Workplace Communication Study: How do Employees Communicate in 2024?
Spike’s new communications study raises awareness to the need for an email revolution.
The survey* focused on Americans’ preferences for email and other messaging tools in the workplace. While the survey revealed that email is still king (100% use email), it’s no longer a standalone solution (100% also use messaging apps). In general, 53% of Americans prefer email to other communication tools.
77% prefer using email for work
vs.
23% prefer messaging apps for work
“There are other siloed productivity platforms being adopted, but email is unequivocally the most commonly used method of communication. So, in an age of zero patience with endless expectations, we wanted to ask the American workforce why a 50-year-old technology is still their go-to, where the pain points are and what changes can ramp up their productivity.”
Dvir Ben-Aroya, Co-founder and CEO at Spike.
Broken down by age groups and gender in the chart below, the gap between these methods tightens significantly for females and Gen Z/Millennials, who use more messaging and less emails for work than their male counterparts and their colleagues aged 35+:
Today’s workforce would like to see consolidation of communications.
Best of Both Worlds
The survey reports that across all age groups, messenger/chat apps are the second most used communication tools (outside of email), followed by social media and docs/notes. When asked to rank their preference for which communication apps should be integrated into work email, messenger/chat apps were again the top choice, followed by social media and calendar.
When asked how emails are better than messaging apps:
52% prefer to read and respond when they want to
When asked how messaging apps are better than email:
26% prefer to read and respond when they want to
Below is a full breakdown:
Future Tense
Americans have mixed predictions for the future of traditional email:
- 24% think it will be used less often
- 22% think it will be used more often
- 19% think it will become identical to text
- 11% hope it will become more fun!
“Email’s open nature and inherent respect for flow are superpowers. As time goes on, we’ll see those characteristics increasingly ingrained into our work software for true productivity. Spike brings modern email, messaging and collaborative tools together on one platform, while also having shared workspaces for real-time channels where you can collaborate with any email address holder in the world.”
Dvir Ben-Aroya, Co-founder and CEO at Spike.
*Methodology: This Spike survey was conducted online by Propeller Insights in September 2019 among a national sample of 1,001 adults. The results for the full sample have a margin of error of +/- 3.1% with a 95% level of confidence, and is representative of the U.S. population for age, gender, ethnicity and region.