I wanted to write about a new popular form of workplace communication: Slack. It’s like Facebook for employees of a company.
I’m not a fan of Facebook at all. I’m a member of 2 Facebook groups devoted to fashion and image consulting. They’re the only ones I go on every week.
At your job you will be forced to sign up to your company’s Slack account. It’s either you do that or you’re kept out of the loop.
A person on a team or committee or working group that you’re a member of can create a Slack channel for this project without telling you about it.
Whether this is intentional or an accidental oversight you won’t know about it. Until you’re told this Slack channel exists and you should be on it. The person might not tell you at all that they’ve created this channel.
Not only that a lot of staff members send notices about meetings and other information only via Slack channels. Email has become to Slack what voicemail has become for texting–no one uses it to communicate anymore.
I would prefer to receive dates and times of meetings the old fashioned way–via email. Only it’s more convenient and reaches every team member at once when a person posts the meeting details to the project’s Slack channel.
Oh I know–you could create an email Distribution List and send the notice to everyone at once via the group email. That isn’t going to happen anymore either the way modern communication takes place at your job.
One thing is certain: you might be the only one sending comments to team members via your designated Slack channel. That is you might expect a reply to your Slack channel comment within a half hour.
When no one responds to you within a half hour you’ll need to keep checking your team’s Slack feed regularly to see exactly when and if someone has commented on what you said.
This leads me to want to write a blog entry here about the perils of online Zoom meetings. I’m going to write in detail about acing your video impression on Zoom. I’ll do this at the start of the New Year.
For now I’m giving you pointers about Slack because like other forms of social media Slack appears to be here to stay as a relationship-building tool.
How often should you check your Slack channel? As often as you check email? This can be a time-waster when it’s checked at inopportune times of the day.
Only the fact remains that there’s one more Feed to feed regularly to keep on top of your work projects.
I will be checking Slack at my job every 2 hours. Not any sooner and not spaced out longer than 2 hours.
You can keep Slack open on your internet browser and pop into the channel quickly.
WorkingAssets 