As Covid-19 has forced companies across the globe to close offices and shift to a remote workforce, tech giant Slack is rethinking how its employees will work in the future.
The workplace collaboration platform, which opened an 80,000-square-foot office in Denver in 2019, has extended its office reopening past September 1, not offering a specific return date for employees.
In a blog post, Slack SVP of People Robby Kwok wrote that Covid-19 has made the company evolve.
"Slack is going to become a much more distributed company," he wrote. "That means most employees will have the option to work remotely on a permanent basis if they choose, and we will begin to increasingly hire employees who are permanently remote."
In July 2019, Slack said its Denver office housed 85 employees, with plans to grow that number to 150 by the end of the year. The office has employees from across the business, including product, design, engineering, customer experience, legal and sales.
In an email to Colorado Inno, a company spokesperson didn't go into detail on Slack's local hiring plans, offering only that "everything is on track."
"We’ve continued to hire over the past months to meet the surge in demand we’ve seen from new and existing customers," the spokesperson wrote.
The company currently has seven job openings listed on its website in Denver, across various departments including engineering, customer success and sales.
The Denver office features an open floor plan with dedicated seating, along with conference rooms and privacy spaces. In line with Slack’s philosophies, the space does not have traditional corner offices for executives.
The office also features beverages on tap and bulk snacks to minimize single-use packaging. In the blog post, Kwok acknowledged that shared-amenities like these will likely change whenever Slack returns to the office.
"While we’re still navigating exactly how and when our offices will reopen, we expect them to look quite different: fewer amenities such as catered lunches and coffee bars, less focus on in-person meetings with colleagues, and more options for focused solo work," he wrote.
Slack confirmed to Colorado Inno that it has 2,165 employees around the world, but didn't specify how this pandemic has altered local hiring plans, if at all.
Check out this gallery of the company's Denver office when it opened in 2019:
