Slack chief says offices should be social spaces where people ‘actually enjoy themselves’
The chief executive of messaging platform Slack has said offices should be social spaces where people “come together and actually enjoy themselves” rather than a place where people take video calls.
Speaking with the BBC, Slack boss Stewart Butterfield said office time was particularly important for young people starting their career.
“It’s hard to imagine starting your career fresh out of university, and not going to the office, and not being able to meet all these people in person,” he said.
“But I think the the majority of knowledge workers, over time, will settle into some sort of pattern of regular intervals of getting together.”
Butterfield said that his firm, which has offices in US, Canada, Japan, Australia and India, are shifting towards a more social format with their offices —putting focus on face-to-face interactions.
He explained that this sits in contrast to the office vibe the tech firm adopted before the pandemic.
“The 80% of the floor space that we dedicated to kind of factory-farm, battery-chicken housing for people to use their desks all by themselves and listen to their headphones, and not talk to anyone else… was a bit of a waste,” Butterfield told the BBC.
Like Google and Meta, Slack has a flexible work-from-home policy.
Likewise, Amazon has also told its employees that it is up to team leaders to decide what the remote work policy should be.
Apple is perhaps the only Big Tech outlier that has called on employees to get back into office at least three days a week.
Apple boss Steve Cook reportedly told staff that “in-person collaboration” was “essential to our culture”.