10 Slack Tips to Showcase Your Company Culture, Boost Productivity, and Create a Supportive Environment

Fairly easy to use and essential for distributed teams, Slack—a chat-style communication platform—has become a staple in many organizations as a tool for information sharing and collaboration.

At MAIN, Slack is our primary communication tool. We hardly ever send internal emails. Here are 10 tips—presented as commandments—to help you express your company culture, boost your productivity, and create a supportive environment on Slack!

take the time to get organized

With the potential flood of channels, it’s important to establish some basic rules to stay organized. The first six commandments focus on the things we’ve done at MAIN to help us all find our way.

1- A channel naming convention—you'll create

In MAIN, all our channel names have contextual prefixes(e.g., rh-, team-, management-). This allows us to quickly organize our channels.

• gov-ca-management
• accounting and management
• pro-team
• personal team
• HR management
• hr-management-unsolicited-applications

2-Try to be consistent with your channel names

For example, at MAIN, we create channels by project and sometimes even one channel per project component, adding certain suffixes to indicate the nature of the projects (e.g., -dev for a project in development that hasn't started yet, -ext for a channel with collaborators outside the organization).

This helps quickly establish the context of the discussion and avoid messages that are out of context.

• a-momentumpi (The general channel for the momentumPI project, used to discuss day-to-day operations)
• a-momentumpi-idea (A dedicated channel for discussing the project's inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility aspects)
• a-momentumpi-gouv and admin (A dedicated channel for discussing steering committees and administrative aspects of the project)
• a-momentumpi-education-pi (A dedicated channel to discuss the educational aspect of the project)

P.S.: The prefix “a-” refers to the business unit calledacceleration Supportacceleration

3-Make sure to fill out the channel headers thoroughly; you'll be aiming for

Channel headers let you add themes. This can be a short sentence explaining the purpose of a channel. You can also add documents, external links, or links to folders stored in Google Drive. This is truly essential for effective collaboration.

4- In discussion threads, you will reply

If the devil is in the details, we can exorcise him by always replying within the thread! We sometimes forget this, especially with the mobile app, whose thread interface isn't as intuitive—yet it's essential for boosting productivityin Slack.

Discussion threads are a simple way to provide more context and to thoroughly document all the details of an issue. They are therefore a valuable source of information, especially for colleagues who are called in to help (tagged) later in the discussion.

5- Pin important messages

On MAIN, we use a combination of discussion threads and pinned posts to track subtopics that don't necessarily warrant their own channel but may be relevant over time.

For example, in our #tech-team channel, we have a thread for logging phishing attempts that may have slipped past our spam filters—cleverly named THREAD: Phishing Attempts or Other “Fishy” Activities ” 🎣. This makes it easy to quickly refer back to the thread by checking the pinned posts at the top of the channel, and it also allows new members joining the channel to quickly find useful background information.

6- You will avoid private conversations

At MAIN, we’ve decided to adopt a policy of banning private conversations and encouraging everyone to conduct all work-related conversations in channels. This practice is the one that generates the most resistance at first. Asking a question that seems trivial or is directed at just one person in public? It feels strange… It’s true that it takes some time to get used to it.

The reality is that several team members will jump into conversations to add their “two cents” and their “two cents,” even if the conversation wasn’t really directed at them. them!

That said, in a hybrid work environment, we’ve found that information is often fragmented, and the only way to get all the pieces of the puzzle is often through these public conversations. This approach somewhat mirrors the natural tendency we have in the workplace to pick up bits of information on the fly when two colleagues are talking to each other. And our projects are enriched by this practice!

bring your culture to life

With a decentralized teamthat rarely works in the same physical office, the organization’s culture is reflected in how we use our technology.

Building connections with coworkers through little inside jokes—using humor really makes everyday life and relationships so much more enjoyable! The next four commandments are all about company culture.

7- You won't refuse to use emojis

At MAIN, we use emojis a lot when replying to messages in Slack. It’s even something we mention during new hire orientation. Even though the latest Slack update has pushed reactions to the background, they’re an essential tool for our productivity! For example, instead of replying to colleagues with “done” when we’ve completed a request, we use the ✅. This avoids a notification, and it’s quick and clear.

We also create custom emojis! Zoom screenshots of our colleagues—taken at just the right moment and turned into custom emojis—bring our culture to life and add a touch of humor to our workspace.

8. Use Slack status updates to share your status. You will

Slack lets you set a temporary status for your profile. Some statuses are pre-programmed into the platform (e.g., 🌴 On vacation). Users can also set a custom status.

At MAIN, the team has adopted a code to let colleagues know when we need some comfort, are going through something unpleasant, or need support from the team. There’s no need to share your personal life publicly if you don’t want to. Simply adding the octopus emoji (🐙) to your Slack status is enough to signal that you’re in “handle with care, please” mode. Using this code is part of the onboarding process for all new hires.

9- By encouraging spontaneous interactions, you will stimulate

Still in the “Slack profile status” category, we’ve added a preset status for all users to encourage spontaneous interactions among coworkers.

Much like working in the same physical space can do, we created a team status that is the opposite of “I’m focused—please don’t disturb me.”

When we have a little gap in our schedule, we’re encouraged to set the friendly status “Door’s open, I’m available, give me a call!” Visible to all other users, this status helps spark spontaneous mini-conversationsand sometimes lets us quickly iron out details on ongoing projects without having to schedule ANOTHER meeting.

10. Create channels or add social media apps—don't hesitate to do so

We have a channel specifically for Wordle enthusiasts. We also use apps integrated into Slack to provide other ways to connect. For example, we usethe Donut app, which randomly pairs two people every two weeks and invites them to meet for 15–30 minutes to chat about non-work topics of their choice. For those who are stuck for ideas, the app even suggests icebreaker questions when needed.

The Polly applets you createpolls—whether anonymous or not—for your team. Any team member can create a poll. So whether you want to find out “Which of these options best reflects your regular use of Zoom (on a weekly basis)” or “What’s the best way to prepare Kraft Dinner?”, Polly’s got you covered.

Of course, every company has its own culture. What are some unique ways your organization uses Slack that you’d like to share with us? We’d love to hear from you!

– Caroline Cloutier