Why Are So Many Employees Willing to Break Rules and Risk Termination (or Worse) for Instant Messaging?

Think of instant messaging as a hybrid of the telephone and e-mail. IM enables users to hold give-and-take real-time conversations with multiple people, just as the phone does—minus the hassles of phone tag. IM also offers all the capabilities and features of e-mail— at lightning speed.

IM appeals to users’ desire for fast, real-time chat. Many business users—particularly stock brokers, customer-service representatives, and salespeople who interact with clients—feel that IM delivers a necessary competitive advantage that e-mail and the telephone just can’t match: speed. If you don’t use the technology, they argue, you won’t get the business.

Added benefits: With IM, you don’t have to sit and wait for a reply, which can take hours if you’re using e-mail. You need not bother sorting through a stack of e-mails piled up in your inbox. Nor do you have to sift through a backlog of voice mail messages— where two-thirds of business calls land. ^[11]

^[11]Brian Deagon, ‘‘Top Brass Slow to Embrace Instant Messaging Technology—Explaining IM Benefits,’’ Investor’s Business Daily (July 2, 2003).