How the digital HQ is empowering businesses to do good in the world
Today, businesses are about much more than making money. Great workplaces now have not just profit as a priority, but people and the planet. They are more conscious of their potential as makers of positive change in the world.
This trend can be seen all around us. It’s evident in the rise of the B-Corp (which has seen more than 6,000 applications since 2020), well-being programs, and wider investments into activities that don’t only maximise profit, but which also make a difference.
In short, doing good is increasingly a part of the best business’s DNA. It’s an evolution that’s inspiring to see and which we should all welcome.
Empowering teams to do good, however, isn’t just about having a positive impact externally. It’s positive for the wider business too — it means more motivated teams united by a clear mission. This relationship goes both ways. Successful businesses with motivated teams will naturally have more freedom to pursue initiatives that do good than those that are struggling.
Clearly then, we should think of these two elements — running a successful business and having a positive impact on the world — as connected. And the connection runs deep. What might surprise businesses is that empowering employees to do good and running a productive organisation are built upon a shared foundation: the digital headquarters (HQ).
In Slack’s vision, a digital HQ has no barriers. It can unite teams across the world, and empower individuals to do great work and have a positive impact.
To drill into the potential of the digital HQ further, it’s worth exploring how it’s built and why it’s enabling leading businesses to both do great work and do good.
Why the digital HQ is the foundation of better work
Understanding why the digital HQ is key to better ways of working is recognising that hybridity and flexibility are the new standard.
Research from Future Forum shows that 80% of all knowledge workers want flexibility in where they work and 94% want flexibility in when they work. In short, workers don’t believe they need to be in a physical office every day from 9:00am to 5:00pm to have an impact.
When thinking about the digital HQ, it’s important to recognise that this is now where work gets done and it’s untethered from physical space. So how does this enable the digital HQ to drive flexibility, and much more?
To understand this, we need to look at the building blocks of the digital HQ. These are what we call Slack channels. Channels bring order and clarity to work – they can be created for any project, topic, or team. They help us to break free of identities like ‘in person’ or ‘remote’ and instead enable everyone to engage equally, regardless of physical location.
Because channels are transparent by default, everyone in a channel can catch up on work at any time. Teams can record short video clips instead of holding live meetings, making asynchronous work simpler. Or they can use tools like Slack Huddles to quickly hop on an audio-only chat (replacing those quick conversations in the office). Everyone can work on their terms and move faster as they do so.
Channels also break down communication silos, giving everyone equal access to information. They house all the discussions, documents, and updates relating to a project or topic in one place. Wherever a team is, nobody is left out.
That visibility nurtures a sense of connection with the bigger picture as people can see the impact they are having. They have sight of the reason why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Because it nurtures this connection, and drives more agile ways of working, the digital HQ, underpinned by the channel, is fundamental to uniting teams behind a shared goal or initiative. It brings people together to deliver on work of all kinds, wherever they are, like never before.
However, if the digital HQ empowers teams with the tools to change how they work to do good in the world, it’s up to organisations to form and execute on those positive initiatives.
Unleashing the potential of the digital HQ to do good
Any organisation that wants to help teams do good can’t only rely on the digital HQ to deliver purpose. It also needs a positive mission that teams can get behind.
One business that did this successfully is Deliveroo. At the start of the pandemic, Deliveroo set a goal to distribute 500,000 free meals to frontline hospital workers.
By collaborating in Slack, Deliveroo’s newly-remote team rapidly pulled together the initiative to help frontline healthcare workers. As more employees got involved, they could hit the ground running as all the information they needed was ‘pinned’ to the channel (Slack’s pin feature enables people to pin messages and bookmark key files to a channel so everyone has swift access).
By using Slack as its digital HQ, in the end, Deliveroo didn’t deliver 500,000 meals — they delivered more than one million.
Not only did this mean frontline workers being supported in a crisis, but spirits at Deliveroo were lifted by seeing the good they were doing. The channel soon filled with notes of thanks from hospital workers. And as Berenice Cowan, Head of UK Expansion at Deliveroo noted,“We couldn’t have executed this initiative over email – too clunky. Or over the phone – too messy. The only way we could have done it was in Slack.”
As work continues to evolve, creating positive change in the world will become increasingly fundamental to businesses. While only companies themselves can drive these initiatives, investing in the right digital HQ can empower them to unite their teams, coordinate efforts, and ultimately do amazing things together.