Internationalization, growth and digitalization: these were the driving forces for launching Slack at Mast-Jägermeister SE in 2019. At the time, the focus was on transparency, collaboration and change management. Since then, Andrea Ostheer, a manager of global corporate communications at Mast-Jägermeister SE, has refined the use of Slack together with her colleagues. Today more than 30 multilingual workflows and integrations help employees work productively, efficiently and transparently with a tangible outcome: the company has saved 14,700 working hours and around 480,000 euros in one year thanks to Slack.* “We’ve automated recurring yet essential tasks, which takes the pressure off our staff,” says Ostheer.
Translating, communicating, sharing
In an international company, it’s vital to make information accessible to everyone, equally and quickly. To achieve this, Mast-Jägermeister SE has created a workflow in cooperation with the translation AI DeepL: announcements that are posted to its channels in German or English can be translated automatically. All that’s required is adding a language’s country flag to the post. “This workflow helps us with our international communications, allows us to disseminate knowledge transparently and ensures greater productivity,” says Ostheer. Every member of staff can be brought up to the same level of knowledge quickly and easily.
Additional drivers of efficiency include workflows such as automatic reminders for time sheets, holidays and recording travel expenses. These are processes that don’t feel time consuming on their own, but take up a lot of time in total. This is where automation helps to recover time. This simplification of the working day, the “why” behind automation, ultimately helped boost acceptance of Slack throughout the company.
Automation decouples criticism from people
The team uses Slack in a way that’s beneficial for everyone, including using profile pictures, not replying outside of threads, keeping work location details up to date and naming Slack channels correctly. In these cases, when someone doesn’t follow best practices, Mast-Jägermeister SE uses charming, tongue-in-cheek workflows such as the Thread-Rex, a Tyrannosaurus-Rex emoji, or the Status-Bob, a reference to the TV painter Bob Ross. They help to facilitate necessary criticism in little everyday matters without making people feel bad for minor errors. This depersonalizes criticism in the work routine and creates a more pleasant way of working together. “Finger-pointing isn’t part of our culture,” explains Ostheer.
“Slack contributes to our corporate goals by facilitating communication, breaking down knowledge silos and allowing us to communicate quickly and transparently across countries.”
Continuously refining the tool
Slack isn’t just used internally. Mast-Jägermeister SE connects with its partners via Slack Connect. This allows communications with a variety of different stakeholders, for example at events, to be pooled efficiently. It makes work easier for Ostheer’s team members as well: they can make use of automated workflows for inquiries from journalists and employees to filter and distribute content and make it accessible to everyone. Email inquiries from journalists can be forwarded to an internal channel, for instance. This automatically triggers a form in which the respective employees can recategorize the inquiry again according to urgency, regional origins or contact details. It can then be shared with the team in a pre-filtered and summarized form. The company is also planning on integrating various channels into the intranet so as to further pool information and notifications. The project team is working on returning these interactions from the intranet back to the channel.
Slack is a living tool at Mast-Jägermeister SE. There are always new ways and areas in which the technology can provide support. “Slack champions”–specially trained employees who are particularly interested in leveraging the technology–help drive development forward. The company is currently canvases, but artificial intelligence might play a role in the future as well. “Slack contributes to our corporate goals because it facilitates communication, breaks down knowledge silos and enables us to communicate quickly and transparently across countries,” Ostheer says.
*These figures are based on the Slack Value Calculator, which analyzes the previous month’s usage data and extrapolates it for the entire year. This provides companies with precise forecasts of their time and cost savings.
