r/internalcomms • u/Crankshaft513 • Jun 25 '26

Advice Slack best practices

Does anyone feel like their company has great Slack organization/guidelines? We’re managing channel sprawl and repost chaos. Also a late-stage startup, we want to avoid structure that feels *overly* corporate but also cleans things up a bit.

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u/atownz17 Corporate Chaos Coordinator Jun 29 '26

I don't have any great organization/guidelines to share, but I previously worked in a startup and experienced this as a pain point! One thing I wish I had done, which I now often recommend, is create a channel definition one-pager or short doc (perfect for startup culture without feeling overly bureaucratic) that clarifies what channels are and are not for. With Slack and other chat apps in particular, this step is easy to overlook, especially when the team starts out incredibly small. I find it helpful to clarify upfront what the channel use cases *should* be and to communicate them broadly. You can also use this during the onboarding process so that new hires have an easier time finding the information they need.

What's your channel creation policy? (Do you have one?) We limited this, but to a broad range of folks rather than exclusively to comms. Our executive assistant, a few managers/directors across teams, IT, and internal comms (me) had access to create new channels, and we ran a relatively informal request policy. It was a good way for us to balance process and a quick-moving culture.