IM the time thief?

What is time theft? Time theft is when an employee uses time being paid by the employer to engage in tasks not involving work or simply not doing tasks assigned while at work.

In the case of instant messaging, it can certainly become a time thief. Beware the co-worker who wants to turn your day into a chatathon.

So you're at work, in the zone and all of a sudden your IM notifies you of a message. You check it and it's Chatty Cathy. She's a great work friend and you often spend your lunch hour with her but she has a habit of making your lunch social hour extend into the rest of the afternoon. Unintentionally or not, Ms. Cathy is stealing time. Time from her own work day and now yours by monopolizing your time via Instant Message. Depending on your work environment, this can be a big no no and lead to disciplinary action if you're caught.

How do you handle the time thief? Keep your IM's short and sweet. Keep them work focused and if it gets into social territory gently let them know that you're working on a project/deadline and that you'll discuss it with them at lunch or after hours.

Another option is ignoring social messages. I don't recommend this as it can come off as rude and if the work relationship is otherwise good, it could really sour your environment. The best course is to be honest and let them know you're busy. It's polite, it's to the point and hopefully your time thief will take the hint.

As an employer, you do have options for monitoring time theft. There are programs available to track how time is spent by your employees.Great programs will allow you to track time spent on emails, IM, and how people generally spend their day while working.

On a final note, I leave you with a scene from The Office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_isgn5JMVk

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? for which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - Wlliam Shakespeare

Speaking of names, I thought now would be a great time to discuss all the different IM programs out there. There are a LOT of business related apps and messengers available for business today. At last count, there were well over 150 for business related communication. I'm not going to run down the full list but I am going to go over a few noteworthy apps/programs.

Before I give you the rundown, it bares mentioning that not all apps are created equal. As such, some apps are better suited for small business, while others are better for larger companies.

So what makes a great app for small business? Well, primarily, free. Free is good and when you're a small start up or struggling to get things off the ground, free is GOOD. Did I mention free is good? Okay, I know. You got it. Moving on.

There are some great free apps out there. First up is Google Hangouts or Gtalk (different but amalgamating in the near future). Most people know about Google and most have at least one Gmail account these days. This is one of the reasons that Hangouts can be a great way to start your business off with IM, it's convenient! You can see when co-workers are online, you can send offline messages and they'll receive them when they get back online. Sort of like a text message. That said, it's a bare bones messenger, you won't get any extra frills here.

Others worth mentioning that are free include Spark, Jabber and Adium. Adium is for MAC platform only so if you're working with PCs or anyone from your team isn't on a MAC, they'll be left out. Sort of like the last kid picked to play freeze tag at recess. Spark was specifically made for businesses and the messenger has the ability to link to the business server so employees can access IM with their company ID and passwords, just like email. This provides a little more security for the small business owner as well. Lastly, Jabber offers your company IT the department to control the messenger so that if you have any technical issues, you go to them, not a third party.

As far as paid apps go, there are quite a few to choose from but I'd like to focus on one in particular. An app called Slack. This app is relatively new to the market but it's been taking the market by storm for the past six or seven months and does so much more than just IM. The great part about this IM app is that it allows the user to create channels of communication. Channels include things like messaging, files, comments, projects, etc. and it provides users the ability to integrate things like DropBox and Google Drive which many companies use every day. Of course, awesomeness does come at a price. Also, if you've got time, check out this article on the creators of Slack, it's pretty serendipitous how it all came about.

Here's a great video on how Slack works in the workplace. I'd love to hear what you think about it. I personally think that apps like Slack are going to take the business world by storm in the next little while.