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

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If tech is so distracting, how do Slack employees stay so focused? By Nir Eyal 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 seem to have that problem. How Slack's culture kills distraction if you were to walk around Slack's company headquarters in San Francisco, you 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 named Slack its Company of the Year, the slogan is more than just talk. By 6:30, Slack's offices have pretty much cleared out, according to the article. That's how Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield wants it. Surely, Slack employees log back in when they've gone home, right? Wrong. In fact, they are discouraged from using Slack after they've left, according to Amir Shabbat, Slack's former director of developer relations. People there understand the norm is to know when to disconnect. It's not polite to send direct messages after hours or during weekends, he says. Slack's corporate culture is an example of a work environment that hasn't succumbed to the maddening cycle of responsiveness endemic to so many organizations today. Knowing when to disconnect is the norm to facilitate focus, Slack's culture goes even deeper than its slogans. Slack management leads by example to encourage employees to take time to disconnect. In an interview with OpenView Labs, Bill Macchiatis, who served as Slack's chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer, says, you you need to have uninterrupted work time. This is why, whether I'm dealing with Slack or email, I always block off time to go in and check messages and then return to uninterrupted work. The fact that someone as senior as Machiatis makes uninterrupted work a priority and goes as far as scheduling time for email and Slack sends a profound message to his colleagues. Shavat echoes Macchiatis sentiment at Slack, he said it's okay to be offline. He is religious about giving his co workers his complete attention when meeting in person. When I give someone my time, I'm focused 100% and never open a phone during a meeting. This is super important to me, he says. Shavat also revealed how Slack employees stay offline outside office hours. Slack has a Do Not Disturb feature that users can turn on when it's time to focus on what they really want to do, whether it's working on an important project or spending time with family or friends. Shivat told me that if an employee tries to send a message when they shouldn't, you'll get hit by the Do Not Disturb feature. If it's after hours, it turns on automatically, so you don't get direct messages until you get back to work. Most important, the culture at Slack ensures employees have a place to discuss their concerns. Several studies have found companies that make time to discuss their issues are more likely to foster psychological safety and hear the looming problems employees would otherwise keep to themselves. Dealing with distractions starts by understanding what's going on inside of us. If employees are unhappy, they will find ways to address their feelings one way or another, whether in a healthy way or not. Ensuring employees have a forum to voice problems to company leadership helps Slack team members relieve the psychological strain found in toxic work environments. But how does a company as big as Slack make sure everyone has a place to feel heard? This is where the company's own technology comes in handy. The Group Chat tool facilitates the regular discussions needed to foster psychological safety while coming to consensus quickly. How do they do it? Though it may seem inconceivable, Shavat credits Emoji Slack Channels for Everything At Slack, there's a channel for everything, he says. There's a channel for people who want to get lunch together, a channel for sharing pet photos, even a Star wars channel. These separate channels not only save others from the sort of off topic conversations that clog up email and make in person meetings unbearable, they also give people a safe place to send feedback. Among the many Slack channels, the ones company leadership takes most seriously are the feedback channels. They are not just for sharing opinions on the latest product release, they are also for sharing thoughts about how to improve as a company. There is a dedicated channel called Slackculture and another called Execama where executives invite employees to ask me anything, Shavat says. People will post all sorts of suggestions and are encouraged to do so. There's even a special channel for airing your beefs with the company's own product called Beef Tweets. Sometimes comments can get very prickly, Shavat says, but the important thing is that they're aired and heard. Here's where emojis can come to the rescue. Management lets people know they've read their feedback with an eyes emoji, explained Shavat. Other times, if something is handled or fixed, someone will respond with a check mark, he says. Of course, not every conversation at every company should take place in a group chat. Slack also conducts regular all hands meetings where employees can ask senior management questions directly no matter what the format. Giving employees a way to send feedback and also know it's been heard by someone who can help lets employees know they have a voice. Whether employees feedback is heard during small group meetings, company wide meetings, or over group chat channels isn't the point. What matters is that there is an outlet that management cares about, uses and responds to. It is critical to the well being of a company and its employees. The future of the Indistractable Workplace there's always a risk when pointing to specific companies as exemplars. Jim Collins's bestseller Good to Great and Built to Last included profiles of some companies that didn't end up lasting very long and others that turned out to be not so great. Certainly working at Slack isn't perfect. Some employees I spoke with told me that they'd had bad experiences with heavy handed managers. As one former employee said, they really did try to be a psychologically safe company. It's just that not everyone was equally skill at maneuvering some of those nuances. Creating the kind of company where people feel comfortable raising concerns without the fear of getting fired takes work and vigilance. For now, the strategies Slack uses seem to be successful. On Glassdoor.com, the company has an average anonymous review of 4.7 out of 5 stars, with 93% of employees saying they'd recommend the company to a friend and 97% approval for the CEO. As Slack begins a new chapter as a public company, it's worth noting that regardless of future profit margins or returns to shareholders, the company shows concern and commitment to helping employees thrive by giving them the freedom to be indistractable.

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