is this group's least preferred method/tool of choice. If you are a parent of a teen, or have ever just observed a teen for more than 10 minutes or so, you would notice them pretty furiously tapping away on their phones almost non-stop - with the vast majority of this activity being SMS messaging, (and to a lesser extent using SnapChat, WhatsApp, and social tools like Instagram). 

What they are almost certainly not doing is sending or replying to email. 

It might be hard for us crusty adults to want to deal with or accept, but anyone under about 25 or so did not grow up relying on email for anything, (save for possibly communications with 'grown ups').

Whenever I run a piece like the 'teens hate email' one, I usually get a few comments or replies on Twitter that more or less say the same thing - 'So what? Email isn't ever going away. When these teens enter the workforce they will simply have to adapt. Blah, blah, blah and get off of my lawn.'

Mostly, it seems, professional adults don't generally see any significant change to email's ubiquity and primacy as the 'professional' communication technology of choice, and fully expect teens and Gen Z types to have to just deal with it if and when they want to get (and keep), a real job.

But is it really that simple? Or asked differently, can us 'adults' really get away with thinking that way? Forever?

So after the 'teens hate email' piece ran last week I received an email from Kay Lucas, VP of Product Strategy at PeopleMatter. In case you are not familiar, PeopleMatter is a leading provider of workforce and talent management technology solutions, focusing primarily on retail, hospitality, and other service provider organizations. Think restaurant chains, convenience stores, hotels - that sort of thing.

The kinds of organizations that do high volume, rapid hiring. And, more importantly, the kinds of organizations that tend to employ lots of folks in their teens and twenties - the kinds of folks that tend to see email as their least preferred method or technology for communication.

So to get back to Kay, here is the full text of the email she sent over last week after my post ran:

Steve,

This past weekend we rolled out a new release and ditched email as being required for applicants for this reason. Just thought you’d be interested in knowing.

Thanks,

Kay

What?

Candidates can actually apply for a job without an email address? 

I had to know more, so I asked Kay for some additional background on this decision and she shared with me some more details (note, I checked with Kay and have her permission to share these emails here).

(Kay Lucas, PeopleMatter)

We decided to do this (allowing customers to make Email an optional field for candidates), because our customers felt like they were losing applicants because email was required. One very large casual dining customer in particular really thought that they were losing two whole groups of people: 1) the younger generation as you point out, 2) the non-tech generation – think of back of the house employees in restaurants and retail. It could be folks where English is not their first language and/or they just don’t care about email because they have no reason for it.

We also know that in our space (service industry), the majority of employees don’t have computers – their phone is their connection. So, texting and mobile friendly are key.

The release literally just happened this past Saturday morning. Here’s what we have already seen: 

On Sunday, the quantity of job applications increased by 5% from the prior Sunday. On Monday, the quantity of job applications increased by 22% from the prior Monday. Wow! We are already blown away and totally pumped we did this. Hats off to our clients and I love listening to them. Makes us so much smarter. They get it and we are so happy that we’ve made this change. The labor market is tight so this is a really big deal for them.

Ok, so I love this for a few different reasons. One, it gives us a direct, real-world example of how teens and others communication preferences, (essentially mobile phone driven, and SMS heavy), are being acknowledged and reflected in how organizations and HR technology providers are deploying HR tools. If your target applicant pool would prefer not to use email, (or simply can't use email), then provide a way for them to interact and apply with you using their desired method.Image courtesy PeopleMatter - click for a large version

Second, it shows really well how good my friends at PeopleMatter understand and react to their customers. Retail and food service are precisely the kinds of industries that would likely have plenty of candidates in the email hating teen to young adult cohort, and this 'email optional' update shows how well the technology can adapt to these needs.

And finally, it serves as a great reminder to all of us, HR leaders and HR technology providers alike, that just because us old farts that make all of the rules and all of the decisions are not that we are not always right, and that we need to be open minded enough to adapt to what today's 19 year olds think too. 

That is if we want to remain relevant once that 19 year old becomes out 26 year old boss in a few years.

Thanks again to Kay Lucas at PeopleMatter for sharing the information on their approach to this issue and if you are an HR leader from retail or food service or hospitality be sure to check out what PeopleMatter is up to.

Have a great week!

Guess what teens' least favorite communication technology is?

I may as well rename this blog 'All the ways I hate Email' since that is what I am going on and on about lately.

Well, I ask your indulgence one more time and I swear I will get off of this soapbox for a while because I am sure you are sick of it, and also because no matter how much I moan about email, it isn't going anywhere soon.

Unless it might be.

Take a look at the chart below from some recent research from Pew on teens' (also known as your future candidates, employees, customers), preferred mediums for communicating with their friends. Drink in the dta on this fine Monday morning and then some FREE commentary from me after the chart.

A quick look at the data reveals a few interesting pieces of information:

1. The obvious: Text or SMS messaging is still the 'killer app' for teens, with 55% of those surveyed reporting they use SMS every day to connect with friends. Despite the proliferation of 'messaging' apps like SnapChat and WhatsApp, the lowly SMS message still dominates teens' daily use. The lesson here for the rest of us: Interoperability often can trump features when people make decisions about technology. SMS just works, no matter what kind of a phone one has, no matter the version of the operating system, and more importantly, comes 'enabled' and ready to use on every device - no special app downloads and 'friending' required.

2. In-person is not dead, at least not totally. If you combine 'In-person' along with talking on the phone, then you can see that these 'real life' interaction methods have not been completely replaced by electronic an impersonal communication modes. There are a few possible reasons for this - it could be information overload with teens' likely feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all the communication choices and formats available to them. Or it could be that teens' are actually, you know, somewhat normal people, and enjoy the in-person interactions with friends just like you do too. I guess the main takeaway is to not undersestimate the value and importance of the in-person interaction, even when it is so, so much easier just to send an email.

3. And since I just had to bring it up, we see teens' least preferred method of communication with friends is email. At only 6% claiming to use it daily, it trails all other forms of communication, including really niche methods like video game chatting. There is no indication from any source I have seen that suggests this trend and preference will reverse any time soon, resulting in essentially a generation of future workers and customers that simply rank email at the bottom of their preferred methods of interaction. We (people who make decisions about workplace technology and are charged with reaching and influencing this audience), have to start taking these changes more seriously, or risk not being able to effectively engage the next generation of folks.

What do you think? Are you considering making any changes to your communication tech mix?

When was the last time you emailed someone under 20?

Did they respond?

Have a great week!

HRE Column: How Can We Make Email Less Terrible?

Here is my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here.

This month, with a nod to it being the middle of summer when we are/should be taking a little bit of a respite from 'normal' work, I decided to take a look not at HR technology specifically, but at the most ingrained and ubiquitous workplace technology of them all - Email.

If you have followed this blog for any amount of time you will recognize some of the themes - email is terrible, it keeps us from doing more creative and fun work, and yet we can't seem to lessen email's grip on our work lives. But as I examine in the HR Exec column, there are plenty of opportunities to make email better, and many of the world's largest tech companies, (Google, Microsoft), are investing in improving email. 

Here is an excerpt from the HRE column, Rethinking Email:

Email is likely the first and last workplace tool that HR and employees open every day (not to mention the 395 other times during the day you are either reading, managing or composing messages). It is, without question, the most important employee communication technology in the vast majority of modern workplaces.

So why doesn’t HR think more about how to make email better?

Well, some technology companies are thinking about and doing exactly that. Take the following three examples; in at least one case, the technology is has the potential to dramatically reduce the importance of email as a workplace tool. All of these examples are instructive and—even if you, as an HR leader, don’t have direct authority to change or update your enterprise email technology and strategy—all of them offer HR insights into how employee communication preferences are changing, and how your communication strategies can adapt.

Get better management of your workflow inside email.

If you are a user of Gmail, you might be familiar with Google’s newest smartphone app for Gmail called Inbox. Inbox transforms email management in several ways, chief among them by “learning” about how you use email, and then helping to better triage incoming emails into relevant categories based on your usage patterns, relationship with contacts and message-management preferences. It takes a little getting used to, but Inbox devotees claim it saves hours each week in the time it typically used to take them to manage, sort and classify incoming messages. That said, I think the best feature of Inbox is the “Snooze” feature, which resurfaces a message you’ve opened but don’t have time to properly respond to at that moment. In fact, Inbox even looks for clues in the message (references to due dates, event dates, etc.) to auto-suggest the optimal time to resend you the message so that you won’t miss an important deadline. For HR leaders, a simple takeaway here might be to be sure to include relevant due dates or deadlines in the subject lines of emails, rather than buried in the email body. So “Benefits Open Enrollment” gets replaced with “Benefits Enrollment Open from Oct. 1 through Oct. 15,” allowing employees to better manage their workflow and to-do lists....

Read the rest over at HRE Online 

Good stuff, right? Humor me...

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and wash your car or cut the grass for you if you do sign up for the monthly email.

Have a great weekend!

Communication in a post-email world

It is no secret to long time readers of the blog, and also to some folks who have tried or are trying to get in touch with me, that I have a long-standing hatred of email. The specific reasons are not really important and the moment, a quick search of this blog archive, or even Google will provide ample ammunition for why email is terrible. But I bring it up again because of a post I came across on the blog of Forrester analyst Julie Ask, titled How Will You Communicate With Your Customers if they Don't Read Email?

Check out Ms. Ask's rundown of the various messaging apps and platforms she is currently engaging with, and the current state of unread messages in them:

A summary of my communication (or lack thereof) shows:

• 24,998 unread personal emails (okay, mostly from marketers)
• 4,937 unopened work emails
• 272 unopened SMS messages
• 45 unopened/read messages on WeChat (these are from marketers)
• 0 unread notifications from Facebook (and I average 23 per day)
• 0 unread notifications from Slack (and I average 87 per day)

The reasons and reasoning that Ms. Ask offers for this current state of (mostly) ignored emails is instructive and probably similar to what many of you, your employees, and your job candidates/prospects are finding. Namely, our email boxes (both personal and professional) are overrun, we have recently adopted more and newer messaging tools (like WhatsApp or Slack), and we elect to migrate only a small subset of our universe of contacts into these new, preferred platforms.

Check one more excerpt from the Forrester piece, and note, I am going to swap out the work 'marketer' with 'recruiter' and 'customer/consumer' with 'candidate'.

Marketers Recruiters and really anyone looking to engage with consumers candidates thought they had checked the box with gaining consumers’ candidates' trust when they gained permission to send emails. Think about how many times you’ve made a purchase online and the box to “receive additional promotional materials” is already checked for you. You have to opt out rather than opt in.

Mobile came along and changed the game. Now digital business professionals and marketers recruiters worked hard to drive app downloads. They wanted to own their mobile moments with their customers candidates on mobile phones. Each download was considered a win.

But then consumers candidates stopped opening or using the applications. Only a few marketers recruiters have realized that they have to do more. Now if Marketers recruiters want to reach consumers candidates, they have to gain consumer candidate permission to receive push notifications.

The bar keeps moving for marketers recruiters who want to reach consumers candidates on their mobile devices. Permission lies with each application. At a time of hyper-adoption when consumers candidates can switch apps in less than a minute and migrate their base of friends or colleagues in a matter of days or weeks, marketers recruiters can’t rest.

This is really good stuff from Ms. Ask, and totally relevant for any of us who are trying to capture attention in a highly-fragmented and rapidly evolving communications technology landscape.

I guess the bright side could be that no, people are not ignoring your email. They are ignoring all of their email.

No access

I am in Beijing, China for the next few days and as is my tendency to be mostly unprepared as to the details of the places to which I travel, I was surprised to learn upon arriving that access to many of the apps and services I have come to rely upon, (Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts, Twitter, Hootsuite, Instagram, and a few others), are essentially blocked here.

So if you are trying to get a hold of me by any of the above means, well, I pretty much won't be reachable until Tuesday or Wednesday.

If you really, really, need to reach me for some reason you can try to email at steveboese at hotmail, that service for whatever reason is accessible here.

This is a really interesting place, and I kind of like the fact that I have been able to enjoy it a little more closely and attentively, not being constantly distracted by emails, tweets and the like.

Have a great weekend!