Communication is an integral part of an organization, as, without communication, things can get messy instantly that can cause damage to the organization. If the communication of the staff is well maintained, the company will be able to achieve its objectives and targets.
In the last two years, a lot has changed due to the pandemic. Many organizations faced problems and had to change their working structure completely. As people weren’t allowed to go outside the house during the pandemic, organizations moved to remote work as a resort.
But remote working also has its pros and cons. While people can work from the comfort of their homes, the communication process of an organization can face difficulties, as it is hard to handle many people at once without any proper mechanism.
It is where the Slack application comes in. It is a platform where an organization can share any information with its employees.
What is Slack?
Slack is a messaging application used by organizations to connect their employees to a unified platform and share information. It is very effective as a single platform is used to share information from an organization to its employees.
Slack helps an organization work with more flexibility. Regardless of an employee’s location, one can access information at any time. They don’t require a schedule or anything to coordinate with their colleagues.
Workers can easily connect through dedicated spaces known as channels through which they can share information with the right people. Since the information to all the employees is transferred, at the same time, quick decisions can be taken, which is helpful for the organization.
Top 8 Features of Slack:
Slack has various features that help an organization achieve its targets by forming a coordinated conversation among the employees. It helps to make smooth communication across the business channels. Here are some essential features that make Slack popular among businesses.
Helps in Remote Work:
During the pandemic, everyone was having problems because working from home was a concept that had not been explored before. However, with Slack, it is possible to share information with the entire team via message, and it is also time-saving.
Moreover, you can create different channels on Slack and add people from the organization to these channels. The channel members can get instant information, which was never possible through individual messaging. Also, this application is more secure, thus, safe for sharing confidential information.
Availability:
Another feature that the Slack application offers is that you can check the availability status of your co-workers. Wondering how? It’s easy to check if your colleague is available or not, you have to see the dot that is present just below the profile picture of the person.
Different colors mean different status, the green color indicates the person is online i.e. available, while the red indicates the person is not online. Furthermore, if a person has linked their Slack account with Gmail, any team member in the same channel can know whether the person is in the meeting, in the office, or on sick leave.
Reminders:
One more feature that helps employees to follow their routine is the feature of setting reminders. You know that there are many things that an employee has to do, as they get busy they can easily forget about their meeting and other work-related stuff.
But with Slack, you can set reminders, which will remind you about your activities. Slack provides the option to get notified, by setting reminders on any message that you receive from any channel, either from co-workers or clients.
Notifications:
Another feature that helps organizations in making uninterrupted communication is notifications. The user gets an instant notification, whenever they receive a message on any channel. Thus, making it easy to follow a conversation on a channel.
There are many channels on Slack, whose sole purpose is entertainment. Getting repeated notifications from these channels can be annoying, particularly when an important project and meeting takes place.
Due to this, the Slack application has the option to set preference notifications. With this, you can set preference for what kind of messages you want to receive a notification like the mentioned message, direct message, all messages, etc.
Audio and Video Call:
When working from home, for many of us, it is difficult to connect with everyone. However, there is a feature for audio or video calls in the Slack application that helps workers to connect with others. While working at home, we quite often find ourselves stuck in some difficulty, this is when this feature comes in handy.
You can use this feature to easily connect with your co-workers or clients, streamlining the communication process and saving much time. With the video call feature, you can share and display your ideas through a screen effectively.
Integration with Other Applications:
With Slack, integration with other apps is easy, meaning you can connect your team with other office tool applications. These applications are Google, Microsoft Office, Outlook calendar, Zoho, Asana, etc.
With this feature, it’s easy to connect your whole team on every platform, making it easy to stay updated at any time and anywhere. All team members get a notification whenever a task is done on an integrated application, which makes it easy for everyone to follow.
Private Channels:
Sometimes there is a project or confidential information that you don’t want to share with everyone on the channel. But there is a feature on Slack with which you can make private channels and share your information without any problem.
You can create a private channel on Slack and invite only those co-workers or clients with whom you want to share the information.
Channel Details:
With this feature, communication becomes more transparent because you can add details to the channels, making it easy for everyone who is already on the channel and also for future employees.
This feature helps to make more clear communication among people, as for every project, there is a different channel, which prevents intermixing of information.
Conclusion:
Now you know the features of the Slack application and how it helps organizations in communication. However, the features are not limited to just these features, other features such as pin the message, save message by forwarding the message to yourself, slack bot, etc. also aid employees.
Slack is an application that is designed specifically for business communication. More importantly, Slack developers have made remote working possible by improving the application regularly according to the needs of organizations and employees.
Thus, if you have an organization that offers more remote work and continuous communication required, Slack is the best application for you.
