Three reasons asynchronous is the future of work

Allowing people to work at a time and a pace that suits is key to empowering us all to do the best work of our lives.

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Something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year is the benefits of working asynchronously. It’s a concept that has been around for centuries, and something we have embraced with renewed vigour at Slack this year.

Even though we adopted technologies that allowed us to work remotely long before the pandemic, we still

Arturo Arrarte, Slack’s head of enterprise for Asia Pacific

gravitated towards being in the office together. And the office is the natural home for synchronous communication where you’re in a back-and-forth conversation or discussion, for example in-person meetings and video calls.

There is a place for synchronous communication, but there are also huge benefits in empowering people to work at a time, and in a way, that suits them. Asynchronous communication allows people to first absorb and then act on information when they are able to, rather than the moment a piece of information is put in front of them. This is particularly useful when you’re working across time zones, but even when you work in the way I do, where having time to think on and internalise information before acting is critical.

Working across time zones is a cinch

Today it would be rare to find a company that doesn’t have to work across time zones, whether that’s within their own company or working with partners or suppliers around the world.

Culture Amp, an Australian-born global software company with offices in four locations across three continents, uses Slack to work asynchronously and stay nimble. Their 400 people in Melbourne, San Francisco, New York and London are able to review and act upon that information at a time that works best for them. Without this ability, Culture Amp would struggle to achieve alignment across such a geographically dispersed company, and would arguably not be able to operate at the pace and scale it does today.

At Slack, when the pandemic took hold back in March, we closed our 17 offices. Within three days we were fully remote, collaborating across multiple time zones, from our HQ in San Francisco to Melbourne to Tokyo to Paris. We’ve since announced that our offices will be closed until at least June 2021.

Prior to the pandemic, Slack had an in-office culture with only a small percentage of employees working remotely, so this was an adjustment for us, as it was for many others. Without the ability to have in-person meetings and to avoid sitting on video calls all day, we relied on our platform more than ever, having those same conversations in Slack.

The ability to work at your own pace and at a time that is best for you

Slack has also removed the expectation that work happens primarily between 9 and 5, which is where asynchronous work comes into its own. We encourage our people to work the hours that suit them and their lives, in the middle of what is a stressful time for everyone.

This is one of the transformative things about channel-based messaging, where messages and conversations live in channels. They remain there, ready to be interacted with. Work flows in a natural and efficient way despite the physical distance between our teams. And some of those all-important ‘water cooler’ conversations are now happening in Slack channels, rather than in person.

Something we didn’t anticipate was that by shifting everyone to remote, and working in this asynchronous way, people outside our San Francisco HQ started to feel like they were on a more equal footing. And the introverts among us felt more empowered to contribute on their own terms.

The benefit of time to reflect

There’s a natural emphasis within synchronous communication to make decisions on the fly, without allowing for time to step back and contemplate.

Asynchronous communication allows people to absorb information at their own pace, in their own way, and then deliver their thoughts with far greater impact. You are empowered to stop, think and process before committing your thoughts in writing. This has profound advantages – measured decision-making and clarity of communication around those decisions, which in turn leads to alignment within the team.

Something I observed during the early days of the shift to remote was that there were many companies simply replicating what they did in the office in a distributed environment. What this led to was back-to-back video calls, which we all know are a uniquely exhausting way to work. Rather than a video call where one person presents materials to many, a more effective use of that time could be for synchronous discussion about materials that are sent, and absorbed, well ahead of the meeting.

Just recently, we announced an asynchronous video prototype we’re working on called ‘Slack Stories’, which is a quick way to share a team message or status update as a video clip. It takes what we love about video – seeing faces and places – and separates it from the constant pressure of video calls and packed meeting schedules. It helps people collaborate in their own time instead of at the same time.

2020 has been a challenging year, no doubt. But one thing is clear - the way we have adapted will inform how we work for years to come, empowering us all to do the best work of our lives. Allowing people to work at a time and a pace that suits them is key to this.

Arturo Arrarte is Slack’s head of enterprise, Asia-Pacific

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