Slack - Group communications
At Axelerant, we operate as a fully remote, distributed team across multiple time zones. To support our collaboration and productivity, we prioritize asynchronous communication—which means work can continue and decisions can move forward even when not everyone is online at the same time.
To facilitate effective and efficient communication, we use Slack. Slack helps our team stay connected through organized channels, casual chats, team discussions, and cross-functional updates—both in real-time and asynchronously.
Learn more about Axelerant’s Communicationexpectations.
✅ What is Slack used for?
We encourage using Slack for both efficient communication and meaningful team bonding.
We do not expect team members to constantly monitor Slack after work hours or to be available at all hours.
Slack is best suited for:
Casual conversations, exciting links, and social engagement
Questions or requests needing faster/same-day responses
Real-time conversations with teammates in similar time zones and async updates for others
Sharing praise, gratitude, milestones, and celebrations
Non-urgent updates (often prefaced with "NRN" – No Reply Necessary)
Slack is not the best place for:
High-level discussions or company-wide decisions that require deeper reflection
Lengthy conversations—if a thread has extended replies, it’s a good time to move to a real-time call
Providing detailed or structured feedback—please refer to the Feedback, Giving guidelines
📵 Respecting Downtime
Everyone is responsible for managing their own downtime. This helps maintain a healthy work-life balance and allows team members to communicate freely without fear of disrupting others.
You can use:
Do Not Disturb (DND) mode when offline or focused
Custom notification settings on your devices
Slack features like "Remind me," stars, or "Mark unread" to track important messages
Please avoid sharing confidential information or client-sensitive data in public channels unless authorized.
🔒 Compliance & Ethics Reminder
Axelerant is committed to creating a respectful and inclusive environment. Please keep the following in mind:
Avoid using Slack to share personal opinions that may violate our code of conduct, including discriminatory, insensitive, or inflammatory content.
Do not use public channels for private matters.
Ensure all communication aligns with Axelerant’s values, including Enthusiasm, Kindness, and Openness.
When in doubt, communicate with care and assume best intent while preserving professionalism.
Use status and profile to communicate the availability
Share your status to let folks know when you’re out sick, on vacation, or in a focus period. Also, Slack profiles include lots of great information like time zones and office hours. Ensure yours is filled out to help folks understand how best to communicate with you and check others as you work with them.
Display Picture for Slack
We recommend adding your photo as a display on Slack as it helps build a stronger connection with your colleagues and adds a human touch to our remote interactions.
Use a recent photo of yourself, which is a truthful representation of you.
To maintain a professional and authentic environment, kindly avoid using logos, animated images, animals, memes, avatars, other digital imagery, etc., as your profile photo.
Keep it simple.
Be deliberate about your notifications.
We recommend keeping Slack’s recommended notification settings: only direct messages, @you, and highlight words. These settings eliminate worry about missing important messages without your phone or computer going off all day with less important conversations.
Too many channel notifications
Use the /mute option within a channel to only receive notifications in which your username or another desired keyword is mentioned for that channel.
Directing others within threads
Use
^to indicate; look just above.Use
^^to indicate; look at the beginning of the threadUse @name to target people for a response
Use #channel to reference a channel
Get away from Slack when you need to focus
Which doesn’t necessarily mean quitting it. You can set yourself away, activate Do Not Disturb, or set your status to a focus mode when you want to focus on something without interruption.
Don’t constantly check chat messages.
Having unread messages on Slack doesn’t mean you have to read them immediately! Let people get on with their work while you get on with yours. Save message-checking for when you are out of your focus zone.
@channel or @here?
Including @channel in a message will notify everyone in the chat room. Using @here will only notify the people who are online at that moment.
For non-urgent announcements, @here is always best.
Use @channel for emergencies only — it sends push and email notifications to everyone, including people who may be offline or on vacation.
Alternately, use the relevant `@cs-team`, `@sales-team`, `@team-engg-mgmt`, or another group alias to notify the desired people.
Creating new channels
Create channels using a naming convention like the following. And don’t forget to invite relevant people.
opp-TBDfor opportunitiesevent-TBDfor events
Not interested in a channel?
/leave it.
Recognize others
When people do well, recognize them, which makes them feel good for themselves and you. Use /recognize to open a helpful dialog box.