'We were made for this': How Slack became king of the remote-work world
fastcompany.com
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The quick rise
Slack makes it possible for tens of millions of employees to have online conversations, ask questions, share information, make decisions. The platform reproduces the culture of the open-plan office by combining smartphone text messaging with the ability to separate and chronicle streams of workplace communication.
In 2020, there was an increase in number of people working from home and universities canceled in-person classes. Monday, March 9, 2020, Slack’s worldwide connected users hit an all-time high.
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Slack became indispensable
Investors had been wary of Slack since it went public in June 2019 because of its slowing growth, lack of profitability, and competition from Microsoft's competing product called Teams.
But as business swerved to avoid contagion, people were flocking to Slack's product to cope with disaster. Slack became a critical service, like Wi-Fi or electricity.
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Work from home
Although Slack also runs on Slack, the company had a work-at-office culture. As the company closed its offices in March, the executive made a series of decisions to make its mission clearer: Slack would take care of its people first during this crisis. In turn, those employees would take care of their customers.
- They offered to reimburse each employee up to $500 for whatever equipment they needed to do their jobs at home.
- When the schools closed, they advised people to work when they could.
- They encouraged their employees to log out and take care of their kids and families.
- They offer to pay employees their full salaries.
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Made for this time
A lot of people are relying on Slack at this moment. They ensure that offices can keep on functioning.
"There's a feeling inside that the company was made for this crisis," says Slack's CTO, Cal Butterfield.
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