Slack has become a key part of our lives at Kiwi.com, from reporting tech issues to getting the latest on travel emergencies, it plays a vital role in the day-to-day running of our company. However, it can also create chaos and miscommunication if it’s not organized properly. In a company with more than a thousand employees, it gets more difficult for information to reach each Kiwi but it also becomes more difficult for Kiwis to stay in touch with each other and belong in a community. Among many other things, we use Slack to help with this challenge, and we adopted it for both work and non-work-related purposes. For example, we have dedicated channels where we can learn about main announcements but also channels where we can also praise a colleague, a channel dedicated to happiness, and so on.
Here are some of the examples of how we use and organize Slack for both work and pleasure purposes, how Slack reflects our culture and how it connects us.
Main Slack channels
Choosing the right communication channel might not be easy, especially when there are hundreds or even thousands of them. Some of our main channels are #all-kiwis, #kiwi-employees, #announcements, #office-brno (so as #office-prague, Bratislava, Barcelona, and so on). For example, #all-kiwis is used by every single Kiwi and the recommendation is not to leave it as there are announcements affecting all of us. It differs from #kiwi-employees as there are Kiwis employed directly by Kiwi.com and Kiwi.com vendors and we use #announcements for product-related updates and the membership there is not obligatory.
There is also the #hr-and-recruitment channel where we follow job openings and one of sometimes very useful channels are also #plz-channels, such as #plz-hr, #plz-executives, #plz-access, and many more. This is used whenever Kiwis would like to ask a question or request support from the respective team. What to say, we are proud of our transparency and yes, we use it regularly to ask whatever we are curious about!
Channels that make our life easier
One of the channels that are heavily used is also #off-topic in which Kiwis from all locations chat about topics unrelated to work. There are also variations of those channels, for example, we have also #off-plants where people discuss and swap plants, #off-investments, #off-market where we give away or sell stuff we don’t use, and so on. If you are changing the flat, we try to get it through the #accommodation channel, if we seek some answers or want to connect to owners of dogs or cats there are channels dedicated to that.
Another channel we absolutely love is #no-stupid-questions. This one is used whenever we are looking for the answer we have had stuck in our mind, but we are perhaps a little hesitant to ask.
Useful and social channels
We’ve also created channels such as #carpooling where Kiwis who are going by car in the same direction as you can give us a lift, or a channel #lunch where if we missed our group having lunch, we can find a new buddy for it. A similar channel is #coffee-budies which randomly connects everyone in the channel and encourages us to go for a coffee and chat.