"Office Time Is Not For Video Chats", According To Tech Boss

According to the CEO of messaging platform  Slack, businesses should reconsider how employees spend their time at the office.

Many people now split their workweek between going to their office and working from home as a result of hybrid working.

But according to Stewart Butterfield, chief executive of Slack, being at work should be an opportunity to complete tasks that are impossible to complete at home. He claims that using headphones while working at a desk is not one of them.

Naturally, the CEO of an online messaging service won't go so far as to advise colleagues to leave their laptops at home, but he does say that doing so would "put a strong line in the sand about what the purpose is of getting together".

The headquarters of Slack is located in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and India.

According to Mr. Butterfield, when looking back on the company's offices 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."

He says that ongoing changes are making the Slack office more like a social club since he wants employees to come to work to collaborate and form relationships face-to-face.

"The best thing we can do is create a comfortable environment for people to come together and actually enjoy themselves," he added.

"The best thing we can do is create a comfortable environment for people to come together and actually enjoy themselves," he continued.

In addition, he believes that young individuals just starting their careers often prefer to work in an office environment with their peers and recognizes that some people will choose to work full-time in an office setting because they cannot or do not want to work from home.

"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 says.

"But I think the majority of knowledge workers, over time, will settle into some sort of pattern of regular intervals of getting together."

He supports Jeff Bezos's idea from Amazon, wherein attendees read a six-page memo as a briefing note at the start of a meeting rather than listening to PowerPoint presentations.