Async-first Communication: Are You Ready For It?

Async-First communication is a fairly new trend, and we’re seeing companies adopt it to boost employee productivity and efficiency.

In this post, we’ll take a look at what Async-first means as well as explore tips to practice asynchronous-first communication with Slack.

What is Async-first Communication?

The Async-first approach involves defaulting to asynchronous communication, but also finding the right balance with synchronous usage wherever possible.

Asynchronous communication doesn’t require that all of your team members are present or available at the same time. With asynchronous communication, you can manage your workload more efficiently, communicate with coworkers across multiple locations and time zones, and free up calendars allowing for better scheduling. It allows us to be more flexible in our work.

On the other hand, with Synchronous communication you expect responses in near real-time. You can think of it as a face-to-face conversation you have with someone.

Why use Async Communication?

Let’s consider an example that might resonate with many of you.

When you’re in a global organization, it’s logical for employees to want to hold a meeting across time-zones often. Attending or hosting a meeting across 3 time-zones isn’t fun!

Have you dealt frequently with the challenge of finding the “right” time-slot for such meetings?

Differences: Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Communication

Pros and Cons of Async Communication

Pros

• Makes it easier to work with a globally distributed team from different locations and time zones. Mitigates the challenges of scheduling and coordinating that dreaded meeting slot across countries.
• More flexibility: Asynchronous communication gives you the time you need to think before responding. You can always respond when it’s convenient for you, instead of having the pressure of instant responses. This translates to more employee engagement.
• Fewer interruptions and lesser context switching: you can work with fewer distractions and focus on one thing. This facilitates Deep work and increased productivity.
• Improved response quality: Team members have to formulate more thoughtful and higher-quality responses. Translates to Quality improvement and better documentation for future reference.
• Eliminates the need to be always online: with Async communication, you can set the availability and response expectations. No need to stay online all the time.

Cons

• Requires more discipline in communication to avoid disconnects and misunderstanding: With asynchronous communication comes the need for much more clarity and detail because the conversation isn’t happening in real-time.
• Async communication is not suited for topics requiring urgency. The Async-first rule of thumb is: only go Async when you need to.
• Spillover beyond traditional fixed-schedule work hours: As there is no hard meeting schedule, people choose their convenient timings. This often leads to a spillover beyond the traditional fixed-schedule work hours.

Finding the right balance: when to go Async and when to go Sync

The best part about an Async-first approach is that it provides enough flexibility to choose synchronous communication depending on your use-case needs. Finding the right balance between both types of communication is the key.

Do not hesitate to decline that synchronous meeting invitation where you are expected to be a passive listener — and replace it with an Async conversation instead.

It is important to identify situations in which face-to-face (synchronous) communication is required and then establish lines of direct communication between coworkers.

Use Asynchronous communication when:

• The topic is not very urgent, and you do not need an immediate response
• The other person is in a different time-zone
• The conversation group is fairly large to accommodate in a single meeting

Switch to Synchronous communication when:

• You and the other person need to get something urgent done immediately, and doing a video/phone call or a face-to-face chat is an available option
• When you’re participating in a long asynchronous exchange with multiple back-and-forth messages

Power Tips: How to go Async-first on Slack

We love Slack for its easy-to-use and powerful team collaboration capabilities that combines chat, audio, video, file sharing, search and more. But at the same time, the constant sync chatter on Slack can interrupt our ability to do focused work.

Here are some tips on going Async-first with Slack and boost your productivity:

• Set very clear expectations within the team on when to go Synchronous on Slack vs. when to stay Async. There are use-cases when the topic is urgent and the response cannot wait, and for the rest an immediate response is not always required
• Promote the right Slack usage culture. A culture of I-need-a-response-right-now and expecting everyone to be online round-the-clock will only decrease productivity and engagement over time. Promoting a culture where the team knows what needs your immediate attention on Slack and what can wait is the key
• Use Slack power tips on enforcing the optimum Channel usage, sidebar customization for prioritizing important messages and muting notifications for all but important channels
• Use crisp and clear wording in your Slack messages. A lot of back-and-forth sync messaging can be avoided if your original ask was clear and easy to understand. This is especially helpful when trying to go Async with remote colleagues distributed across time zones
• Make use of Slack’s powerful availability & status options — the availability & status options make it easy to let others know how quickly you can respond to messages and when you are available.

About Paco: Paco is the new Slack productivity app that is designed to enable deep-work, avoid context switching and go Async-first on Slack. Add Paco to your Slack workspace for deeper concentration, zero task slippages, and happier remote culture!

Webpage: https://pacohq.com | Follow Paco on Twitter