Slacking Off: Can Office Chatrooms Make Us More Productive Time Wasters?

Group chatting platforms like the much-hyped Slack are being praised as a fun way to boost productivity at work. But not everyone is a fan

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By Rebecca Greenfield

May 21, 2015 at 2:19 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

When Normative, a software design firm, introduced Slack to its staff nine months ago, the first office chatroom looked like Twitter during an episode of Game of Thrones. GIFs and jokes flowed freely and employees, mostly the men, chatted with abandon. The guys having the most fun had been chatting online since early chat client mIRC was popular in the 1990s. "They hopped onto it and immediately got what Slack was and how to communicate," says Amrita Chandra, the head of marketing at the Toronto-based company.

What was a work-approved free-for-all for some, however, was overwhelming and exclusive to others. The "crazy IRC behavior," as Chandra describes it, was intimidating. "People weren't participating." She clarifies: "A lot of the women weren't participating."