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RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG), a provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, released its new report From Workplace Chaos to Zen: How App Overload Is Reshaping the Digital Workplace. The report is based on a global survey of 2,000 knowledge workers and reveals that the very workplace apps intended to streamline tasks have sparked an app overload that’s injecting chaos into business workflows and costing enterprises billions in lost productivity.

Specifically for communications applications, workers today are using an average of four apps, with 20 percent of workers using six or more. This includes apps for phone calls, texts, web meetings, video conferencing, team messaging, and more. Sixty-nine percent of workers waste up to an hour each day navigating between myriad communications apps, amounting to a waste of 32 days per year.

To counter this app fragmentation, 66 percent of workers want a single communications platform that will bring a sense of productivity to their workplace. However, the C-Suite is more likely to be content with their current suite of tools (44 percent), revealing a disconnect with the cultural shift to newer communications and collaboration solutions.

App overload is creating workplace chaos

Today’s flood of communications has upended the modern workday, creating a sense of workplace chaos that’s taking a toll on employees and their companies.

- More than 70 percent of workers say their communications volume is a challenge to getting work done.
Sixty-eight percent of workers toggle between apps up to 10 times an hour, and 31 percent of workers said toggling causes them to lose their train of thought.

- Workers find navigating between apps more annoying than doing household chores (53 percent), paying bills (52 percent), and trying to lose weight (50 percent).

- Despite the prevailing feeling of app overload, workers find team messaging to be the least disruptive to their workday.

"Today’s workforce is under siege by a flood of communications apps. More than ever, our attention is scattered across a wide array of different apps and communications channels," said Riadh Dridi, CMO of RingCentral.

"These apps are meant to bolster our productivity, but managing myriad apps is proving difficult—with serious repercussions for businesses. This new research reveals workers demand a unified experience that brings together all modes of communications into a single platform that promotes better collaboration and seamlessly integrates with their other business applications."

Workers seek one platform for simplicity

The report found that workers believe a single platform integrating all their communications channels would bring more simplicity to their workday. Specifically, the data shows that:

Employees believe this would help them achieve better workflow (67 percent), be more productive at work (65 percent), make work feel less chaotic (62 percent), and make it easier to work remotely (61 percent).
Workers 45+ years old still prefer email (51 percent), but 18- to 44-year-olds prefer team messaging (43 percent). Team messaging–centric platforms are growing quickly in popularity as the preferred "home base" for a single communications platform.

"This report confirms what we’re seeing in the workplace—employees prefer a singular, real-time communications platform that increases their productivity and workflow on a day-to-day basis," said David Smith, Founder and Principal at InFlow Analysis. "It maps back to the trend toward ‘conversational workspaces.’ Enterprises are striving to enable collaboration combined with real-time communications. As more businesses adopt these platforms, it will encourage workers to use these tools to get more work done with less effort."

The C-Suite is slower to adopt newer communications technologies

Despite the growing popularity of team messaging–centric communications apps among younger workers, the C-Suite has been slower to embrace this technology.

While 80 percent of C-level executives are more likely to find their communications volume very or somewhat challenging, they are more likely to be content with their current suite of tools (44 percent), revealing a disconnect with the cultural shift away from email to newer communications capabilities such as team messaging within their ranks.

#contactcenterworld, @ringcentral

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: RingCentral