Crafting a communications policy

Setting boundaries on communications is a major step toward being intentional

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

I hate to break this to you, and maybe I'm not the first to do it, but: It's the end of July and we should probably start getting ready for Fall semester.

That statement might prompt you to rage-quit the browser tab where this article is displayed. But don't quit reading yet! Because I want to write today about a kind of "readiness" that isn't just about writing syllabi or planning committee schedules. Instead its a readiness that has to do with the systems we have in place to make the start of the semester not something to dread, but something to welcome.

At this blog we talk a lot about adopting simple, coherent systems that we observe consistently in order to be intentional about academic work, so that we can enjoy as much of life as possible. There's one such system that you can set up right now, that will make your workload much lighter when the semester kicks in, and make life better for you, your students, and your colleagues. It has to do with communication.

Communication conundrum

We have a love-hate relationship with communication in higher education. On the one hand, everything we do -- from teaching to research to service -- is based on effective communication. And when communication works, when we really connect mind-to-mind with another person, it's awesome and satisfying.

But clearly, communication doesn't always work well.

Many academics aren't intentional about how they communicate. Once, I received an email from a person at another institution, and this person asked me to set up a 30-minute Zoom meeting to discuss whether I was available to give a talk on a certain date -- which they did not disclose in the email. This person was well-intentioned, but really... You don't need a Zoom meeting for this. Just tell me what the date is, and I will tell you if I am available. That's what I said in response. They responded with the date, and sure enough, I was not available then. End of story, no Zooming necessary.

Maybe you have a similar story -- the meeting that could have been an email, the email that ought to have been a hallway conversation, the student email with a question that's in the syllabus, and so on. Most people default to what's superficially the easiest way to communicate, even though taking a little more time on the front end to think intentionally about the best way to communicate will save time and effort later.

Many academics also aren't intentional about when or where they communicate. The default assumptions for many academics appear to be that every communication is urgent; every communication needs a reply; and all such replies need to happen immediately. I've gotten emails from people before at 5:30pm on a Tuesday (long after I have left to go home) and then followup emails asking if I'd read the previous email, at 9:30pm the same day! And all the first email contained was the agenda for a meeting.

The flip side is also true: Many faculty members fail to put boundaries on when and how they will engage in communication. This leads to trouble: If you got that 5:30pm email with the 9:30pm reply, and replied at 9:45pm, this is sending a signal to the sender that they can expect you to communicate in that time frame. And guess what: Soon you will be getting more and more such emails, in the evenings and on weekends and over holidays, and the expectations never scale back.

Setting a communications policy

Without a doubt, one of the simplest and sanest things you can do to get some control over your work and some freedom with how you choose to do it, is to set boundaries around your communications. This is what I mean by a communications policy: A simple set of rules for yourself and the people with whom you work, for how, when, and how often you will engage in communication. Crafting this policy and trying it out now, in July, and then deploying it in full when the semester starts is one of the smartest and simplest things you can do to really get ready for Fall.

I've had a communications policy myself for a while now, but I got a fresh realization of how important it is when I recently read the book Winning the Week: How to Plan a Successful Week, Every Week by Demir and Carey Bentley. I highly recommend this short and useful book to anybody reading Intentional Academia. In the book, they make an important claim about communication:

People don’t need an instant response from you. They need absolute certainty about when you’ll respond.

In my experience, this is a stone cold fact. There's a mistaken impression that students, in particular, demand instant replies to emails and next-day return of graded work. But my experience over at least the last decade is that what students really want is a reasonable time frame for replies and graded work, that is held to consistently. I think the same is true for communications with colleagues. Your department chair probably does not need to get a reply to her email within the hour or even on the same day; as long as they are 100% certain you'll reply within 48 hours, this is more than good enough.

An effective communications policy has, I think, a few common criteria:

• It should be simple -- easily understood, and not a complicated system of if-then statements, something that people can remember without trying hard.

• It should be clearly and ubiquitously stated -- in your syllabi, your email signature, office door, you name it.

• It should strike a balance between personal boundaries and generous consideration of others. Saying for example that you will only check email once a month gives you a lot of boundaries, but it's not likely to be helpful to your students.

My communications policy

I have two policies, one for students and one for everyone else.

For people in general (not students), there are two points to my policy. First, I don't check email on the weekends or in the evenings. Second, if a get a message, I will first check to see if it needs a reply, and if so, that reply will come within five business days. I have it in my email signature like this:

My outward-facing communication policy.

I think the second part (which appears first in the policy) is critical: Not all messages need replies. A lot of times they're just information, or not relevant, and I'll handle it in the Clarify portion of my daily or weekly review. I actually avoid replying to emails unless the message explicitly needs it¹. The implicit message is that if you need a reply, you need to say so².

And in case you are wondering, I've had this policy since well before I was tenured and promoted, and I have never once gotten any negative feedback on it.

Students have a more compelling claim on my time, so have a more proactive policy with them. In the syllabus, it states:

Please note that I do not always respond immediately to messages. In particular I typically do not check email between 6:00pm and 6:00am on weeknights, and I typically do not check email at all on weekends. That said,

• Messages sent on a weekday (Monday-Friday) before 4:00pm ET will get a response the same day.

• Messages sent after 4:00pm ET Monday-Thursday will get a response the next day.

• Messages sent after 4:00pm on Fridays or on the weekend will get a response the following Monday.

That word "typically" gives me some freedom to check in on students outside my usual downtime, if I feel they could benefit from it and it's not too onerous for me, while maintaining the boundaries I set. The additional structure on weekday communication takes away a lot of the simplicity, but I find students benefit from the structure, on balance.

Now you do it

So your homework for this week is to draft your own communication policy or policies. You can leave your drafts in the comments. Some questions to ask yourself:

• What boundaries would I like to set for evening/weekend/holiday communication that would help me gain more freedom and control over my work?

• What boundaries are reasonable for me, yet helpful for others?

• Do I need different policies for different groups, or one big policy for everyone?

• What's my plan for consistently observing these boundaries and obeying my own policy?

• How will I communicate these policies out to others?

Tool time

One of the biggest misuses of communication, particularly email, is setting up meetings. The first email: "Hey can we meet?" Response: "Sure, when is good for you?" Response: "Any time this week." Response: "How about 2pm on Tuesday?" Response: "Sorry I have something then, how about 1pm?" And so on, and so on.

Calendly is a favorite tool of mine for addressing this problem³. It works by connecting to your calendar (Google and Outlook are supported), then you set up a series of time slots when you are available for meetings. Then, a person who wants a meeting with you simply goes to a link that shows the available time slots, and they pick one. Done.

Meetings can be set up manually for in-person meetings or phone calls. But Calendly also connects to videoconferencing systems including Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet so that when a person signs up for a time, everyone gets a calendar invite with a link to the meeting. And since it's connected to your calendar, if you add an event to your calendar it will automatically block that time from being scheduled by Calendly.

I have my Calendly link in my email signature and in my syllabi. I set aside a block of time in the afternoons for these meetings. If a person wants a meeting, they just click on my link and they're given some options for different kinds of meetings. (I have different times set up for academic advisees than I do for generic 20-minute phone calls for instance.) Then they’re given some options:

Then they just pick the one that works best for them. Simple.

It's not a perfect tool: Sometimes the calendar integration is fiddly, and it's somewhat easy to set up the blocks of available time incorrectly. You need to double-check that you have the right times set up. And there's a certain demographic that finds it condescending to be told "Click my Calendly link and pick a time that works for you". But I reckon that Calendly has probably saved me hours of back-and-forth meeting setup emails in the few years I've used it.

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Thanks again for reading Intentional Academia, and a special welcome to the new subscribers! I’ll be blogging about getting ready for Fall semester again in a couple of weeks. In the meanwhile, leave a comment with questions or ideas, or just click the “Like” button. Cheers!

1. Because even a "Thanks!" reply will interrupt the other person's workflow which could take up to a half an hour to recover from.

2. And while you’re at it, be clear about when you need the reply. Don’t say “send this back when you get a chance” when what you really mean is “I need this by end of the day Friday”. Just tell me when you need it by.

3. Doodle was also invented to solve this problem but the treatment has become worse than the disease. We've all seen Doodle polls where the sender puts in two dozen possible times, resulting in a poll that requires an ultrawide monitor to view, only to -- inevitably -- have no mutually acceptable dates.