Slack, the popular instant messaging service used by scores of businesses worldwide, is picking up the slack as employees need to catch up on internal training.
This week, the cloud-based company is pausing business operations to force the team to complete training sessions.
Business Insider reports that staff members are reportedly ‘frustrated’ by the extra work given, filling their week just to complete the training materials.
Forcing down the training
Every company knows this feeling all too well. Forcing staff members to complete compulsory training can be as tedious as it sounds. Slack expects employees to complete training on Salesforce’s Trailhead platform by the start of next year. These modules include topics like the fourth industrial revolution and eating healthy.
In an internal message to employees leaked to the media, slack CEO Lidiane Jones reportedly forced employees to use business hours this week to complete the training and make progress.
She writes: “It’s important that we all reach Ranger status this year, and I want to ensure that everyone has focus time to upskill on Trailhead. I know this will disrupt and slow V2MOM progress for many of us – we are making this a priority now so we can quickly get back to work on our roadmaps.” She is referring to the business’ yearly strategy planning document.
No more slacking
Fortune reports that staff, including Slack engineers, were trying to speed up their training tasks, including “building codes that could automate tasks and click through modules for them.”
The company has responded to media queries, expressing its commitment to “learning and development of employees,” but stopped short of confirming or denying allegations of engineers trying to find loopholes.
A spokesperson told Business Insider that the training is essential, especially “with the rapid acceleration of generative AI.” The spokesperson says the entire company is working to reach Ranger status on Trailhead. That means each worker has to spend around 40 hours on the platform. That means each employee has to commit to at least eight hours a day for the entire week to upskill their career, whether they want to or not.
It’s unclear what will happen to people who have not reached the target of Ranger by the deadline next year. The chief of staff reportedly told employees if they don’t finish the training, it “will make Slack look bad compared to other clouds.”
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Mia is a multi-award-winning journalist. She has more than 14 years of experience in mainstream media. She's covered many historic moments that happened in Africa and internationally. She has a strong focus on human interest stories, to bring her readers and viewers closer to the topics at hand.
