How do you get co-workers to respond?

11 Comments

1. AnonymousJanuary 31,2025 at 7:20PM UTC

   Copy leaders and colleagues. You cannot and will not change behavior. This is completely acceptable at the company now.

2. AnonymousJanuary 31,2025 at 8:51PM UTC

   You can't change the culture. You can ask your boss for a 1:1 and not only give examples, but you must offer solutions. Keep a running report of who you emailed/messaged, sent smoke signals too, then their response time. Then another column, called Outcome. This column represents how it affected your work, what's expected of you, and/or your team's output. Change comes with data. And sometimes change simply is you making your change to find other companies that would love your skills. If new ones are coming in, others are going out, you're just in a big ole ocean with a lot of fish that just swim in circles. Meanwhile, you're the fish that's willing to work but you can't change what's in your personal pond. Decide if your boss can help and if not, it may be time to make your change to someplace else.

3. AngieJanuary 31,2025 at 10:00PM UTC

   Build a rapport through one on one discussions. Offer to help remote workers navigate the company. I manage fully remote people and this approach works.

4. AnonymousFebruary 1,2025 at 2:22PM UTC

   So, I don't understand something. You said you cannot swing by someone's office to ask a question. Why is that? Is it because they monitor all communication between employees, forcing you to do it digitally? I know COVID scared people and places into keeping people away from each other, but this policy is beyond insane. It sounds like you have a virtual office and an in-person policy.

   The paper trail you are generating is actually something that can benefit you. Pull logs/email trails of the discussions you described here, and suggest to your manager that 1:1/drop-in discussions with onsite coworkers be encouraged rather than prohibited. Getting people to talk to one another face-to-face rather than through a chat box or video camera can work wonders. It may be time to move on, so you may want to find someplace that appreciates human interaction.

5. AnonymousFebruary 1,2025 at 9:01PM UTC

   Thanks for your response. The remote employees are those you cannot swing by to ask a question. For those in office, there is no policy against talking to people in person. Those are the resources who are most accessible....

6. AnonymousFebruary 2,2025 at 1:42PM UTC

   Okay, that's better. Then I suggest you lean on those you can. Also, you can help create a paper trail for those working remotely but not finding the time to respond to you by supplying hard evidence to your manager(s) about their response ethics, especially when their [lack of] response is crucial to meeting your deadlines.

7. AnonymousFebruary 5,2025 at 2:43PM UTC

   People at my company don't respond to emails but direct messages through Teams works most of the time. If they don't respond via Teams after a couple of reminders, we set up a meeting to get the answers. That usually either prompts the person to finally answer you via email/message so they can avoid the meeting or you get the answers at the meeting. Or better yet, send them a message via Teams asking if they have time for a quick chat on the phone, which is basically a virtual drop-in in person. Just waiting on emails to be answered is not a great plan, especially in some company cultures.

8. AnonymousFebruary 2,2025 at 2:12PM UTC

   The one that usually works for me is to send a follow-up email and copy in their manager. If that doesn’t work, include the managers manager, and a note about why you need this information and the downstream impact of this delay etc. most people don’t like to be called out for being the bottleneck especially in front of their bosses!

   We use Slack instead of TEAMs but same thing here, if my team is not getting a response, I will send a message in the wider group chat @ that person asking them to please update on XYZ as it’s been X weeks and this will now delay XYZ that is expected to start next month.

9. AnonymousFebruary 6,2025 at 2:25PM UTC

   Schedule them into a meeting and make a clear agenda with all the topics you need to cover and input you need from them. May need this to be a regular meeting.

10. Michelle StewartFebruary 6,2025 at 3:30PM UTC

    If you are a leader, you can have a meeting with the other leaders. If you are an IC, you can speak with your leader. You need to show you their non-response directly impacts your work. To me, this sounds like a company culture issue since you are saying this is happening across different departments. And, it is important to note that just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't also juggling multiple things - who knows how many questions they have been asked and are answering. Or if maybe their leader is stonewalling them on information they need as you stated that their leader also doesn't respond. I work fully remote, as does my team. Approximately half of my organization is fully remote. My team has a 24 hour (working day) requirement. If we need something urgently, we make a call and follow-up with a Teams message or email for things in writing. Many of our departments have similar requirements; however, other departments are much more delayed and take poking, sometimes excessive poking, to get responses. Oddly enough, those are teams that are mostly in-office.

11. AnonymousFebruary 21,2025 at 5:45PM UTC

    There are 3 ways. First next time the team is all together you can bring this up citing a specific example but not flaming someone publicly about a situation where this occurred. Ask the team for how you can all be better and can you all agree to a certain response timeline for say: email, chat, or other comms. If that does not come to a consensus that all can agree upon. Go one by one with each stakeholder that you typically comm with and agree to an individual one with each person. For example whenever I work with someone new I ask their favorite forum (chat, slack, phone, text, email) then we decide cadence of comms for each week, or day depending upon how often we need to cross over work streams. That usually works and we give allowance for times when there is too much work or give things P - levels (P-0- drop everything, P-1 do it by EOday, P-2 by EOweek, etc.)

    As an alternative to this methodology, you can have quick daily standups (similar to what engineering teams do)- and go around the room to assure nothing falls through the cracks and if things need to be re-prioritized you can do this. Don't let the frustration take over your world because it won't solve what stress it is causing you. If you need to bring in managers to this conversation do so knowing that they should help to solve this in a simple way. If there are scofflaws to the approach once it is solve get the manager involved again. Good luck.