Whether you're working with a remote team for the first time or looking to improve your online office culture, building a strong Slack culture for your remote team is crucial for overall performance and productivity. In addition, boosting team morale is vital to engaging your employees and lowering overall employee turnover rates, which is where Slack culture comes into play.

It can be challenging to manage a Slack community, especially without the help of Slack apps or add-ons. Thankfully, countless great Slack apps can streamline the Slack moderation and integration process and even boost company culture. Here, we discuss how to increase Slack engagement and tips and tricks on setting up your Slack channel for success.

Topics at a Glance

• How to Increase Slack Engagement
• Channel Organization is Key
• Importance of Employee Acknowledgement and Shoutouts
• Don’t Fear Feedback

How to Increase Slack Engagement

Thankfully, there are a few key ways to increase employee engagement and boost company culture. Correctly organizing your Slack channels, setting key expectations for engagement, and balancing internal communication and corporate culture with non-work channels can all craft a productive online workspace for your remote team.

Let's take a look at some steps to start your Slack channel off on the right foot, from organizing your channels correctly to acknowledging your employees directly and encouraging employee wellness.

A key thing to note is that applying Slack guidelines to your entire company and applying rules to Slack discussions and personal interactions, as well as internal communication, can significantly streamline both productivity and social interactions and ensure everything runs smoothly on and off Slack.

Channel Organization is Key

Before you even begin to discuss Slack etiquette with your team, make sure your Slack channels are organized and streamlined. Having an easy-to-navigate virtual workspace can significantly simplify employee interactions, boost productivity, and make personal interactions easier over the long run. Here are a few tips to craft active, intuitive Slack channels.

• Use a naming scheme: Set a company-wide Slack naming scheme. This makes it much easier for new employees to identify the right channel for each topic and helps streamline the channel search shuffle when a problem arises.
• Active channels only: Make sure to purge inactive channels regularly to keep your company's Slack clean and easy to navigate.
• Set channel descriptions: Every channel should have a short description that tells members what to expect. For example, bot channels should be labeled as such, as should non-work channels versus production channels and discussions.
• Pin rules: Make channel and Slack rules easy to read and find for each channel, and make sure to pin rules in a thread so that your team members know what is expected of them. This rules consideration applies to both internal communication and external messages. Be sure to set firm expectations with your employees. While Slack is great for fostering social interactions and employee connection, ensuring a precise balance between private messages and personal channels and that all messages follow company guidelines.
• Use threads: This applies especially to busy channels, but threads can greatly clean up your Slack channels and avoid lost messages. Make sure to use pings and "@ messages" correctly to improve productivity and prevent Slack overload.
• Organize channels by use: This applies similarly to setting channel descriptions and naming schemes, but make sure to organize channel locations based on their use. This allows newcomers to your remote team to quickly identify different channels, reducing overall Slack fatigue, as employees don't have to scour the office Slack to find a single post.
• Feel free to moderate: Having a team moderator for Slack channels, or a moderation bot, can streamline channel use and avoid confusion in various channels. It can also help diffuse a situation before reaching out to HR and better organize channel use by pointing employees in the right direction.

Importance of Employee Acknowledgement and Shoutouts

While Slack can be useful for productivity and remote work discussions, another key feature of this work social app is, unsurprisingly, social interactions. Slack channels are an excellent place for employee shoutouts and acknowledgment, monitoring and encouraging employee wellness.

Using different Slack apps, you can easily send Slack kudos to employees. This encourages a positive workplace and office culture and reduces overall infighting. Since a valued employee is more likely to stick with the company, encouraging team members to boost one another up creates a positive workplace environment and boosts overall company culture.

Use Slack app features like gamification tools, icebreakers, and other fun social add-ons to drive engagement and balance work-entertainment needs in your virtual workspace. A good blend of workplace and non-work channels crafts the same balance as having a water cooler in your workspace or the comfort of an employee lounge.

Monitoring and cultivating your Slack environment can boost employee engagement, encourage personal growth, and craft an atmosphere that appreciates transparent communication. Setting clear rules, encouraging employees for a job well done, and cultivating an active Slack workspace all help drive employee engagement and craft a strong Slack culture for your remote team.

Don’t Fear Feedback

Employee insight can be a crucial asset to your Slack channel and cultivate a positive workplace. Ask your team members what they'd like to see in a Slack channel and how workplace culture could improve. You can use various anonymous survey programs available for Slack or have a virtual meeting to openly discuss suggestions and issues, whatever works best for your remote team.

Your team is a vital part of your workplace. Gaining employee insights on Slack channel management, company culture, and employee wellness initiatives increases employee engagement and offers creative, innovative insights into ways your virtual workplace could evolve. After all, your employees are one of your company's greatest assets, meaning making sure they feel valued and appreciated is a crucial part of any Slack management initiative.

From offering wellness initiatives using a Slack app to cultivating a positive virtual work environment that encourages socialization and streamlines productivity, tailoring your Slack channels can build office culture and overall workplace satisfaction.