SLACK

Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge

Learning outcome
• Introducing Slack
• Meeting Slack’s Users and Customers
• Understanding why Slack Exists
• Email: The blessing ad all-too-frequent curse
• Trapped institutional knowledge
• Employees often can’t find what they want quickly or even at
all
• What Slack Speciality Does
• Employer Benefits
• Employee Benefits
Introducing Slack
• Slack stands for Searchable Log of All
Conversation and Knowledge.
• Slack is a relatively new and powerful
application that allows people to work,
communicate, and collaborate better
• Slack brings people together to
accomplish goals through what it now
calls a workspace. (Slack used to call
this a team.)
• As of January 2020, more than 12
million people use Slack. Collectively,
they send more than a billion
messages every day.
• More than 600,000 organizations use
Slack — more than 100,000 of which
pay for it. Customers include Pinterest,
Airbnb, CNN, Target, and Zappos.
 • Thanks to its flexibility, Slack
Meeting appeals to the smallest of
startups, the largest of
Slack’s Users conglomerates, and organizations
of every size in between.
and • The industries that use Slack run
the gamut: technology, media,
Customers music, higher education, retail,
hair salons, and restaurants.
• Government agencies such as the
U.S. Census Bureau and the State
Department also call themselves
Slack customers.
 • Slack is answer to the following questions
• How would you characterize communication and
collaboration between and among people in
your group, department, and company?
Understanding • How often do you experience communication-
related issues?
Why Slack • Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed and/or
Exists disengaged while at work?
• Does locating key documents or conversations
take longer than it should?
• Have you ever wondered if there was
fundamentally a better way to work?
Understanding Why Slack Exists

Email: The blessing and all-too-frequent curse

• Much of the time wasted at work stems from email or, more precisely, our misuse of email.
• In July 2012, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) released a report titled “The social
economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.”
• Thirty years ago, professionals spent zero hours sending and reading emails every week.
Today, those two tasks make up nearly one-third of their workday.
• McKinsey urges employees to use more collaborative tools in lieu of email. The report
suggests that this change would let us recapture seven to nine percent of our workweeks.
• Slack is one of these tools.
Understanding Why Slack
Exists
Trapped institutional knowledge
• The near-universal use — and overuse — of
email has confined a great deal of valuable
organizational knowledge in the inboxes of
individual employees.
• When employees leave a company, IT typically
deactivates or deletes their email accounts. No
matter the method, the result is the same:
Those employees’ essential files, important
conversations, decisions, and institutional
wisdom effectively dies.
• Thanks to Slack, that is no longer the case.
 Employees often can’t find what they
want — quickly or even at all
• At work, employees generate an enormous
amount of content — much of which they can’t
Understandin find easily or even at all. I’m talking about Excel
g Why Slack spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations,
contracts in Word, and other key documents.
Exists • Workers often struggle to find key messages in
their bloated inboxes.
• The problem is so acute that an entire category
of software is dedicated to helping employees
find key documents and information.
• Slack is the answer
 What Slack Specifically Does

Understandin When used correctly, Slack helps individuals,

g Why Slack groups, and even entire organizations solve
these grave workplace problems.
Exists
In other words, Slack offers a number of
benefits to both employers and their
employees.
 Employer benefits
• Build a permanent, comprehensive,
and searchable organizational
knowledge repository
• Enhance employee productivity
• Improve employee corporate
Understandin communication and collaboration
• Facilitate remote work
g Why Slack • Increase employee job satisfaction
Exists • Allow employees to begin their jobs
with less training
• Increase organizational transparency
• Help companies attract and retain top
talent
• Lessen voluntary employee turnover
• Easily train employees and diagnose
issues
 Employee benefits
• Tame the email beast
• Quickly find what you need
• Consolidate notifications
• Email
Understandin • A file storage and sharing tool, such as Box or Dropbox
• Text messages
g Why Slack • Social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn (often for work
purposes)
Exists • Homegrown company systems
• Reporting and data-visualization tools
• Popular enterprise systems
• Some type of instant-messaging tool, such Skype and Google
Hangouts
• Productivity applications from Microsoft (Office) or Google (G
Suite)
• Reduce workplace-related stress
• Get to know your colleagues
• Smoothing the acclimation process for new hires