If Tech Is So Distracting, How Do Slack Employees Stay So Focused?

How Slack’s culture kills distraction by building psychological safety, telling employees to go home, and using lots and lots of emojis.

If there’s one technology that embodies the unreasonable demands of the always-on work culture that pervades so many companies today, it’s Slack. The group-chat app can make users feel tethered to their devices, often at the expense of doing more important tasks.

Over 10 million people log on to Slack every day. Slack’s own employees, of course, use Slack — they use it a lot. And if distraction is caused by technology, then they should surely suffer the consequences. Surprisingly, according to media reports and Slack employees I spoke with, the company doesn’t have that problem.

How Slack’s Culture Kills Distraction

If you were to walk around Slack’s company headquarters in San Francisco, you’d notice a peculiar slogan on the hallway walls. White letters on a bright pink background blare, “Work hard and go home.” It’s not the kind of motto you’d expect to see at a Silicon Valley company that makes the very tool many people say keeps them at work, even after they’ve gone home.

However, at Slack, people know when to log off. According to a 2015 article in Inc. magazine that…