What do asynchronous communication mean

See our recommendations for more asynchronous communication tools. For example, if you send me an email, I can read it later and reply. That's asynchronous work. The internet has made asynchronous communication possible; you probably use async communication a lot more than you think.

In these examples, people must be present at the same moment in time, even if it is remote communication. This isn't rocket science. Now that the basics are done, let's dig into how asynchronous communication can improve work. A friend recently recorded a conversation about asynchronous vs. He refers to the difference as "my time" vs. He defines "my time" as asynchronous communication. Examples include an email, video recording, or composing a document. The most obvious benefit of asynchronous communication is that it gives more flexibility for responses.

For example, a major benefit to remote work is that it allows people to manage conversations around a " flow state. This is especially helpful for people on a maker's schedule ; being able to manage communication around the work itself can improve productivity significantly.

One quick note: if people are using a form of async communication email, Slack, etc and expect an immediate response, it destroys the value of this form of communication. Many workplaces operate this way, which is unfortunate. The best remote companies will understand that this doesn't usually happen and will plan accordingly. Imagine for a moment if your email inbox didn't have any past emails in it. In some sense, that's how synchronous communication works. Communication happens, and there's no documentation that exists unless someone takes notes.

Asynchronous communication especially the stuff online is documented by default. For example, if I send an email, the record exists and can be referenced years from now. Written communication is great for that. Once again, this is obvious, but incredibly powerful as it creates a running log of communication that happens at work that can be referenced over time. Many teams use a knowledge management or wiki as a best practice. It serves as a form of communication redundancy.

To get a more in-depth comparison of the two types of communication, we recently did a blog post about the difference between Zoom and Watch and Learn. What does this look like in the online workspace? Here are few examples of asynchronous communication:.

If you send an email, a message on Slack or on Microsoft Teams, you can read it and reply in your own time. Asynchronous communication has been made possible by the internet and is used more in day to day business than you might think. You probably use asynchronous communication as the main way of getting in touch with clients and colleagues. For all these types of communication, everyone has to be present at the same moment. You have agreed to talk at 12pm GMT and there is no wriggle room around that, unless someone is on a coffee run.

If someone sends you an email or a Slack message expecting you to respond immediately, this defeats the purpose of asynchronous communication. They are wanting to use it synchronously. Pretty easy once you get your head around it.

But how can get the most out of asynchronous communication? Here are some of the pros of not having to all synch up. Pros of Asynchronous Communication. This allows for more flexibility as to when people respond. It gives people time to focus on their primary work, which can fall to the wayside with continuous video calls.

This can greatly improve productivity without the pressure to respond right away. By its very nature, asynchronous communication has a paper trail. Since you can look at it after it has been created, it automatically makes a record of the conversation.

Like an email chain. If you record a video or an audio message, it is there forever to go back and refer to. For example, if you aim to reduce uncertainty in a situation where more information is needed, you should use email, which has a slower rate of interaction and higher precision. A face-to-face conversation, however, should be used to reduce equivocality , a situation open to more than one interpretation. But since this theory was developed before the invention of modern communication channels like instant messaging and the enrichment of written text with interactivity, it is now a bit outdated.

Carr revisited the media richness theory by validating its applications in modern communication channels for example, text messaging. Factors like formality, concurrency, organizational context, experience with the topic or medium, and the negativity of the message also bear considering, because they can influence the perceived effectiveness of a channel.

Media synchronicity theory posits that any communication medium has five different capabilities in support of the conveyance of information making it understandable , and the convergence of understanding reaching a common understanding.

These factors are the immediacy of feedback, parallelism , symbol variety , rehearsability , and reprocessability. Immediacy of feedback is how quickly people can reply or provide feedback, and how bidirectional the feedback is. A forum post without comments has low immediacy and is largely one-directional.

A telephone call has low degrees of parallelism, whereas chat has a high degree of parallelism. The more parallelism present, the harder it becomes to monitor and coordinate conversations. A lack of symbol variety can have a negative impact on social perceptions in communication. Email is more rehearsable than video chat, for example.

Reprocessability is the degree to which a message can be reexamined or processed again within the context of the communication event. Written, asynchronous channels are more reprocessible than synchronous calls and meetings. Media synchronicity theory considers the development of new media, like collaborative software and instant messaging, and is supported by studies on global collaboration of software development teams. Most tasks in knowledge work require individuals to properly convey complex information, and to converge on shared meanings.

Choosing a single medium for any task may be less effective than using a set of media that the group chooses depending on the process.