Don’t provide this perk?

You’re doing it wrong!

Starting a new job is an exciting milestone. The soul-crushing job search is over and the nerve-racking negotiations on compensation are complete. Now you finally get your keycard and your company email. Logging in, you are greeted by two lonely emails that you promptly read and send to the trash. You revel in the glory of hitting inbox zero and marvel at the fact that this pristine oasis is your work email. You hammer out a couple messages to your new team and you’re quickly on your way to getting things done.

Fast-forward three months: Your inbox is overflowing. You have grown to dread even opening it, not to mention using it to communicate with your team. Every correspondence forces you to trudge through a seemingly never-ending thread of replies in this communication wasteland. The new job is great and you love your team, but the constant struggle to facilitate everyone’s needs is really taking its toll. In the end you grit your teeth and bear it, because it is the best way for you to digitally communicate with your new team, isn’t it? There surely isn’t a better solution out there, is there?

Hold on.

We need to talk, because I think you have been swindled out of the most valuable employee benefit. No, I’m not talking about flextime, or remote work, or even unlimited vacation days.

I’m talking about Slack. Yes, that’s right, the team collaboration platform.

“Psh, that’s ridiculous. Slack is nothing more than an over-hyped chat client.”

I beg to differ. Just like free food and game rooms aim to increase your team’s quality of life, so does Slack. Here is how:

Communicate emotion, not just information.

Humans are inherently social beings. This is ultimately our greatest strength; when we work together, amazing feats can be achieved. Yet in an age where information is literally at our fingertips, we are spending more time in front of screens and less time having meaningful human interactions.

Slack understands this, and focuses on establishing richer forms of communication between individuals instead of the industry standard: sterile transfer of information. This is reinforced by the platform’s personable appearance incorporating thoughtful touches more commonly found within the space of the consumer internet.

“Slack is the communication platform that was missing from our operation. It’s improved the day-to-day lives of people who work for the same company across our locations.” Greg Storey, President / Partner, Happy Cog

For instance, you can select the style of emojis you prefer — Apple, Google, Twitter, Emoji One, or plain text. This might not seem like a big deal, but think about it: if you don’t like the style of emojis a platform offers, you are less likely to use them.

The platform isn’t just limited to emojis to convey how you feel. With Giphy’s online library of gifs, you can quickly and effortlessly express yourself.

These might seem like silly trinkets but they make the differences between an email that can be misconstrued and a meaningful emotional connection. Overtime these interactions enable the development of relationships.

Community with Personality

Slack’s structure of persistent chat organized into channels was clearly heavily influenced by Internet Relay Chat. For almost 30 years, IRC was used to curate digital communities. Slack builds on top of this idea of community curation.

By adding custom loading messages, you can give Slack personality and set the tone for your team in advance. Whereas most dread opening their inbox, Slack’s loading messages humanize the application.

Slackbot takes this one step further, transforming Slack from being a communication platform, to being a member of your team. Just like loading messages, you can customize Slackbot’s responses.

As a result, when you arrive in Slack, it feels like a living organism, as opposed to a never-ending abyss-like email. This revolves around establishing a sense of community for your team.

Access to your team for both feedback and fun.

We all live such busy lives that it is hard to find the time to truly connect with our coworkers. If you are lucky, you occasionally have lunch with some of them or share a brief conversation in the hallway on your way to a meeting. Those fortunate enough to have some free time after work, are now faced with the task of contacting their colleagues. Society from an early age conditions us to establish clear lines separating work life from personal life. As a result, people try their best to avoid checking email after work. You often have to know a co-worker pretty well before they are willing to provide you with their personal phone number. This poses a catch 22 for new hires that want to connect with their teammates on a more personal level.

“It makes our relationships deeper because we discover things about each other and we’re in touch with exactly what’s happening.” Ken Schafer, EVP Retail, Tucows

Slack circumvents this issue by not only letting you communicate with your team in public channels, but also with private groups and one-on-one direct messages. Messages sent via these methods remain outside of the public’s view. Since Slack does mobile and notifications right, there is a pretty good chance that not only will your coworker receive the message, but also read it. This means no matter where you or your teammates are you always have a direct line of communication at your disposal.

Different strokes for different folks.

I personally hate interruptions or anything that gets in the way of me getting shit done. When I’m in a flow, I don’t want to have to finagle with files. Slack realizes that business aren’t all built the same and that they frequently require different tools to get the job done.

Slack goes out of their way to make sure that you experience as little friction as possible in their workflow buy offering integrations to dozens of other services ranging from file sharing programs like Google Drive and Dropbox to hosting and management tools like Heroku and Sentry just to name a few. Slack automates the sharing of information with the majority these services to help you save time.

At my last startup, I was managing an internationally distributed team. I struggled to find a way to keep my team on the same page. I went from tool to tool trying to find a solution with no avail. There had to be a better way.

Luckily, not too long after this dilemma I had my first experience with Slack while working with the team over at WorkingOn. I immediately knew there was no going back; I was hooked.

Slack made it possible for me to genuinely get to know my team during my first three months at the company despite working remotely over 3,000 miles away. It wasn’t for another two months that I actually met any of my teammates in person. Slack made the transition feel seamless.

Slack empowered us to communicate the emotions and personality that help to facilitate these bonds and should be on your list of employee perks if you’re on the hunt for a job.

Looking to supercharge Slack? WorkingOn allows you to share progress with your team from anywhere in the world, without distractions.