Employees’ desire for flexibility is well-known and has grown in popularity in recent years. A staggering 94 percent of workers say they want flexibility in their work hours and 80 percent say they want flexibility in their workplace. However, it is not as straightforward as allowing employees to work from home or having some flexibility with their schedules to grant them the autonomy and control they desire. Real flexibility means fully embracing asynchronous work, and this requires bigger changes to the way team members communicate and collaborate.
What exactly is asynchronous work?
Asynchronous work, also known as “async,” allows individuals to work independently of one another in real time. It is not expected of employees to attend meetings or interact face-to-face; they are free to handle tasks and answer questions when they please. There’s a good chance that you already do a lot of asynchronous work. Email, collaborative documents, and recorded videos are all examples of async communication, while meetings, phone calls, and real-time instant message conversations are examples of synchronous communication.
What makes asynchronous work different from remote work? In recent years, the terms “async” and “remote” have both become commonplace, making them easy to misunderstand. The two often go hand-in-hand — remote work usually incorporates a lot of async and vice versa — but they are different concepts.
Think of it this way: “remote” refers to where you do the work, and “async” refers to how it is done. Working remotely means doing your work in a place where you aren’t co-located with your colleagues. Working asynchronously means not having to sign in at the same time as your coworkers to complete your work. Pros and cons of asynchronous work
Async communication is logically supported by the majority of today’s workers, who value flexibility. In point of fact, 52% of employees wish their employer were asynchronous-first. However, this does not imply that async is free of drawbacks. Here are a few pros and cons to consider when deciding not necessarily if your organization supports asynchronous work (because, again, it’s already happening) but how much of it should be asynchronous.
Pros of sync work Flexibility: Workers can’t have the schedule autonomy they crave if they’re expected to be logged in and active at specific hours. When people work asynchronously, they can work when it works best for them. It also makes it easier for distributed teams with members in different time zones to work together. Focus: Employees are interrupted up to 15 times per hour, according to research, making it difficult to concentrate on substantial work. Asynchronous work means less real-time communication and fewer of the urgent pings, meetings, and other disruptions that rip people’s attention from their actual to-do’s.
Documentation: There is a built-in paper trail because async work is built on communication that can be easily revisited, like emails, recorded videos, documents, and more. People don’t need to worry about losing track of something that was said in passing or invest time into manually summarizing and saving conversations.
Async work cons
Disconnection: Loneliness is a growing problem among employees, with 82% of workers admitting they’ve felt lonely at work. Async communication involves less real-time, personal connection between coworkers, which can make them feel even more isolated from the people they work with.
Miscommunication: Our nonverbal cues – facial expressions, gestures, posture, eye contact, vocal pitch and volume, and more – add a lot of context to communication. While some methods of async collaboration (like recorded videos) allow those cues to shine through, other formats don’t. That can increase the potential for misperceptions and misunderstandings.
Speed: Async communication isn’t immediate, which can be frustrating for urgent issues that need fast answers. Working asynchronously requires some patience, as well as clear communication about what topics warrant a synchronous approach and a speedy response.
5 tips for making the most of asynchronous work
Asynchronous work is not a new concept for any organization because email has been around for decades. However, just because you are doing it now does not imply that you are doing it well. Here are five suggestions for ensuring that asynchronous work is an asset rather than a barrier.
