Does Workplace Nagging Pay Off? This Study Says Yes

By Maria Valdez Haubrich

Are you one of those bosses who tells an employee to do something, then sends them an email reminder and follows up with a phone call a few days later? You may think you’re being a nag or wasting your time. But according to new research by Harvard Business School’s Tsedal B. Neeley and Northwestern University’s Paul M. Leonardi and Elizabeth M. Gerber, you’re actually being an effective manager.

BNET reports that the authors of How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication found that “redundant communication” (that is, saying the same thing over and over in different ways) was highly effective in getting tasks completed smoothly and on time.

Interestingly, the researchers found the people most likely to use redundant communication were those who didn’t really have any authority over the people they were directing. For example, employees who are working in teams and put in charge of a short-term project, but have no hiring or firing authority over their fellow team members, were more likely to use redundant communication, especially in time-pressured situations.

People who did have real authority (such as, say, a business owner) were less likely to follow up (or nag). Instead, they just assumed projects would be done on time—then spent more time doing “damage control” when things didn’t turn out that way.

In the study, 21 percent of project managers with no direct power over their coworkers used redundant communication. Just 12 percent of managers with direct authority did so. The managers who used redundant communication got the projects moving faster and more smoothly.

Not only do successful managers send the same messages over and over, they use different media—that is, text message, IMs, face-to-face, email, etc.

These days, using multiple media makes a lot of sense. We’ve all experienced working with that person who “never checks voicemail” or doesn’t respond to email, but instantly replies to texts. And with so many of us overloaded with communications, it’s smart to hedge your bets by communicating as many ways as you can.

Read an abstract of the research paper here.

Image by Flickr user alanwordguy (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 12th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Small Business, Workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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