62% of workers already work remotely.

At my first workplace in a government department in the early nineties, there was a photo from the the 1930's of the office workers sitting in rows in a large room at their large desks. These men and their lives seemed so intriguing in comparison to the fast paced lives we were leading at the time.

It was likely a day of arriving at the office on the train, working with fountain pen, ink and paper, the tea lady coming around twice a day and a mailboy distributing letters and work to the desks.  No phones, no computers - a completely different world.

The world of the typical information worker today has changed as much again.  The figure of 62% of information workers working remotely does not mean they never come into the office (although that does apply to a percentage of them).  Rather they work at multiple locations - in the office, in a meeting room, at an off-site meeting, in the car, at a coffee-shop or at home.  With technology available today - all of these locations are available as places of work.    

Where once, the physical space was a key linking tool for the team, it can now be technology that is the glue which links a team together.

The Unified Inbox team all work remotely, with our linking tool being Unified Inbox itself.  Our conversations take place in the comments field of our work-items. These work-items can be emails, notes, project reminders, Twitter messages and Facebook messages.

This month we're looking for the best remote work story (could be unusual location, time, type of work).  Tell us your story and go in to win a free three month Unified Inbox package.

 

Social Media in the workplace

While many may think that social media in the work-place means employees losing hours maintaining their Farmville account, others point to the business benefits.

This week we read a short piece from Jane Hart on how employees can learn from social media while at work.  Her background is Learning and Development which means her work can directly benefit businesses today.

She contends that work of the future will include a more self-directed and self-reliant approach to continuous learning as people do their jobs, and that social media plays a key role in this learning.

She breaks the opportunities into four areas:

• improving productivity
• finding and using content
• joining and building networks and communities
• creating and sharing content.

At Unified Inbox we too have found these areas to be crucial to our work.  Unified Inbox was developed to allow us to take advantage of these opportunities and is the hub that brings these areas together for us.

 

JOB VACANCY

At unifiedinbox.com, we're creating a true team inbox that captures all messages (be they email, Facebook, Twitter or others) in one place.

It's revolutionary - would you like to help?

Job Title - create your own, typically other companies would call this role a software engineer.

Work location - where you want.  You have the chance to work in an dynamic international team, where the place you work from does not matter. Work from where you want and where you feel most productive.

Work hours - would you like a flexible schedule? Maybe you like working in the evenings, or maybe you're a morning person. The job of the future is not about location and schedule. All that matters is enthusiasm and results.

This job includes working with teams from India, New Zealand, Germany and UK - it's working with globally dispersed teams that is at the heart of Unified Inbox - so you'll have the opportunity to test your product every day of the week.

What we'd like from you:

• Are you experienced in PHP/MySQL, CSS3, HTML5? Maybe you even worked with Dojo and Dojo Mobile?
• We work with Agile processes, and Scrum iterations.  Experience in working with these processes is not essential but you must be willing to take them to heart.
• Fluent English is a must.  It's mostly our teams 2nd language so we all have to be better than the translation software. 

Our company offers different compensation methods, from fixed salary to performance incentives and company shares.

Apply by contacting us via https://unifiedinbox.com/contact.html, and we'll arrange for you send us a CV and samples of your works and explanations.

 

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

• Work Your Profit Margin http://cot.ag/ntgTDJ Advice for entrepreneurs including information management. 
• 6 tips for managing remote workers http://cot.ag/p3nfjn Make information tools work for you, not against.
• 10 Tips for Easing Information Overload http://cot.ag/nxGVoA Tips from Jonathan Spira new book.
• I'm Never Quitting Email http://cot.ag/pXwZBJ One persons thoughts on how they cope with email.
• The secret to managing your email http://cot.ag/oqTKMa Useful list of email management techniques.
• 4 Reasons Why Email Overload Is Your Own Fault http://cot.ag/nYiiId Widely retweeted post.
• 4 Strategies to Avoid the Social Media Time Drain http://cot.ag/qPDL7j Quote: "social media is a seductive mistress."

Statistics

• 530 million internet users speak English, the 2nd most common language is Chinese with 444 million users http://cot.ag/rj3kVG
• 49% of managers believe the workplace is suffering from information overload. http://cot.ag/kQUwel
• 10 years ago, 8% of the worlds population used the internet, that figure is now 30% http://cot.ag/pp4Bch
• 1.8zb of info created in 2011. 1.8zb = 200 billion 120 min long HD movies. Would take 47 million yrs to watch. http://cot.ag/jJgn2o

Wisdom:

• What you are doesn't age.  - Michael Jeffreys
• A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. - William Shakespeare
• Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time -Theodore Roosevelt 
• A meditative mind is at ease because it's not trying to acquire anything. - Adyashanti

What is the future of the software economy?

There are those amongst us who remember the days of punch cards.  The days when the check-out operators at the supermarket had to read the sticky label on each item and punch it in the cash register.  The days when you had to get up to turn your record over to hear the other side.  And when phones could be moved as far as their cords allowed.

Why the sudden burst of nostalgia? - well we suggest that with current changes in technology usage, it will mean that one day you will talk about the time when all your files were stored on your computer - if you were away from it, you couldn't get them.  That you physically commuted into your office with all your other office workers.  And other changes that we can't actually see right now because we're too close to them to see that they may one day be different. And you will talk about all of them as nostagically as the punch cards

The key change taking place at the moment is the mainstreaming of cloud computing.  Since 2006, companies have been steadily introducing more services to the world of cloud computing - "having secure access to all your applications and data from any network device".

Already we see changes where technology has allowed 62% of knowledge workers to work from multiple locations, meaning the days of being tied to one physical location or device are already behind us.

It is this world (or economy) that John Battelle is surveying when he writes Time for New Software Economy.  He states that with the move to the cloud the economy has developed as "a fractured ecosystem lacking a strong economic and technological true north". 

"On the web, we're wanting more robust solutions to problems that are only beginning to surface - I'd pay five bucks a month to someone if they'd solve my social presence problem, for example.  .....

But for such a quality software ecosystem to unfold, we need, as developers, a clearer sense of a platform roadmap, and some certainty as to what portions of the economic pie are open for competition.  ......

Isn't that what the web is supposed to be? Isn't that the promise of the cloud? .....

It is, but for that to work, all those platforms have to be willing to share data and APIs"

How long do you think it will take for a "new software economy" to develop?  And specifically what changes need to happen first to develop this robust platform that Battalle talks about?

 

 

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect. 

Tips

• "10 tips to have the time of your life" http://cot.ag/oOgu4g How to handle "time-famine".
• "We Have to Fix E-Mail" http://cot.ag/rrJC23 Some additions to the email charter.
• "Email checklist (maybe this time it'll work!)" http://cot.ag/lIbvy0 Seth Godin's thoughts on how to handle email overload.
• "Avoiding Email Overload After your Vacation, or Everyday" http://cot.ag/pWLOeY Start planning before you go away.
• "How to Save Your Brain from Online Overload" http://cot.ag/q8LX4I 15 handy hints.
• "4 tips to manage information overload" http://cot.ag/oEXFBr For those in the inforat race.
• "Email Overload Expert Kicks Off I LOVE Email Campaign" http://cot.ag/r6323k 3 simple solutions are offered.
• "How to Handle Email Overload" http://cot.ag/pTsPsi Good solid advice.
• "Personal and Business email: separate but equal? http://cot.ag/pUnGU4 An issue more and more of us have to address.

Statistics

• 62% of the information workforce work from multiple locations. http://cot.ag/ofoAmy
• Weekday edition of NY Times contains more info than average person would see in lifetime in 17th century UK. http://cot.ag/pOzkYu
• Currently, at least 19.31 billion pages make up the entire World Wide Web. http://cot.ag/rjcPwb

Wisdom

• Example is leadership. - Albert Schweitzer
• Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• When nothing is sure, everything is possible. - Margaret Drabble.

USING UNIFIED INBOX - Training new team members

Unified Inbox was developed to help team members who are spread out over different geographical locations manage the different communication streams they use in their day to day business.  When we talk about communication streams we're talking email, Facebook and Twitter messages.  In this blog series, we'll be looking at ways different users have used Unified Inbox in their businesses.

Training new team members

The Unified Inbox founders have recent experience in bringing on new team members and bringing them up to speed with Unified Inbox.  In fact, they found Unified Inbox was the key tool that allowed them to do so without being physically present.

It's always tough when you're the "new" member in the team, especially when there is nobody sitting there next to you to help you out when you have questions on how certain things are done, where the person before you left off, whom to ask for permission, when and so on.

Over the last eight weeks, we've added new team members in China, Romania, Germany, India, New Zealand, the UK and the Philippines - while we ourselves were travelling between the countries. All of our new team members had to deal with the problems listed above but we've found that where they have access to Unified Inbox the induction process was that much easier on all of us.

Our new team members were able to quickly skim through the comments of previous team members, assigning messages with comments to colleagues worldwide and ask them their experience and feedback and finally, get our approval within seconds of sending an email or posting a message.

We cannot envision leading a global company across several verticals without the help of Unified Inbox. It has assisted our company leaders as much as ourselves in teaching and guiding each other and the people we work with on a daily basis, reducing the time it usually takes for somebody to be accepted in a team and be confident in what they are doing without even being physically present throughout the whole year.

The key features mentioned above are:

• access to team inbox so full communications history is available as the new person starts
• comments and assigning - Unified Inbox separates out the external message from the internal conversation - so at any time our people can assign a message, with a question to a colleague, safe in the knowledge that that the communication is safe and secure.
• send after approval - when you have people who are still learning the ropes of a business, you can ask them to use the "send after approval" function on any emails they send out.  This means they can do what they know how to do and allow you (or other supervisor) to check the work and comment on it before it goes out.

 

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect. 

Tips:

•  "Email overload and email charters - 9 Ps of email best practice". http://cot.ag/nEIb06 Advice from an expert in the field.
• "3 Natural Ways To Fall Asleep Faster". http://cot.ag/lhzJdY  Impact of information overload on sleep patterns.
• "10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload". http://cot.ag/jTYYGb  Handy list - focuses on "problem" of hyper- collaboration.
• "Meetings Are Good and Other Unpopular Management Tips". http://cot.ag/iupXM0 Self-named "unpopular" solutions to information overload.
• "Driving Adoption for Social Computing Technology: Kill Your Email". http://cot.ag/iLSiTJ  Social Fridays anyone?
• "Inbox Zero". http://cot.ag/lGMlkE In the absence of the Inbox Zero book, one bloggers list of what it should include.
• "Inbox Zero is in the mind". http://cot.ag/kLFRdJ  One man's experience with Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero concept.
• "Become An Email Jedi In 7 Steps". http://cot.ag/jVmIRF  Take that light sabre to your email!
• "Email overload, WaterAid and email limits". http://cot.ag/myBKxR Combine your email efficiency with workplace activism.
• "How to Dig Out: 8 Steps for Email Overload". http://cot.ag/m4XPtS  Managing the vacation return.

Statistics

• 1.8 zettabytes of information will created in 2011 http://cot.ag/jJgn2o
• Americans who check work email outside of regular business hours (43%) do so in order to ease their workload http://cot.ag/eu24en
• The world's information is doubling every two years http://cot.ag/jJgn2o
• 62% of companies already allow employees to work remotely http://cot.ag/kQUwel

Wisdom

• Wisdom: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity" - George S. Patton.
• Wisdom: "It’s better to fight for something than against something"  - unknown author.
• Wisdom: "Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts" - buddhist quote.
• Wisdom: "A thought is just an opinion about another thought" – Michael Jeffreys.

 

Email charters?

If re-tweets are an indication of popularity then the email charter concept launched recently by TEDchris is very popular indeed.  Today we take the time to look at this charter and its "10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral".

Given that this charter was developed in an environment where:

• the typical corporate user sends and receives 110 messages daily. 
• almost one in five emails was copied unnecessarily to staff members other than the main recipient. 
• 41.4% of respondents miss important news because of overload. 
• 46.9% of respondents are unable to answer all email. 
• it takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30 second interruption.
• reading and processing just 100 emails per day can occupy half a workers day. 
• information overload cost US economy $900 billion per year in lower productivity and throttled innovation. 

(you can receive these statistics as we update them on our Twitter feed).

then you can see the need to create some mutually agreed upon guidelines for how we use the communication tools available to us!

The charter suggests 10 ways in which we can individually affect the volume of email and the impact it has on our intended recipient.

1. Respect Recipients' Time 
2. Short or Slow is not Rude 
3. Celebrate Clarity 
4. Quash Open-Ended Questions 
5. Slash Surplus cc's 
6. Tighten the Thread 
7. Attack Attachments 
8. Give these Gifts: EOM (end of message) and NNTR (no need to respond)
9. Cut Contentless Responses 
10. Disconnect! 

Our suggestion - pick one of these items today and practice it in each email you send out this week.  Pick another one next week and continue on this way to doing your part in keeping information overload at bay for yourself and the people you work with.  

While doing this you may create a short signature line that lets your recipients know what you're doing and link to the charter.  Let us know which of these points you found had the biggest impact on your workday.