5 Slack Apps That Create a Better Employee Experience

Ten years ago, we relied on email for everything work-related. Both external and internal conversations were confined to one endless inbox.

Then Slack came along—a fun and friendly office messaging alternative that has since transformed collaboration at work into an enjoyable direct messaging experience. With Slack, members of a company can utilize public channels, which are like chat rooms (created and named by you), to post announcements, share documents, answer questions, and react to adorable pics of your coworker’s dog.

Since Slack was founded, people have created more than 1,000 Slack apps that allow you to accomplish more at work, integrate with other software tools, and interact with your team in new and exciting ways. For workplace managers, Slack presents a major opportunity to shape and nurture employee experience. 

Here are 5 Slack apps that we recommend for creating a better employee experience:

1. Donut

Donut is all about introducing coworkers who don't know each other. Donut randomly pairs employees and sets them up to meet for coffee, lunch, or... donuts! You set the cadence, so coworkers can meet someone new every week, two weeks, monthly, etc.

If you have multiple offices, you can program Donut to pair people based on their location. Employees will love the friendly purple Donut character, and appreciate all of the personal connections they form with coworkers on different teams.

2. Polly

Polly allows you to send out public or anonymous surveys and polls. It's as easy as typing /polly into a Slack channel and filling in the questions you'd like to ask or a topic to get feedback on. Polly is helpful for getting a pulse on how employees feel about the trivia event you planned, the coffee provider you're test-driving, or when selecting a date for a team outing.

3. Managed by Q

Managed by Q gives employees the ability to submit office requests by typing /Q into Slack.

Requests from Slack go to your Managed by Q office dashboard and then are automatically routed to the responsible member of your workplace team (so, if someone makes a request for a laptop case, it will go straight to IT!).

Employees are notified whenever you update the status of their requests, and they can reply to your messages without leaving Slack. Kristin, the Facilities Manager at Slack HQ says, “My team uses Managed by Q to collaborate across our 10 offices. It’s the perfect tool to create a unique workplace experience for our employees.”

When all employee needs come through a single channel, you’ll not only save a ton of time, but also access metrics that can help you spot office trends. 

4. Birthdaybot

Birthdaybot stores a list of all employee birthdays and work anniversaries, so that it can announce each event to the whole company. This is super helpful because, let’s face it, who has the brain capacity to remember every birthday? Birthdaybot is a perfect way to celebrate life moments, make your coworkers feel included, and bring the office together with fun emoji reactions. 

5. Forecast

Forecast shares today’s weather at each of your office locations when you type /forecast. We can’t promise this will take the place of awkward elevator small talk about the weather. (In fact, weather small talk will most certainly still happen.) This bot does, however, make it way less likely that you’ll forget an umbrella when there’s a high chance of rain!

Office culture is an integral part of every company, and it is known to be the top contributor to employee retention. Slack is already instrumental in culture-building by providing a tool that makes cross-functional communication as easy as texting.

As much as we love technology, it’s what you do with Slack that will determine the effect it has on office culture. If you’re a workplace manager looking to bring employees together and boost morale, Slack is your playground.

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