There are plenty of benefits to remote work for employers—access to a wider talent pool, less overhead, better retention, and lower absenteeism, to name a few—but the communication downside can be significant.
Since 2020, collaboration and teleconference tools like Slack and Zoom (and with them Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and Meet, Hive, etc.) have been trying to solve that problem.
While it’s great to stay connected and engaged, it can also be overwhelming: Your team could be spending more time on meetings and calls and responding to messages than they do actually getting things done.
Let’s fix that.
Here are some handy tips to make using Slack and Zoom more efficient for remote workers. (Keep in mind most of the following can be applied to other collaboration and teleconferencing tools.)
Slack tips for remote employees
Slack can effectively help folks reduce their email load with group chats and direct messages. It can also lead to a whole new type of unread clutter. Here are a few ways to minimize the noise.
1. Update your status often. Just because you’re “on” Slack doesn’t mean you’re available or wish to be disturbed. Default status settings like “in a meeting” help manage response expectations, but feel free to customize your status. “Working on inventory for the next hour” not only indicates you won’t be available but also lets others know what you’re doing.
Using status messages gives you the freedom to focus on an important task without interruption—or feeling like you need to constantly check for messages.
2. Mute “less important” channels. There’s a difference between “important” and “urgent.” Messages in your own team channel or one like “#customer-complaints” might warrant immediate notification. But plenty of channels don’t need to pull you away from whatever task is at hand.
Mute the channels you can—or want to—check infrequently; that way you won’t get distracted by notifications that don’t require immediate attention.
3. Respond in threads. Joe from accounting posts a message to a main channel. Marcy responds. Anika responds. Joe responds to Marcy. Before you know it, the channel gets clogged and no one can tell which reply matches which.
Instead, respond in a thread to keep different conversations organized. It’s easy; simply click “Start a thread.”
4. Use reminders. Slack messages are often like emails: Many you want to handle or respond to them… but not right this minute. But if you don’t, you may forget.
The solution is simple: Set a reminder. Click the three dots at the far right of the message (where most of the message tools reside), choose “Remind me about this,” and choose an alert time.
5. Use “notify all” judiciously. Want to share something important? Include @channel in your message and everyone in the channel will be notified. (The same is true for @here, except only those who are actually on Slack at the moment you send the message will be notified.)
Rarely, though, does a message need to instantly be delivered to everyone. (A crisis for two shouldn’t be a crisis for everyone.) Simply post the message for people to read when they have time, and if a few people need to know right now, only tag them.
6. Create user groups. If you have more than four or five people on your team, posting all messages to one channel gets unwieldy fast. Creating user groups can streamline communication and better organize conversations.
User groups can be based on functional areas, roles, personal interests… whatever works for your business. Maybe you’ll have one for the shop floor and another for admin. Or one for supervisors of one department and another for all department heads.
An easy way to start is to think about how you tend to use email CC. If you often include the same people in certain emails, boom: create a user group. Then you can either go to that group to post your message or tag the user group in a general message.
7. “Pin” important information. Want people to be able to access certain information easily? Click “Pin to this conversation,” and the message or thread will appear under the “pin” icon at the top of every user’s screen. You can remove the pin when the information is out of date, which also makes it an easy way to post schedules, to-do lists, etc.
8. Protect work-life balance with DND. Create a custom notification schedule to automatically turn on Do Not Disturb (DND) at specific times of day or days of the week, like when you’re off the clock, at an appointment, or doing deep work.
9. Bring in people from outside the organization. Share a channel with up to 19 other organizations, making it easier to communicate with customers, vendors, partners, etc.
10. Streamline your workspace side panel. You can group channels into what Slack calls “Sections,” making it much easier to stay organized.
11. Use Slack canvas to capture and organize important project and vendor details. In April 2026, Slack rolled out Slack canvas, their version of a project management tool where teams can create, catalogue, and share important information like project FAQs, action items, status updates, relevant resources, and more.
12. Tap into AI assistance. Describe a process to Slack AI and let it draft the workflow for you. For example, if you want to create a weekly standup in Slack, simply prompt Slack AI to:
Ask everyone in your team channel to share their top priority for the week, along with any blockers every Monday at 9am
Compile those responses into a summary and post it in the channel by 10am
13. Try out Slack bots. This type of Slack integration runs inside your Slack workspace and can send messages, respond to inquiries and commands, or send reminders automatically. Jira Cloud, Trello, Zapier, Asana, Monday.com, Google Drive, and Notion all offer Slack bots that help teams track project status, receive important notifications, and ask questions without having to send a DM to anyone.
14. Huddle with ease. Slack huddles now open in their own window instead of blocking the sidebar, making them much easier to use. Plus, Slack AI can now auto-transcribe notes and spin up a post-huddle Canvas with highlights and action items. Pretty cool.
Want to stay on top of new updates? Slack announces new and upcoming features and provides links to tutorials on its updates and changes page.
Zoom tips for remote employees
By now, Zoom is second nature for most teams, whether they work in a remote work environment or not. Video calls are often the easiest way to get everyone together for a team meeting, which means many of us are spending more time on Zoom (or another video conferencing tool) than ever before.
Give these a try to keep your Zoom time as valuable as possible.
1. Set up waiting rooms. If your calendar is stacked with meetings and one runs over, it’s distracting when participants for the next meeting pop in before the last one concludes—or if they log in early, before the previous meeting has ended.
A waiting room takes care of the problem. To enable waiting rooms, log into Zoom on a web browser. Click “Meetings” on the main menu at left. Then click “Personal Meeting Room” at the top of the “Meetings” page. Scroll down and click “Edit this Meeting,” and under the “Meeting Options” section, check the box beside “Enable Waiting Room.” Then hit “Save.”
2. Record important meetings. Recordings are useful when all team members can’t attend in real time, for training purposes, or when information is relatively evergreen. For example, a friend recorded a new employee onboarding session a few months ago and now distributes the link to new employees.
The free version of Zoom lets you record a meeting on your computer; the paid version lets you save recordings to the cloud and then distribute a link to anyone you choose. Paid plans also include Zoom's AI Companion (an admin needs to enable it first). With this feature, Smart Recording automatically breaks long recordings into chapters and highlights. AI Companion can also generate a written meeting summary with key points and action items, and offers a "Catch Me Up" feature so anyone who missed the meeting can get a quick recap instead of having to watch the whole recording.
3. Use an external microphone. Teleconferences are difficult enough without having to strain to hear what is said. A decent external microphone solves the problem, cutting down on ambient noise while dramatically improving voice clarity.
Investing $50 to $75 on a decent microphone is well worth it. After all, if it’s important enough to be said… it’s important enough to be heard.
4. Control another attendee’s screen. Simply request control of a participant’s desktop and, once they approve, you can use their cursor. It’s a great way to provide technical support, run a demo, or highlight information on documents, spreadsheets, etc.
It also helps you avoid everyone waiting while a file gets emailed to you or the right person.
5. Help people stay engaged. Staying focused during an hour-long in-person meeting is tough. Staying focused during an hour-long teleconference is even tougher, especially if one or two people carry most of the conversation.
The best solution? Use the same strategies that work for in-person meetings:
Don’t hold meetings just to share information and updates. Use email or Slack instead.
Schedule meetings only for the time you need. Decide ahead of time how much time you need, based solely on what you need to accomplish, and schedule accordingly. If you only need 15 minutes, schedule 15 minutes. And end on time—or early if you accomplished everything on the agenda quickly.
Never let anyone (including yourself) “think out loud.” People who haven’t taken the time to prepare don’t need to participate.
Focus on action. Hold meetings to make decisions. Assign authority. Assign responsibility. When things happen, people pay attention.
6. Use recurring meetings wisely. If you tend to meet with the same people on a regular basis, Zoom makes scheduling those video meetings easy and convenient, especially since it uses the same meeting settings and meeting link.
But then there’s this: Research shows that while large groups are good at refining and improving existing ideas and designs, small groups are better at disrupting the landscape by coming up with new ideas, inventions, and opportunities. (As the researchers put it, “Small teams propel fresh ideas.”)
A 2025 study shows that brainstorming and problem-solving (the two should go hand-in-hand) are significantly more effective when people first come up with ideas by themselves, or with one or two other people at most, before regrouping.
As with many things, just because you can have recurring meetings doesn’t mean you should.
Zoom and Slack both make it easy for your employees to meet and collaborate. But sometimes, what people need most is the time and space to get important things done.
Make sure the way you use collaboration tools is designed to help people get things done.
Quick note: This is not to be taken as tax, legal, benefits, financial, or HR advice. Since rules and regulations change over time and can vary by location, consult a lawyer or HR expert for specific guidance.
FAQs
Why does Slack sometimes make communication worse instead of better for remote teams?
Slack reduces email volume, but its channels, DMs, and constant notifications can create a new kind of clutter that pulls focus away from actual work. The fix is to use features like custom statuses, muted channels, and Do Not Disturb schedules to control when and how messages reach you.
What's the best way to stop Slack from interrupting focused work?
Set a custom status describing what you're doing, mute channels that don't need immediate attention, and schedule Do Not Disturb during deep work blocks. Combining these habits lets messages wait in the background instead of triggering constant notifications, so you can decide when to check Slack rather than reacting to every ping.
How can I keep people engaged during a Zoom meeting?
Keep meetings decision-focused rather than informational. Share routine updates over email or Slack instead. Schedule only the time actually needed, avoid unprepared "thinking out loud," and end with clear action items and assigned owners. Engagement improves when a virtual meeting has a real purpose people need to show up for.
Should remote teams rely on recurring Zoom meetings?
Not automatically. Recurring meetings for distributed teams are convenient since they reuse the same link and settings, but research shows small groups generate better new ideas while larger, established teams are better suited to refining existing work. Before defaulting to a standing meeting, consider whether a smaller or one-off call would work better.
Do these Slack and Zoom tips apply to other tools like Microsoft Teams or Google Meet?
Yes, most of these habits are tool-agnostic. Status updates, muted notifications, threaded replies, and meeting-length discipline work the same way in Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and Meet, or Hive. The specific menu clicks differ, but the underlying goal to cut unnecessary interruptions applies across any collaboration platform.
