An inside look at Slack’s culture of experimentation

When Slack created our Workforce Lab, our goal was to study how to make work better. We do that through regular quantitative and qualitative research of global desk workers to tease out the conditions that enable people to thrive and succeed at work.

We then bring what we learn about the global workforce back to our own employee base, to experiment with ways to improve how we work at Slack and Salesforce. 

The term “experiment” might seem intimidatingly formal or academic, but some of our most effective efforts have started quite small and lightweight.  

We begin by identifying a common workplace pain point among the global population from our survey results—for example: too many meetings, too little focus time. 

Then we poll our own employees to see if that problem is similarly present at Slack. If we find that it is, then we pull in a group of employees to pilot a solution—for example: Focus Fridays and Maker Weeks. 

If the fix proves a successful intervention for the pilot group, we share it across Slack and Salesforce as a best practice for other teams to pick up and adapt. And we share what we learn in case studies on our blog that can by used as playbooks to tackle similar challenges for any team, anywhere.

The future of work isn’t something that happens to us. We’re building it together. Technology shifts are one part of the equation but the other (and I’d argue, more important) part is us—people—making the countless decisions every day that collectively establish our company cultures and enable our success. 

Experimentation in practice

Inspired? Want to get started? Here are a few interventions that any company can experiment with.

 

Conduct a break-taking experiment

Our Workforce Index survey showed that making time for breaks during the workday improves employee productivity and wellbeing, and yet half of workers do not take breaks. Here’s how we tackled this problem at Slack.

READ: Case study: what happened when we took a break at Slack 

 

Create Personal Operating Manuals 

Our researchers found that while many desk workers want to get to know their colleagues more closely, just as many are hesitant to share their own back stories. Enter Personal Operating Manuals. This process can fast-track team trust, which research shows is a key to optimizing team productivity. 

READ: How Personal Operating Manuals can help you build a stronger team at work

Tame the meeting madness

At Slack, we’ve had success piloting no-meeting Focus Fridays and Maker Weeks. On Focus Fridays, teams cancel all internal meetings and employees are encouraged to turn off their notifications so they can work without interruptions. During Maker Weeks, our teams cancel all internal recurring meetings. Some teams trade meetings for asynchronous status check-ins on active projects, while others simply skip them that week. And while many teams might continue to have external meetings with customers, providing an internal break frees up more focus time for employees.

READ: Four ways to ditch meetings and improve team collaboration

 

Make AI work better for every worker

Two in 5 desk workers (37%) say their company has no AI policy, and those workers are 6x less likely to have experimented with AI tools compared to employees at companies with established guidelines.

Similar to personality or strengths tests for team building, conducting an AI personas exercise with your team is a fun and inviting way to encourage discussion, clarify guidelines and expectations, and identify any blockers holding people back from trying AI. It also sets teams up to learn and share the most helpful and creative AI use cases for their roles and functions.

READ: AI team-building with the AI persona quiz