Intra-Office Communication Revisited: Could You Be Doing Things Better?

A fun, new way to shake up internal communication is through the program Skype. Many of us have heard of Skype for video chatting, but this program has many other features including a messaging function that many could benefit from with a large or small office.

Skype allows each staff person to maintain communication at their desk without the in-person interruptions, "quick-questions", favors or awkward conversation that sometimes take place before you get what would be a 2 second response in Skype chat.

Want an answer from 2 of your colleagues? Bullet your thoughts and have them respond with the corresponding number. Everyone in agreement or conversation over? Give a simple emoticon - thumbs up and presto!

Some benefits of Skype are:

• Easily send documents to any contact
• Conversation history is stored up to a year
• Encourages you to compose a quick, concise and to the point thought
• Remove messages once sent if you didn't want to say something or made an error
• Emoticon help shorten and add animation to a conversation
• Group chats available for 2-100
• Ability to share your working status: online, away, unavailable, do not disturb, offline

This new intra-office communication technique may take a bit to get used to it, but once you start you will not want to look back. Keep your email open to clients, customers and members. Free up your in-box and still chat with your co-workers.

Resources:

1. Using Skype In Your Office
2. Sample Skype Office Standards
3. Can You Delete a Skype Account?