17 Slack Applications to Improve Your Work Culture and Onboarding Process

When Slack was first introduced, it was thought of as a tool that could provide office and remote workers the ability to message and send files across their organization in microseconds. However, Slack has since proven to be more than just a messaging app. It is considered one of the most powerful collaboration platforms in the business world with thousands of integrations and third-party apps that can do everything from facilitating the sales cycle to fostering a positive office culture. The team building niche has recently seen a massive spike in traffic and thus, in this article, we are going to look at the top fifteen Slack apps and bots that can help improve collaboration, encourage team building, and grow an office culture that breeds success.

Simple Poll

Simple office polls are a great way to figure out what to get a quick consensus from your staff. Whether you’re trying to decide what to order for the team lunch or what to name the latest project, Simple poll has got you covered. This easily integrated Slack application allows users to create quick polls directly within the chat interface for channels or groups that can provide results in mere minutes. Once installed, all it takes to create a poll in Slack is a slash and the poll information, and you have yourself a poll with real-time results.  

Donut Bot

Donut is an app that strengthens your team's relationships, culture, trust and collaboration by connecting co-workers together and promoting positive social interaction. Whether it’s going out for coffee, lunch, or of course, donuts. Too shy to reach out? You can even create a coffee/lunch roulette to motivate co-workers to get out and meet each other. Donut is a great tool to fast track the onboarding of new members on your team.

Polly

Polly want a survey? Polly is another polling app that helps get quick and easy feedback from your whole team. Need to know who can make the meeting, or what font to use for the new website?  Polly makes this quick and easy, with a built in native multi-question that has been shown to boost participation rates by over 30% compared to email or web based surveys.  

Troops

Troops is the easiest way to use Salesforce directly from the Slack interface. The app allows teams to manage, collaborate and report on sales pipelines. Centralize key sales workflows, keep your team in the loop, celebrate wins and scale together.  Troops is the perfect Slack application to keep a tight-knit sales organization running smoothly.

Giphy

Look, we live in a Gif world, and Giphy brings these amazing short videos to Slack. Once installed, users can easily send Gifs to individual users or channels with a simple /giphy (Any Phrase). It is that simple, and your team will love the bonus of being able to send funny and reaction Gifs to their colleagues!

Zoom

A video conferencing software; Zoom integrates with Slack with ease to create a messaging and video interface that is seamless. Once installed, users can start an instant video meeting with a couple of clicks right from the Slack interface, and the video quality is excellent. This app is great for those who are remote or in-house and helps build an office culture of communication across teams.

CultureBot

Tettra

Tettra is a customizable and easy to use wiki page for your company, all contained within the Slack app. This powerful tool can help onboard new hires by having a simple FAQ and key contact pages, or can assist in project updates and even tracking products. The beauty of Tettra is that it is moldable to your companies look and brand, and can even be seen as a quick reference document for most seasoned employees. Skip the intranet wiki, and see how Tettra can be your companies hub for increased collaboration across divisions, all contained within Slack.  

Leo

Leo is a great app that integrates with Slack to provide company executives or team leads with employee feedback in a non-formal and anonymous setting. The app allows leadership to ask questions on the various Slack channels and once answered, leadership will be able to see how the company as a whole feels about specific topics. All Leo surveys are completely anonymous, and data collected does not have identifiable traces to ensure employees can be as honest as possible. Leo comes pre-populated with questions that are focused on specific categories such as employee satisfaction, but you can also ask your own!

Lunch Train

Lunch time is a particularly important time for employees, and for those who like to head out for a bite to eat, it can be hard to avoid spamming the channel to figure out where and when everyone is heading out. This is where Lunch Train comes in, it is an integrated bot that allows people to opt-in to join the lunch train and get instructions on when and where. It is simple, it is useful and most of all, it can help connect your team on a deeper level.

Trello

Trello is one of the most used project management tools in the start-up space, and it can easily integrate with Slack. Once integrated, you can use slack to assign team members to a project, add a comment to a card, update or add a due date to a card and link boards. Stop jumping around from tab to tab, with the Slack/Trello integration, you can manage entire projects and collaborate with your team from directly within Slack.

Trivia

Trivia is a fun and engaging app which offers a suite of games, quizzes and puzzles to get your peers excited before a big day at work or while working remotely at your home. Trivia introduces real time quizzes and games which strengthens the camaraderie among your team. Trivia is available on both Slack & MS Teams which makes it even more exciting because now you get to have fun right inside your workspace.

HeyTaco

We all love tacos, and we all love custom prizes. This is why HeyTaco is one of the best apps for Slack for team building. Users can award people tacos for good work, and tacos can, in turn, be redeemed for personalized prizes. People are only given five tacos a day, but depending on your office culture, taco trains do start to become the norm after a big project is completed.

Slackbot

A pre-installed app that comes with Slack, Slackbot is a great bot that includes helping users with questions about the app and can even be programmed with automatic responses. Many companies have utilized this app to send alerts, tasks, and reminders, but the possibilities are practically endless. As a pre-installed bot, Slackbot is accessible for anyone who installs the application from day one.

GreetBot

The GreetBot app is pretty self-explanatory. It greets people. It sounds simple, but the more ways you can help new members feel welcome and informed when they join your team, the better. Appropriately onboarding new team members can help ease them into your office environment and will improve productivity.

Duuoo

Duuoo is a modern performance management platform working to change the way managers engage with their workforce. Its features facilitate discussions between managers and employees about career goals and professional development by helping set up one-on-one meetings, reviews and manager feedback. The Duuoo Slack integration will allow you to set up reminders to schedule check-ins and can even automate the collection meeting talking points.

How does it help?:

• Organizes notes, schedules meetings, talking points, and continuous feedback loops throughout the year.
• Aims to strengthen the relationships between managers and employees.
• Built-in reminders to make sure you never miss a meeting.

Jotform

Jotform is a free online form builder you can use to collect feedback from your colleagues and employees to gain insight into them. Jotform has a suite of multiple apps that help boost your productivity and encourage team collaboration. Use one of their many templates and their Slack integration to create a form and choose which channel to show it in. Once a form is submitted, each channel or person included in the integration will be automatically notified. Jotform is a great way to reduce Slack clutter and get important tasks sent directly to you.

Slack is a powerful tool, and its use for the purpose of team building and collaboration has genuinely made it one of the most powerful business applications available on the market today. Whether you’re looking for collaborative tools or a simple way to promote a positive office culture, these fifteen apps and bots are a perfect way to help your company foster a positive work environment all through Slack.

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