Should I Require Employees to Use Specific Apps?

In the small office I manage, I want employees to settle on certain computer apps to do their work (in this case, the messaging app Slack), but some are resisting. Should I require it?

I hear you. This can be a problem in businesses, in our personal lives, and even in the church office.

According to a Gartner survey, the average number of applications a desk worker uses nearly doubled from six in 2019 to 11 in 2023. People are being asked to absorb new tech tools at a fairly fast rate.

To your question, lots of factors need to be considered: the size of the company, the amount of file sharing among employees, the training requirements to keep staff up to date, and the cost of purchasing or subscribing to more and different programs.

Sometimes, though, these factors get in the way of acknowledging that different people work in different ways. And what should we be most concerned with? The results. For example, might there be people in your group who are far more effective on the phone than they are typing in an online chat? Does it matter if they feel more comfortable in Google Sheets than in Microsoft Excel if they are getting the work done? It may make you feel better knowing every one of your remote workers has Slack open at all times, but for some, might the constant chatter be a distraction that is keeping them from doing their most important work?

As the portability of files from one application to another increases along with people’s growing ability to adapt to new methods, some of our past rules about everyone using the same tool need to be relaxed. And perhaps more sharing with each other about what works best and why is better than “laying down the law.”

Scam Update: In the October issue I included some ways to prevent falling prey to scammers. I should have taken my own advice this past week when I received a call from my sister saying our nephew had been in a crash. He was allegedly not at fault, but because it involved a pregnant mother in critical condition, he was in jail. His mouth was wired shut from the accident, and bail money was needed immediately. Without a second thought—our emotions took over completely—we were quickly working out how to transfer the money. Fortunately, my sisters took a breath and asked each other a few more questions. What seemed at first to be entirely believable started to break down. A quick call to a perfectly fine and accident-free nephew confirmed we had been scammed. I’m not proud of this, but I include it as a reminder to you to be more skeptical than we were.