There’s the work that employees do, then there’s the work that employees do to get to the point where they can get to their actual work. Think of someone whose job it is to respond to the emails sent to a specific address. They may rely on a panoply of filters, automatic replies and saved searches to get through the correspondence in a timely fashion – and they had to do work to identify the parts of their job that could be standardized, then configure the tools and workflows that help them get to the real work of their job.
Slack’s recently-introduced Slack Templates are the company’s newest offering to take the “work of work” off employees’ to-do lists. The new templates comprise a feature that allows users to automate routine tasks or processes, either by crafting their own sequence of steps within a Workflow, selecting and/or customizing one of the templates from the template library, or selecting a colleague’s workflow from a shared workspace’s Workflow Gallery.
What’s intriguing is how the company positioned this automation feature as targeting “low-value” tasks – leading one to wonder how value is assigned to a task and whether automation really is going to boost the value of the work that people do. No Jitter talked to Olivia Grace, Senior Director of Product Management at Slack, about how to define the value of a task, where these tasks fit within an organization’s greater goings-on, and whether it’s possible for someone to set up the templates that eventually eliminate their jobs.
No Jitter (NJ): Slack explained the new feature as "Workflows automate manual, low-value tasks that take up time and effort, so you can focus on the work that matters most." How are you defining "low-value" in terms of tasks?
Grace: According to Slack’s Workforce Index survey, the top three low-value tasks consuming employee time are: unnecessary meetings, routine email management, and excessive paperwork/data entry. While these activities are essential for business operations, they don't advance strategic goals.
Templates – and their associated workflows – help workers eliminate tasks that might be extraneous to their core expertise. For example, if you’re hired as a salesperson, your job is to sell, not do tasks like data entry, building project channels, or copy-paste information between systems. Templates handle those tasks that consume time better spent on tasks directly within a worker's area of expertise.
NJ: Where do low-value tasks fit into the bigger organizational picture and what do these tasks contribute or do they comprise more complex tasks? How do Slack templates ensure continuity of task completion for things that used to be the province of one or more people's jobs?
Grace: Low-value tasks are routine activities that keep operations running smoothly but require minimal expertise, making them ideal for automation.
Slack templates centralize some of that critical “work of work” into standardized frameworks. For example, the kickoff of a new project requires creating new channels, drafting resource materials — like canvases — and developing workflows.
By having these processes pre-built, teams can quickly replicate tasks and work that previously relied on individuals' valuable time and resources. This standardization helps retain organizational knowledge and keeps workflows steady and accessible — making it possible to kick off and manage work with less setup time and greater reliability.
NJ: How did you determine the optimum series of steps and outcomes in the pre-built templates?
Grace: Our decision on which templates to build and their content was made after extensive research. We reached out to customers of various sizes, internal teams across different industries, and conducted user research and data science studies. The goal was to identify the most common and widely applicable best practices that could be standardized in our templates.
For example, project management is a common task across many roles, whether it's a journalist organizing articles or a product manager handling queries. Recognizing its ubiquity, we made it part of our template offerings. Then, we collaborated deeply with customers, internal teams, and data scientists to identify the essential components of project management, such as trackers, issue gathering, updates, and weekly reports.
By thoroughly understanding best practices from various industries, companies of many sizes, and systems, we aimed to create templates that reflect these established workflows and needs.
NJ: One of the core premises for these templates seems to be that routinized work makes up a lot of a person's workload. What kind of jobs are heavily standardized and good for automation?
Grace: In general, it's not that certain jobs are more suited for templating. Instead, our research shows that almost every job has components that can be improved by templating.
For example, in my role as a senior product leader, I often need to gather input from multiple people. Instead of reaching out individually, I can automate this process using templated workflows and lists. We run team meetings on a weekly basis at the same time every week with the same agenda gathering every week – we automate this with templates.
Templates focus on improving the repeatable and predictable parts of jobs, not entire jobs.
