How to use Slack for better team communication

For some, Slack is love at first @, but for others it may feel like just one more app with notifications to deal with. A common challenge with communication tools is knowing when and how to use them. These guidelines are meant to clarify your teams communication channels, so that information is shared, not lost.

Topics covered:

• When to use Slack v. E-mail
• Slack guidelines and etiquette
• Tips to reduce the noise

When to use Slack v. E-mail

• Use Slack for informal communication: questions, idea sharing, brainstorming, asking for help, non-urgent matters, things you would text
• Use Slack for task-oriented communication: project related, shared documents, news and updates
• Use email for personal and high-priority communication: Private, sensitive, urgent

Slack guidelines and etiquette

Below are some guidelines and company-wide etiquette around Slack usage:

• During work hours, if you’re available, be on Slack. It’s inefficient for others to have to remember who is or isn’t on Slack, and leads to redundant conversations.
• You can use Do Not Disturb (DND) mode or update your status to indicate that you are unavailable or need to focus, but make sure your team knows how to contact you if needed.
• Don’t expect immediate responses, especially when someone is in DND mode.
• If someone is in DND mode, only send notification if it’s actually urgent.
• Use @here instead of @channel to get a room’s attention. This ensures that people who are offline or away don’t receive a notification. E.g. “@here who wants lunch?”
• Use the Channel’s purpose field to clarify what the channel is for, who should be in it, and mention any channel specific rules.
• Urgent or important discussions should move to email so that the thread of conversation, and who is on it is maintained, and can be archived easier.

Questions to consider:

Should this conversation be in real time, or can it be asynchronous? Who needs to see this? Should anyone be notified about it?

Slack makes it easy to send a message, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some restraint. If you are sending a flurry of messages or making a lot of typos, you should reconsider if there is a better way to communicate what you have to say.

Tips to reduce the noise

Below are a few tricks to minimize noise and maximize attention to what’s important

• Mute channels that are not required for the work you’re doing
• Suppress notifications for @channels and @here mentions in those channels where they are used with relative freedom
• Star important channels and organize them by priority/most used
• Archive channels when they are no longer needed to reduce clutter. The messages are not deleted, and will still appear in search results

Pro tips

• Set company wide do not disturb hours. The admin can set a global default, which individual users can override for themselves if desired.
• Leaving a +1 or reaction emoji to a comment acknowledges you saw it and your feeling about it vs. saying “ok”, which notifies everyone
• Pin messages or files that are important and you’ll need to refer back to
• Check the slack app directory for other tools you use, such as zoom for video calls or trello for task management. Some integrations can help automate your collaborative work
• Set a channel advocate— this could be a project manager or a slack wiz, but someone who can keep the channel focused and assist/nudge behaviors that have been agreed upon