Constantly flashing notification windows, a plethora of channels demanding immediate attention, and the distinctive sound indicating a new message—corporate messaging tools like Slack are not just instruments that facilitate information flow within a company; they are often also the main culprits of distraction, unnecessary stress, and tasks getting lost in a flood of information. Today, we’ll share a bit about how we use Slack at Casbeg and what best practices to implement so that Slack facilitates work in the company rather than detracting from it.

Effectively Used Slack Grows with the Company

It may seem obvious, but it’s essential to recognize that every new person in a company means increased communication. If in a 20-person team, Slack generates problems such as:

  • Frequent notifications distract people from work,
  • An abundance of threads and channels makes it hard to focus,
  • Things get lost in the sheer volume of messages.

Then, as your team grows to 30, 50, 100, or more people, it will only worsen. It’s crucial to be aware of this and establish communication guidelines before the issue escalates.

Configure Your Slack Notifications

Introducing new habits is much smoother when the environment supports change instead of sabotaging it. Take control of your work environment by configuring your Slack notifications in the Preferences -> Notifications tab.

Some of you might cringe at the thought of completely turning off notifications:

“If everyone turns off notifications, chaos will ensue! People won’t receive important information on time, and everything will happen more slowly.”

If you think this way, test whether you’re right— you can always revert to the previous approach if you find that this one doesn’t work for you. From our perspective, checking Slack every two hours and responding to all received messages at once is far more effective than interrupting work every 15 minutes. Achieving a state of total concentration on a task leads to better outcomes. Unfortunately, entering that state takes time (estimated at 20 minutes), and you must do it every time you get distracted from your work.

Many Messages Shouldn’t Be Created/Sent on Slack

At Casbeg, we see it this way:

  • Don’t send messages without necessity – no one cares that you’re stepping away from your computer for 15 minutes,
  • If something requires a response within 2 hours – send it via Slack,
  • If something requires a response within one day – send it via email,
  • If something doesn’t require a response within one day – discuss it in a recurring meeting or email indicating it’s not urgent.

It’s crucial to maintain the quality of your messages on Slack. Be responsible and considerate in your communication, ensuring your messages are clear and contain all necessary information.

It’s worth reducing the number of messages sent on Slack and increasing their quality. Longer messages instead of many short ones mean that the recipient will receive only a few notifications on the same topic, distracting them from work and suggesting that the issue is far more critical than it usually is.

The messages you send shouldn’t look like this:

“Hey, I was looking for these examples
we talked about
and I came across a great site
https://marketingexamples.com.”

But rather like this:

“Hey, I was looking for these examples we talked about and I came across a great site https://marketingexamples.com.”

Ensure that your messages are clear and contain all necessary information on the topic. If you decide to take more time to respond, make sure there’s no need for clarification on various issues – otherwise, you’ll waste time instead of saving it.

Don’t Notify Others Without Necessity

  1. If a topic doesn’t concern the entire company, it shouldn’t be on the #general channel,
  2. Use commands like @channel, @here, @everyone only when necessary – usually, it’s not,
  3. Continue discussions in threads to avoid interrupting those not involved.

Use Slack Channels Effectively and Wisely

  1. If someone is temporarily involved in a specific area, there’s usually no need to add them to a dedicated channel.
  2. Regularly verify whether all the channels you belong to are necessary, and mute or remove yourself from those you don’t use.
  3. A good practice is to share information in group channels that will be useful to everyone participating in a given project. In Casbeg, this mainly refers to channels dedicated to collaboration with specific clients. Even if a particular issue doesn’t concern all consultants, we want to allow each other access to the history of what has happened with the client.

Utilize Slack’s Functionalities

You can integrate Slack with Google Calendar. Or with Asana? Another way to boost productivity using Slack is to check the available integrations to see what can facilitate your daily work. Another option is using built-in tools, such as recording a voice message. At Casbeg, we used this, for instance, while creating a new website—it was much easier to share insights about projects this way than to write them out in messages. Voice recordings are also handy for summarizing meeting conclusions: informing an absent person about what they missed goes much more smoothly than writing a long email on the same topic.

Finally, voice messages have another advantage over text messages—they help avoid communication errors. It’s much easier to misinterpret someone’s mood or intentions based on a text message than a recording.

Last but Not Least: Stick to the New Rules

The team will quickly forget about rules if you don’t enforce them. Wait to respond if someone asks you something while you’re busy. Answer after 30-90 minutes. You’ll find nothing terrible happens—you don’t have to interrupt or get distracted. Over time, everyone in the company will get used to waiting for responses and, knowing this, will often seek answers and make decisions independently. And if you’re working with mature, experienced individuals, the likelihood of them making a good decision without support is considerable.