Shopify has a work culture that allows employees work from remote locations over the last two years. Even before transitioning to work from home, the company provided employees with free lunches, a yoga studio and a massage room within the office premises.
Now, when employees are working independently from home, Shopify is monitoring their Slack conversations with the help of Channel Champions, claims a report published by Business Insider. The report quoted some of the Shopify employees saying that the tech giant is moderating Slack conversations and using measures to discourage heated arguments.
Channel Champions
Shopify has reportedly appointed Channel Champions, who are basically employees that volunteered to keep an eye on open communications. These champions keep communication channels focused on work by closing down conversations and even channels when conversations take an ugly turn.
The report cited employees saying that Shopify “implemented measures to discourage negative and off-topic discussions of the company and its plans”. It was when the company allowed remote work when it asked some of its employees to volunteer as Channel Champions for communication channels with more than 100 participants. Their work is to make rules and report and stop bad behavior and the spread of hate speech.
Switch Before Layoffs
The report published on Tuesday anonymously cited eight of Shopify’s current and past employees. These employees added how Shopify started strict monitoring a few months before the infamous layoffs. Earlier, the Canada-based multinational company had a more information-sharing and relaxed culture, added the report.
On July 26, Shopify removed 10 percent of its workforce citing failure of an overestimated bet on e-commerce growth, which was first seen in the COVID-hit 2020.
“Shopify has to go through a reduction in workforce that will see about 10% leave by the end of the day. Most of the impacted roles are in recruiting, support, and sales, and across the company we’re also eliminating over-specialized and duplicate roles, as well as some groups that were convenient to have but too far removed from building products,” CEO Tobi Lutke announced the layoffs.
Shopify’s Reply
When asked about the Slack controversy, a spokesperson from Shopify replied to entrepreneur.com that Slack is “a tool to help us facilitate asynchronous decision making, establish community and, most importantly, accomplish the work we do on behalf of our millions of merchants. Given our large, distributed workforce, we have policies to ensure our Slack remains a productive tool for sharing information, collaborating, and building a healthy culture”.
