Employees ‘miss’ the in-person connection, Slack chief product officer says

Slack Chief Product Officer Tamar Yehoshua joins Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi to discuss Slack's products and hybrid work models.

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: The Dreamforce conference is all wrapped up in San Francisco, which means Brian Sozzi is on his way back to New York. Before he left, though, he sat down with Slack's chief product officer and talked all things return to work. Take a listen.

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: We've been working very closely with our customers to understand what they need. And some people are coming back to the office. Some people are working in this hybrid situation. And some people are fully remote. But what we find is they all need the same thing. They need to be able to collaborate effectively and to have tools to increase productivity.

BRIAN SOZZI: What is the next generation of Slack?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: So we're continuing to enhance our tools and enhance our platform so that we can build in more collaboration, more connection. People miss not seeing each other in person. And even if they are going into the office, every time you collaborate, you want to make it feel more personal, more human. So we've added in to our huddles feature, which is a audio first collaboration, the ability to have video and to have fun effects and emoji reactions to make it feel human.

BRIAN SOZZI: Is it-- do you still-- do you find it weird that we still have meetings as if it was pre-pandemic?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: A lot has really changed. People think about meetings in a different way. The whole concept of video fatigue is, you really don't like being on screen all the time. And I think people are more open to changing how they meet. And people are talking about how do we have fewer meetings, how do we have more asynchronous meetings.

The word "asynchronous" was not a word that a lot of people used before the pandemic. Now you hear it from everyone. So a lot of our meetings, we've stopped having, and they've gone asynchronous with video clips. So you just eliminate the meeting altogether. So I find people are more open to change.

BRIAN SOZZI: There's this knock on Slack that we're always on Slack. If we're on Slack, we're not maybe getting things done. Where do you stand in this debate?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: So work is communication. And most of our work is communication. And you should be using whatever communication tools you have to increase more effective communication and be off the tools when you need to. When I need to focus, I turn on my Do Not Disturb, and I focus. And there's an etiquette of you know when you have to-- when something's really important and you have to respond.

But people are going to use whatever tools they have if they don't want to focus on their job. It's easy to do that with email. It's easy to do that with any tool. So you have to use your tools in a way that make you more productive, of beyond them when it's going to actually help you with your work.

BRIAN SOZZI: Be right back. I'm going to check my messages. No, I'm just kidding. But how do you think about-- one thing I've learned or picked up on the keynotes at Dreamforce, talking to folks, is better integration between a Slack, a MuleSoft, a Tableau, and that core CRM software. Is that the right way to think about it? These things are finally starting to integrate and communicate with each other?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: 100%. Slack's platform has always been one of the key parts of Slack and that you can integrate with any third party. So in the very early days of Slack, developers used it for incident management of integrating with all their tools. And we've really focused since the acquisition on integrating with all of the customer 360, all of the clouds. This adds so much value to your productivity.

So instead of having to leave where you're engaged and go check another tool, you get a notification right where you are. And you can actually respond with a workflow to whatever that issue is without leaving Slack, so it just increases your efficiency. So that's another big focus of ours is automation.

BRIAN SOZZI: How do you keep developers and your software team focused? And this is a challenging time for the economy, the world. But how have you kept them just focused on the mission of what you need to achieve?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: So for us, it's all about the customer. And the closer people are in the product organization, the engineering organization to the customer, the more motivated they are because you see that you're helping them. Yesterday, in the Slack keynote, we had some people from Jansen, some customers who are helping to solve-- eradicate cancer. And nothing could be more motivating than to make them more efficient and more productive. So if you constantly are talking about the customer and how what you're doing really has an impact, then people will focus on building the things that will help the customer.

BRAD SMITH: I've asked Stewart Butterfield this numerous times about Slack hacks. He just told me a couple of his. What are some hacks that we're not using that we may should start using?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: Well, one that you probably don't have yet is the huddles that's coming out with the effects, which is bring people together in a video. But one of the things I use a lot is scheduled send because you don't want to bother somebody--

BRIAN SOZZI: There's a schedule send on Slack? I didn't--

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: Oh, my God. You didn't know that?

BRIAN SOZZI: I didn't know.

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: Oh, I'm so glad I told you.

BRIAN SOZZI: I'm not supposed to say that, but just as an authentic moment, like, I didn't know that.

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: Yes, so by the little send, there's a little-- you can-- there's a little carat that you can schedule it whenever you want. So sometimes I catch up on all my messages on the weekend, and I don't want to bother people. So I schedule send it for Monday morning.

BRIAN SOZZI: Wow, I didn't-- and it is OK to have your Do Not Disturb on. That's OK.

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: 100%.

BRIAN SOZZI: You put yours on. When do you set yours?

TAMAR YEHOSHUA: I put mine-- goes on every day at 10 o'clock and until the morning, I think it's 7:00 or 8:00. But every night, I have my Do Not Disturb on. If somebody needs to reach me, they can override it. But every night.