Study Finds Communication Strongly Linked To Productivity In a Software Organisation
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Mobile first, messaging first communications within the workforce lead to significant productivity gains, according to a new 451 research study released by NetSfere.
Furthermore, the survey of IT decision makers and employees shows that workplaces with inconsistent mobile messaging policy and tools not only limits productivity gains, but also opens the door to privacy, compliance and security risks.
The study found that nearly half of both employees and IT decision makers surveyed believe they stand to gain six or more hours a week as a direct result of using their smartphones for business communication which is predominantly for messaging and collaboration.
Their approach applies network and speech analysis strategies to audio recordings of conversations between employees, illuminating when different employees talk to each other as well as speech characteristics that could indicate each speaker’s emotional state.
This communication data is then analysed in relation to employee productivity, measured according to the number of lines of computer code written in a given time.
To demonstrate this novel method, the researchers used it to analyse the communication and productivity of 79 employees of a software engineering organisation who volunteered to have their speech recorded at work over 3 years.
The analysis showed that communication was indeed strongly linked to productivity, and that, by analysing the audio recordings, the researchers could predict productivity with a mean absolute error of below 10 percent.
The researchers noted that certain aspects of communication were linked more strongly to productivity than others.
Specifically, characteristics of the communication network (including, for instance, who speaks with whom or how often employees interact) appear to be more important than characteristics of the speech itself.
While this study suggested a relationship between communication and productivity, it doesn’t clarify whether communication causes changes in productivity or if productivity changes the communication network.
Nonetheless, the novel method to analyse audio recordings could enable deeper, more rigorous research on communication within a group or organisation.
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