Corporate cubicles are awash with pink slips as a global economic slowdown spurs companies to be more careful with budgets and keep an eye on costs. In particular, tech companies aggressively hiring and ramping up growth plans, helped by the pandemic-driven digital boom, have cut jobs and laid off scores of employees as they slow down new experimentation and prepare for an adverse shift in the macro-environment. As companies navigate the crisis worldwide, the focus will be on efficiency and the wise use of available resources.
“I think what more and more organizations are concerned about is that I can no longer solve problems by just hiring a lot more people. And sometimes you can do more with less. The main thing will be how to become more efficient without spending more staff. A big part of that focus will be on employee efficiency, task efficiency, and getting the most out of the tools, techniques, and processes they use,” says Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO of Slack, Salesforce’s proprietary enterprise messaging app.
When push comes to shove, making organizations more efficient is often the company’s strategy, as this entails lower costs. “…it’s a lot cheaper to achieve 10% more efficiency in an organization than it is to hire 10% more people, especially in an environment like this. So there’s a lot of emphasis on efficiency, on understanding the ROI (return on investment) behind certain processes or businesses that we run,” says Henderson, who believes Slack can help companies streamline their processes and work efficiencies to increase. The CTO says that in India, which is an integral part of Slack’s APAC strategy, startups have been adopting the platform early.
“India continues to be an important region for us from a customer perspective… so we have expanded our local presence. We definitely see our early adopters as startups, especially on the tech side. No wonder then that unicorns came along within a few years. Adoption of Slack has always been slow in traditional organizations, but we’re seeing healthy growth there,” says Henderson.
