But there are a couple issues with the “reply all” button. Some people get “cc” happy, opting to include everyone even remotely connected with a project or question on the e-mail thread. The result can be a chain of e-mails flooding your Inbox that really aren’t applicable to you. For some, it creates an electronic paper trail, which can admittedly be useful when your boss says, “I didn’t say that!” and you can produce the e-mail showing she did in fact give her approval.

Even worse than an Inbox full of e-mails debating the best time for a meeting is the accidental use of “reply all.” Just about anyone with an e-mail account can offer up a story of sending something they wished they hadn’t. It’s bad enough when an inappropriate e-mail goes to one person – it’s a thousand times worse when it goes to half the staff.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal highlighted some real-world examples of “reply all” missteps. We read it with a chuckle and the sobering thought, “There but for the grace of God….”

If you’re lucky, your colleagues will laugh it off as a stupid mistake, but certainly there are times when an offense e-mail can result in lost business or ruined relationships.

The best way to avoid a “reply all” blunder is simply to pause and look at the “to” line of your e-mail. It will take less than a second but could save you some serious problems.

We’d love to hear your “reply all” stories. Share and we’ll select one random person to receive a Sprit Telecom goodie. 

Those are more simplistic examples, but do illustrate the concept of working in a web-based world whether accessing your holiday photos or running a sophisticated piece of software for your business.

Cloud computing has even gotten the attention of the U.S. government. According to a March 7 article in The Washington Post, the TechAmerica Foundation is leading the effort to create a commission that will “make recommendations to the federal chief information officer and the commerce secretary.”

The Obama administration is pushing government agencies to use cloud computing whenever it can as a way to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. According to the article, “The commission is expected to address the way the government should deploy cloud technologies and consider policies that could advance the cloud-first initiative.”

What are your thoughts on cloud computing? Are you using it in your business to save money? Do you have any concerns?

The survey came out just in time for Employee Appreciation Day on March 4. Hmm, seems many employees aren’t feeling the appreciation.

The problems? Leading the list was salary (47 percent) followed by workload (24 percent), lack of opportunities for advancement (21 percent) and the employee’s supervisor (21 percent). MarketTools, which provides software for enterprise feedback management and market research, polled 451 adults in February 2011.

The survey also found the overwhelming majority of the employees’ companies don’t have a program to regularly solicit employee feedback. So, if your employees are unhappy, there’s a very good chance you don’t know about it and haven’t even bothered to ask.

Let’s hear about your office – do you solicit employee feedback? If so, what do you do with it?

A recent piece by Jonah Lehrer in The Wall Street Journal highlights the benefits of not paying attention. Researchers have drawn a connection between daydreaming and creativity. Turns out being distracted by a YouTube video or what’s going on in the cubicle next door is a good thing.

Lehrer cites a study of 86 Harvard undergraduates that measured their ability to focus and drown out outside distractions, such as a humming AC unit or a side conversation. The results: those who had a hard time staying focused were seven times more likely to be rated as creative.

“According to the scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousness. Because these people struggled to filter the world, they ended up letting everything in. They couldn’t help but be open-minded.”

Would it be worth applying this information to your business? Should you build in some leisure time for your employees to be “distracted” from work giving their brains a chance to open up and be creative?

But in some cases, an inadequate office telephone system can be more of a hindrance than a help. For example, in today’s world, the ability to have your calls forwarded is a key component. You need to be able to check voice mail remotely – and in some cases, you might prefer to have your messages sent to your e-mail.

One of the things we do at Spirit Telecom when meeting with potential customers is take the time to truly understand their business needs. It’s important to assess how a company is using its phones, the problems it may be experiencing and to take a look at future phone needs. Every business is different so an off-the-shelf phone system may not meet a business’ unique needs.

When shopping around, look for a company that provides some of the following features:

• Call forwarding
• Remote office
• A Web portal so you can easily customize features and manage your phone system needs
• A secure, private network
• HD quality voice

What phone system features are most important to your business?

Typically we think of brands involving logos, taglines and a color scheme, but now a company brand extends to social media as well, requiring you to monitor your brand online and develop your social media personality via Facebook, Twitter and more.

Here’s a great article from Inc. magazine on “The New Rules of Branding Your Business Online” that offers up excellent suggestions on bringing your brand into the social media world. Key tips include engaging your customers so they better understand your brand and develop brand loyalty.

Also, use social media to tell customers more about who you are; it’s easier to connect with a company you feel you know than one that’s simply a static website. Monitoring your brand via social media is important. People will be talking about you, so watch out for what they are saying and respond – whether it’s a positive or negative comment.

Let’s hear how you’re building your brand on social media.

Here’s a great article on communication mistakes that crop up in virtually every office.  One of the common mishaps is simply not communicating at all. Workers rarely talk with their supervisors, believing they have nothing to say or that their ideas won’t make a difference. As this article points out, employers have to take the initiative to encourage employees to speak up and soliciting feedback.

Also important to keep in mind is the use – and often overuse – of e-mail. We’ve come to rely so heavily on electronic communication we have to keep in mind face-to-face conversations can result in more effective communication and fewer misunderstandings. Taking five minutes to walk down the hallway and explain what you need done can save headaches when a project isn’t executed the way you needed.

Do you find communication suffers at your workplace? What’s the cause and how do you overcome it?

The announcement was part of Obama’s State of the Union address last month and calls for making “500 megahertz of wireless airwaves, or spectrum, available over the next decade to meet the growing demand for broadband services, including the widely popular Apple iPad and proliferation of smartphones,” according to this Reuters article.

The article also quotes Obama as saying, “This isn’t just about a faster Internet and fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age.”

A November 2010 report on home broadband Internet adoption in the United States used Census data to assess broadband access and usage. Findings included:

• 7 of 10 American households used the Internet in 2009.
• Income and education are strongly associated with broadband Internet use at home.
• Broadband Internet adoption was higher among white households than black or Hispanic households in 2009.
• Urban residents are more likely than rural ones to adopt broadband Internet access.
• Lack of need or interest, lack of affordability, lack of an adequate computer, and lack of availability were all stated as the main reason for not having home broadband Internet access.

So in reviewing these findings would you agree the government needs to make an investment in wider broadband access? Share your comments!

Even if you’re not in the position to hand out big bonus checks, a simple recognition ceremony at the holiday party or at a special company lunch goes a long way to fostering goodwill and keeping employees motivated in 2011.

Whether it’s an employee who surpassed her sales goal for the year or office manager who quietly keeps the office supplies stocked and the coffee pot filled, people contribute to your organization in different ways – yet each keeps it humming and effective.

Have you found a creative way to recognize your employees for a job well done this year? How important is giving workers a public pat on the back?

Tweet

First, Facebook announced its plans for a new messaging system designed to take the place of e-mail and streamline our conversations. Second, a study out in November from Gartner Inc., an information technology research and advisory company, suggests 20 percent of employees will use social networks as their business communication hub by 2014.

The idea is an erosion of e-mail vs. instant messaging or e-mail vs. Facebook message. In a few years, it will all blend together. Yet that means businesses have to come along for the ride. Currently many companies block social networking sites from company computers – will that change? It may have to.

Here’s a comment from Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner: “In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only. Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles. However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”

Are you ready for the coming changes in the way we communicate?

“This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you’re making friends, can provide mental benefits,” said psychologist Oscar Ybarra, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). The study is published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal.

Ybarra’s previous studies found short-term bursts in executive function after social interaction. In his latest study, he tested almost 200 undergraduates to figure out which types of social interactions yield the most benefits.

According to a news release on the study, they found engaging in brief (10 minute) conversations in which participants were simply instructed to get to know another person resulted in boosts to their subsequent performance on an array of common cognitive tasks. But when participants engaged in conversations that had a competitive edge, their performance on cognitive tasks showed no improvement.

So rather than frowning when employees gather on Monday morning to talk about weekend activities over the brewing coffee pot, encourage those kinds of friendly interactions as a way to get the brain firing and to encourage employees to work together to solve problems and generate creative solutions.

Have you found when employees have more social interactions they work better together and are more effective in their problem solving?

Sometimes a personality test can help determine which candidates are best suited for the job. Granted, you can’t make a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator the end-all be-all in your hiring decision. You still have to conduct face-to-face interviews, check references and ensure the candidate has the technical skills needed for the job. These sorts of tests can be part of a larger checklist of what you need in a job candidate.

We’d like to hear from employers who use personality tests in hiring – are they successful in helping you make good hiring decisions? Or are you an employee who took a personality test during an job interview – do you think it helped you get the job or were you passed over possibly because of the test?

Tweet

Thoughtful and relevant business books are great employee gifts, particularly if you’re looking for something meaningful yet not terribly costly. Of course you can’t go wrong with the classic “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, but you might also consider some current titles.

Hanging out on the New York Times list of business best sellers (hardcover) is “Switch” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The book is all about effective change and these authors have a humorous and fun writing style making for an easy read.

For the sports-minded, check out “The Mentor Leader” by former Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy.

Tops on the list is “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh with lots of business lessons from successful online shoe retailer Zappos.

Taking, in our opinion, the best book title award is “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss. This is about how to structure your life so it’s not all about work. Sounds good to us!

What’s on your must-read or must-give list?

Tweet

Aside from the obligatory questions about experience and work ethic, it seems interviews use the same questions and interviewees have perfected pat answers that usually sound good but may not give much insight into the job candidate.

So, what should you be asking job candidates? Here are some good tips:

7 Interview Questions You Must Ask, including “Is there intelligent life in outer space.”

This list from TechRepublic has some great questions, such as “Can you handle telling other people ‘no’?” and “How’s your stamina?”

What are some of your favorite questions to ask job candidates?

But we love this column from Dan and Chip Heath (authors of “Made to Stick”) about using your presentations to “show, don’t tell.” They point out how painful presentations can be for the speaker as well as the audience. (Great line: “It’s like a breakup talk with fewer tears and more clip art.”)

The “show” aspect of presentations is about bringing real examples and demonstrations into your presentation – much more powerful than reading text from some slides.

Have you done a great “show, don’t tell” presentation? Let’s hear about how you made it work.

So, do e-mail newsletters still have a place, a role in marketing? This interesting opinion piece on ITBusinessEdge.com takes Ben & Jerry’s to task for announcing it would eliminate its e-mail marketing in favor of social media. It points to the idea that social media isn’t a replacement for e-mail and people – 1.3 million in Ben & Jerry’s case – have selected e-mail as a way they like to receive news about the ice cream icon.

Yes, e-mail marketing can be expensive, especially if you’re sending to millions of people. But, it can be effective, giving customers specials and deals, information and simply keeping your brand top of mind. This particular piece highlights recent research from ExactTarget, an e-mail marketing firm based in Indianapolis, noting that when people are interacting with brands, 62 percent will sign up for an e-mail versus 17 percent looking to Facebook for deals.

Does your business use e-mail marketing? Have you considered giving it up and focusing only on social media? Or do you believe each form of marketing plays a role in your overall campaign?

Because we like to have fun, here’s our latest video, giving you some tips – in a playful way – on how to mind your manners while on the phone. Are you guilty of some of these? Or have you been on the other end of the line?

So, once a business decides to invest in video conferencing, the next step is weeding through the many options for the best solution. Your first reaction may be to go with the free service, but that might not be a good fit for your business and its unique needs.

Before you fire up the webcam, here are five things to look for in a video conferencing service:

1. 24-hour technical support. If you have an important call with a large perspective client scheduled for 6 p.m. and have a technical question, the last thing you want to see is that customer service closed at 5 p.m.
2. Similarly, find out if local support is available. You may need an actual person to come by your office and assist with setup or solve a problem.
3. Look for the ability to add multiple people to the video call – and confirm the quality of the call will be consistent whether you have three people or 30.
4. Can you share documents and computer screens? It’s great to see people face to face and it’s even better to see the website or strategy document they are referencing during the call.
5. Possibly the most important consideration is security. Can the provider guarantee a secure, encrypted connection or is your call floating on the public Internet for any hacker to see?

Courtesy/PCWorld

Some big tech news this week is reports that Verizon will begin offering the iPhone as early in January. A report from Bloomberg quotes two people familiar with the not-yet-public information.

Many Verizon customers have been eyeballing the iPhone for years, but are loyal (or at least bound by contract) to the “Can you hear me now?” wireless provider.

The article reports:

The iPhone, which has been the sole domain of rival AT&T in the U.S. since June 2007, will give Verizon a boost in its competition for smartphone customers, UBS AG analyst John Hodulik said in an interview. Verizon customers, who numbered 92.8 million at the end of the first quarter, may buy 3 million iPhones a quarter, he estimates.

Adding the iPhone to its line of smart phones should be big for Verizon as many current customers will most likely take advantage of the new offering. It could be interesting to see how this impacts other brands Verizon offers, such as the BlackBerry.

So, we want to know: if you’re a Verizon customer, will you be first in line for an iPhone? And if you’re a current iPhone customer with AT&T, would you consider taking your iPhone business to Verizon?

But taking the time to actually sit down and hand write a card for someone is an excellent gesture of thanks and appreciation. It’s a way to stand out from the crowd of e-mails and tweets.

Handwritten notes are appropriate in a number of situations:

• Thanking someone for a job interview.
• Congratulations to a co-worker for a promotion.
• Appreciation to a customer who just renewed a large account with you.
• Encouragement for a colleague struggling with a difficult job situation.

You can’t go wrong with a nice note, granted you don’t need to send one every time your co-worker refills your coffee cup, but for extra special instances, it’s appropriate. When was the last time you wrote a thank-you note or congratulatory card? Do you think this still has a place in business today?