Following the pandemic of 2020, most companies are rethinking the way they bring teams together. These days, most people can’t meet in a typical office environment the way they used to. Rather, we’re finding ways to connect digitally through video, conferencing, and even instant messaging.
While formal video collaboration sessions and scheduled meetings are great, Slack, a market leader in collaboration technology, believes something is missing. According to Slack, the informal “watercooler” chat happening between meetings is more important than we realise.
Casual conversations, often ignored by the virtual work landscape, help to build camaraderie between teams while encouraging innovation and creativity. Slack huddles, a new lightweight solution for audio meetings, aims to bring the informal chats back into the workplace.
Slack Huddles Review: Features
Slack Huddles is an audio-only meetings solution and an alternative to the planned, scheduled video meetings of the modern hybrid workplace. According to Slack, Huddles is intended to replicate the impromptu discussions happening between employees when someone passes by a desk or bumps into someone in the hallway.
The one-click solution for audio conferencing allows business users to start a huddle instantly in any DM or channel. You can even launch these impromptu conversations with people outside of the company. Everyone in the channel is free to come in and out as often as they like. This means people can leave the room when they want to focus or join in when they’re keen to be part of the conversation. Features include:
- Instant one-click access to real-time audio rooms
- Support for up to 50 people at once
- Access to huddles in DMs and channels
- Support for guests and external parties
- Invitation notifications
- Screen sharing
- Live captions
- Security policy control
- Audio-only meetings
- Mobile app support
Anyone in a conversation can join a huddle when they receive the invitation notification in Slack. When you join from a desktop, you’ll be able to access additional features, like screen sharing and live captions. Currently, live captions are only available in English, but Slack is planning on delivering extra languages in the future.
In Slack Connect DMs and Channels, you can also invite people from external organisations to join your conversation, but you’ll have to set your security settings to permit this.
Slack Huddles Review: Benefits
Slack Huddles are impromptu, lightweight audio meeting rooms that you can have running in your Slack workspace at all times. Whenever you want to join the conversation, you simply click into the huddle, and it’s just like walking past someone’s desk in the office.
According to Slack, users can access huddles to catch up with colleagues, converse during work hours, and even debrief after a big meeting. Unlike other UCaaS solutions intended to encourage focused collaboration and workplace productivity, Slack Huddles are all about bringing informal elements back into workplace conversations.
The huddle environment may be particularly useful for companies attempting to maintain a strong company culture in a hybrid workplace. Slack also recommends using this feature to discuss complicated topics over time, without having to worry about busy calendars. Benefits include:
- Reduced video fatigue: Keeping employees connected in a remote and hybrid workforce is crucial, but many professionals end up feeling overwhelmed with too much time spent on-camera. The Slack huddles experience offers a break from being on camera, while still allowing for meaningful and contextual conversations. You can even share your screen to bring more information to a conversation
- Excellent technology: The Slack Huddles experience is powered in collaboration with Amazon, and the AWS cloud environment. This means you get excellent reliability and uptime for your audio meetings. Huddles also include fast and accurate live captioning (just in English for now), which AWS technology also supports. This can help to ensure people from different locations can still understand each other in a casual environment
- Improved company culture: Slack Huddles improves company culture by allowing employees to talk more naturally to each other whenever they choose. People can continue to work, reply to emails and do other tasks without being deemed “impolite” in an audio call. Plus, because the meeting isn’t scheduled, there aren’t any major expectations from employees. This takes the pressure off and allows people to talk more freely
- Enhanced hybrid experiences: Huddles is part of Slack’s strategy to support companies as they work on new hybrid methods for working. As teams spread between the office and the remote environment, Huddles ensures that everyone can stay active in the conversation, so no-one feels isolated or ignored. Huddles creates a natural meeting experience for the age of flexible working, intended to keep people engaged
Who Needs Slack Huddles?
Slack Huddles might seem like an odd product at first glance. An audio-focused meeting environment in a video-first world may catch you off guard. However, Slack believes that technology like this is how we can help to keep teams connected on a wider scale. Building on the back of popular social media audio experiences like Clubhouse, Slack Huddles encourages employees to continue talking naturally, just like they would in the standard office.
Unlike the traditional office environment, however, Slack also makes it easier to share contextual information on the fly. You can swap files in chats, share screens, and even record parts of conversations so you can come back to them later. The live captioning is also an excellent feature, with the option to search through the transcription after the discussion is over.
Slack Huddles: Verdict
Slack Huddles is part of the wider move by Slack to make hybrid and remote working experiences feel more immersive. Appealing alongside other popular tools like Slack Atlas (for employee profiles), Slack Huddles ensures that collaboration continues to thrive in the digital world. After all, there’s more to keeping staff connected than booking the right number of meetings.
In an age of video fatigue, and rising demand for employee engagement, Slack Huddles could be the ultimate way to keep the conversation going in all parts of the business landscape.
