How Asynchronous Communication is Helping us Become More Efficient

With every passing day, the world is increasingly becoming fast-paced. In the midst of a global pandemic, a lot of things have become norms, wearing masks, working from home, and video meetings to name a few. Of course, adjusting to newer norms is a tough ask but switching from the conventional working model that we have been used to all these years to the current remote setup is a huge challenge altogether to which we’re slowly adapting.

It’s a tough scenario as each individual works in his or her own model and the very fact that one has to react to the demands of another person to respond immediately or to enter a meeting at that time is challenging. As we switched to working remotely during the pandemic, one thing that has been commonly talked about is how "Asynchronous communication” can do wonders in improving productivity and also change the way we communicate.

Let’s jump straight into it.

Asynchronous communication is the interaction between two or more individuals, where the one who communicates expresses what they want to share and the recipients process it and reply back as they wish at their convenient time. Asynchronous communication ensures that no two or more individuals will communicate at the same time, either physically or electronically. A little complicated, understandable!

Simply put, communication that happens via e-mails, workplace communication tools like slack, messenger are all examples that constitute asynchronous communication. Whereas physical gatherings, zoom meetings, video conferencing, phone calls are all synchronous communication models.

Now comes the billion-dollar question of why we need to move past the synchronous communication model after all these years!

The amount of time spent by employees and individuals to interact with each other during meetings has been growing, particularly in the current work of the home model. Employees spend about 23 hours a week in meetings alone with studies showing that the average meeting lasts one hour, of which 33.4% of the average meeting time is perceived to be unproductive by the attendees.

By now you must have found out the explanation yourself. Through transitioning to an asynchronous communication model, employees and individuals will save a lot of their productive time, not only benefiting them but also the organization as they’ll be spending their time doing meaningful work.

It's not only the fact that asynchronous communication helps workers and individuals invest their time productively, it definitely helped us alleviate work pressure. As the number of video calls/meetings continues to grow in the new WFH model, workers have started to feel "video call fatigue" or "Zoom Fatigue"

The rise of zoom’s daily active users by 2900% in the 4-month period following the pandemic is a direct indication of how many meetings are scheduled.

Switching to the Asynchronous Communication Model ensures that everyone can get back with an answer at the time we like, which in turn improves efficiency, and workers feel a sense of independence that drives them to perform better. Win-Win to all the parties concerned.

But not all asynchronous communication is really beneficial today. Emails, workplace networking tools, and messaging applications are all productivity killers again. These channels of communication have contributed to a sense of urgency among users to respond immediately when they receive something addressed to them. Thus, in fact, it loses its significance of being the asynchronous communication channel itself.

Slack has quoted users of their app on an average are connected for 9 hours and are active for 90 minutes every day. Emails fare even worse, an average office worker spends roughly 150 minutes everyday reading and responding to an average of 200 mails out of which around ⅔ of them are CCs and BCCs irrelevant to the job.

Mailer response times suggest that emailers have become synchronous as well as the average response time for mails standing at 16 minutes in the 20-35 age group. The answer time in the 35-50 age group is 50 minutes.

Concerning numbers but this is where asynchronous video communication tools come into the picture that helps companies, employees, individuals communicate truly in an asynchronous model. No more traditional synchronous communication that includes video meetings, conference calls or the now out of fashion face to face meetings.

Asynchronous video communication could also reduce if not remove the need to use other asynchronous communication models including emails and workplace communication tools extensively.

Instead of writing an email or typing a big message or scheduling a meeting, these tools let the user share what they intend to share through videos that are engaging.

The tools allow the one recording to share camera, screen or both and not just that do a whole lot of things like screen annotations, virtual backgrounds making it the perfect fit for sharing information with one another asynchronously at the shortest possible time.

Concerning numbers, but this is where asynchronous video communication tools come into the picture that helps businesses, employees, and individuals really communicate in a proper asynchronous model.

No more conventional synchronous contact, including video meetings, phone calls, or the now out of fashion, face-to-face meetings.

Asynchronous video communication could also minimize if it does not eliminate the need for heavy usage of emails and communication tools/apps at the workplace.

Instead of writing an email or typing a big message or arranging a meeting, these tools let the user share what they want to share through videos that are interactive as it allows the one recording to share their camera, screen, or both.

Not just that these tools also enable users to do a lot of things like screen annotations, virtual backgrounds that make it the perfect match to share information with each other asynchronously in the shortest possible time.

Now that the world is increasingly changing, with people operating remotely and teams expanding across the globe. Asynchronous video networking has taken center stage, allowing everyone involved to work flexibly while retaining efficiency at the same time.

Check out Vmaker, one of the best asynchronous video communication tools, and start using it for free(Lifetime!)

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