People demanding quick reply to emails and Teams calls

[Tennyy]

Where I work there seems to be an expectation set by some people that you just reply to emails straight away or answer an unexpected Microsoft Teams calls straight away. Not all people put the pressure on but some do. these enquiries are not even urgent but some people can be quite aggressive in their emails to say it it

I find it very stressful as I plan my day out to complete set tasks. I am having to stop and drop what I am doing and get stuck in an email conversation back and forward. I feel the time I have booked in my calendar is not reflective as I have these unexpected queries to deal with which have not been accounts for. Do you deal with these things at a later time? Trying to multitask is stressful and does not work for me.

When I worked, I would check my emails first thing, deal with anything urgent. I would then allocate sometime later in the morning to look at others.
I would then repeat in the afternoon. It's far too easy to get side tracked to look at emails.

Similar in my place except for one or two colleagues who will either 'cold call' or say 'hello' then call without waiting for a response.

I am polite to all but when I see these particular culprits pop up, the voice in my head says 'F--OFF!'

It is expected to pause your background task and reply a Teams call or message. Same as in the olden days you wouldn’t have left your desk phone ringing just because your were doing something. Or you would have stopped to answer the query of a colleague who physically came to your desk.

Block out your calendar saying what task you are doing so you show red on Teams and mark yourself as do not disturb if you really need to concentrate. No-one in my office would Teams call someone showing red. Emails likewise can wait. Turn outlook on in the morning, reply to a few emails then turn it off until lunchtime and ditto.

If it's an email/message I can reply to quickly, thereby assisting the person who sent it by not delaying then I'll just do it as I expect they want to be able to complete their work too and clearly need info from me to do it.

If it's more detailed I will diaries replying to it. Usually attempt to do it the same day, but if not certainly within that week.

Teams calls, unless I'm in a meeting I will answer it. If I'm involved in something I can't afford to get disturbed during, I go on do not disturb.

But if Teams is green, I expect you to answer when I call.

That would annoy me too.

Also, without discussing it, we have developed a process that who ever asks for the call, does the dialling one the recipient agrees.
In the early days of Teams, someone would ask for a call, the other person would reply yes, then both start dialling at the same time which crashed teams.
It’s all very civilised rather than this Wild West of cold calling after a cursory hello you describe!

But back to original message. I might reply to a quick teams message while doing something else, but anything more than a quick back and forth I’d suggest we speak at a particular time. (Not necessarily a calendar invite, just an agreement to speak at a particular time later)

If you are truly busy turn emails off and put do not disturb on.

Otherwise answer the phone when someone calls you.

I think the issue is the assumption that you will stop what you are doing to deal with their question.

If someone comes to your desk when you are head down working then they know they are interrupting you.

When cold calling (or worse, cold calling to chase an email only just sent) there is an underlying assumption that you have nothing better to do than answer!