Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written by: Martin Dale Bolima, Tech Journalist, AOPG.

The work-anywhere paradigm is here to stay but this model is not without challenges—the blurring of personal and professional boundaries, for example, and lack of meaningful interactions—that, when left unaddressed, can side-track this emerging way of work.

Slack Technologies is looking to bridge gaps in the work-anywhere model and at the inaugural Slack Frontiers, a series of hybrid conferences that brought together Slack executives, decision-makers, and change-makers from different industries to talk about a variety of topics related to improving the way people work and collaborate.

The Challenge of Making the Work-Anywhere Model Feasible

Making remote work feasible was the overriding theme of Slack Frontiers Sydney, where Slack executives including Cal Henderson, Brian Elliot, Matt Loop, and Shweta Varma discussed Slack’s crucial role in improving remote work. They also presented the results of the “Leadership and the War for Talent” research, which found that stability and job security are now the most valued considerations (as indicated by 53% of Singaporean knowledge workers) that impact people’s choice of employment. Next is salary (40%), followed by having a good manager (31%).

With financial achievement no longer the prime motivator of today’s workforce—respondents also identified teamwork, transparent leadership, flexible work, and employee well-being as more important than money—executives will have to be even more creative to give their staff the things they value most. That would be easier said than done, especially given the immense pressure executives are already facing.

“Executives themselves are more stressed than ever . . . The last two years have challenged conventional wisdom around what it takes to be an effective leader. They have had to learn new skills and new capabilities to lead much more distributed workforces. At the same time, the economic headwinds are creating more stress on them,” said Brian Elliott, Executive Leader of Future Forum and Senior Vice President at Slack.

Embracing Flexibility

If members of top management are stressed out, so are their teams, with Slack uncovering “sequential growth” in burnout rates—up by 8% globally and by 13% in Australia. Caught front and centre are the middle managers, whom Elliot describes as “the rope in a game of tug-of-war between executives who want to return to past practices and their teams who are looking for and want more flexibility.”

Flexibility in this case means having the liberty to work anywhere, sometimes at any time. And many knowledge workers around the world have spent the better part of two years proving that flexibility translates to better productivity—and most are now unwilling to go back to the old ways of working.

In fact, Slack’s Future Forum survey found that as much as 73% of knowledge workers globally would look for another job if their current one returns to traditional, office-based working arrangements. This ongoing tug-of-war of sorts is creating great tension within organisations, largely because the talent, according to Elliot, is “the basis of competition these days,” and executives are now faced with a conundrum: Go back to conventional paradigms of work and risk losing talent or offer people the flexibility they want and increase talent retention as a result.

Slack, for its part, is encouraging organisations to embrace flexibility. And those that do can use Slack to ensure the viability of flexible work by serving as a digital headquarters (HQ). A digital HQ, as defined by Slack, is “a single, virtual space to connect your people, tools, customers and partners for faster and more flexible work.” The idea behind having this virtual space is that teams who have all the tools they need can focus solely on doing great work.

“If you want to redesign a way of working that’s more flexible, more inclusive, more connected and allows people to be more productive in their work, you need to think about your investment as building a digital headquarters,” said Elliot. “[It’s about] moving into a space where you can align people much more quickly, where your communication happens and where the work is really going on these days.”

Why Slack’s Digital HQ Makes the Most Sense

To be clear, the concept of a digital HQ is not exclusive to Slack. In fact, according to Cal Henderson, Co-Founder and CTO at Slack, many companies already have some form of it. Which then leaves this question: Why should organisations choose Slack’s digital HQ anyway?

His answer is simple: Slack brings value in its own unique ways. And it can do that by adopting three core principles:

1. Make what was hard in the office a lot better. Features like Channels and Clips enable easy, transparent communication between and among team members. Workflows, on the other hand, allow teams to automate daily processes, like updating records to approving requests. Connect, meanwhile, lets organisations use Slack for external communication.
2. Bring to this digital IQ what people love in the office. The vastly improved Huddles enable what Henderson calls “serendipitous communication”—watercooler conversations, short chats, and after-work powwows that many have grown fond of while working in the office. With this feature, team members can have quick huddles instead of oftentimes unnecessary meetings, thereby saving time but still encouraging communication.
3. Create value that is unique to Slack’s digital IQ. The soon-to-be-launched Canvas is the digital equivalent of the office bulletin board. Unlike the traditional ones found in an office, this virtual board is accessible to all, can be automated easily and can be integrated with the organisation’s systems and records. Team members can put in Canvas various text, images, files, clips and external links, as well as embed them in Slack components such as Channels and Workflows.

Expanding the Slack Footprint

Currently, over 200,000 brands all around the world have chosen Slack as their digital HQ. In fact, Slack’s client list is a who’s who of organisations across different verticals—from IBM and Deloitte, to Grab and Atlassian, to even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“These organisations are looking to us at Slack to improve their efficiency and to make work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. For those who aren’t aware, that’s Slack’s mission statement and that’s the reason we created this platform,” noted Matt Loop, Head of APAC at Slack.

Said platform, acquired by Salesforce in October 2021, is only going to expand, with Loop and Slack’s management confident that Slack and Salesforce “can really help and partner with organisations to unlock value and seize the opportunities amongst us during this time of change.”

And that confidence appears on solid ground, thanks mainly to Slack’s unique value proposition and reputation. It is also due to the continuing expansion of data residency for Slack, as announced by Loop. This will give organisations more options in terms of choosing the region where they will store their data at rest—an urgent requirement for companies in certain countries, like Australia and India.

In other words, more companies might just choose Slack as their digital HQ.

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