Recently, my boss Irma took a look at the way the Buildicus team communicates and decided it was time for a change.

Inspired by Ben Balter’s “15 rules for communicating at GitHub,” Irma decided we needed a way to stay in contact with each other without disturbing workflow.

Email hadn’t been working for us, because not everyone would check it. The IRC client we’d been using also wasn’t working because general team communication was getting lost among integration alerts that were specific to our developers.

So we decided to try Slack.

 

Looking for a way to significantly improve workplace communication? Learn about the tool that will have your team communicating efficiently in no time.

Why Slack

Slack took off as a communication tool last year and has been steadily gaining in popularity. It’s brilliantly simple to use and offers benefits such as:

 

• Integration. Connect to sites such as GitHub, Dropbox, Twitter, MailChimp and Google Drive.

• Channels. Create specific channels to focus conversations. For example, we use a General channel for office announcements and everyday shenanigans (mostly posting gifs for our own amusement), a Marketing channel, and a Notifications channel for integration updates.

• Direct messages. You can easily DM a team member for private conversations.

• Search. Search through past conversations — entire conversations — using the search function.

 

Looking for a way to significantly improve workplace communication? Learn about the tool that will have your team communicating efficiently in no time.

 

• File uploading. Upload images, files, video, Emojis and the above-mentioned gifs to Slack.

• Availability. Use Slack on your desktop, iPhone, iPad or Android devices.

• Notifications. Get notified instantly on your desktop or mobile device whenever someone mentions you on Slack.

• Cutesy loading messages. I mean …

 

Looking for a way to significantly improve workplace communication? Learn about the tool that will have your team communicating efficiently in no time.

How Communication Has Changed at Buildicus

Thanks to Slack, we’ve been able to significantly improve workplace communication (mostly through gifs — I can’t overstate how obsessed with gifs we are right now).

We’re all working on trying to keep communication mostly to Slack, and trying to break the habit of walking over and tapping someone on the shoulder whenever we need a quick question answered.

The point isn’t to eliminate office talk completely, of course. We all still chat and joke around in person, of course.

But we no longer have to worry about being interrupted while we’re in the work groove, which is nice.

 

Anyone else out there using Slack?