Why Slack Isn’t Enough for Employee Communities

Slack has become the default tool for internal communication.
So when organisations launch employee communities or ERGs, the instinct is simple: “Let’s just create a Slack channel.”

At first, it feels efficient. Familiar. Free.

But as communities grow, Slack quickly becomes a bottleneck rather than an enabler.

In this article, we’ll explain:

• Why Slack works well for chat—but not for communities

• The specific ways employee communities fail on Slack

• What successful organisations do instead

Slack was designed for conversations, not communities

Slack is excellent at what it was built for:

• Real-time messaging

• Fast collaboration

• Short-lived conversations

Employee communities need something different.

They require:

• Continuity over time

• Clear ownership and structure

• Visibility beyond active participants

• A shared sense of purpose—not just chatter

This mismatch is where problems begin.

The hidden problems of running employee communities on Slack

1. Conversations disappear, value doesn’t accumulate

Slack is chronological by design.
Important discussions, insights, and decisions quickly disappear under new messages.

For employee communities, this means:

• Repeated questions

• Lost institutional knowledge

• New members starting from zero

• No sense of progress over time

A community without memory cannot scale.

2. Community leads burn out

Most ERG and community leads already have full-time jobs.

On Slack, they must:

• Manually remind people about events

• Track attendance elsewhere

• Answer the same questions repeatedly

• Chase engagement across multiple channels

Without structure, running a community becomes invisible labour—and burnout follows.

3. Participation is shallow and uneven

Slack rewards the loudest and most available voices.

Common patterns:

• A small core posts regularly

• Most members lurk silently

• New members hesitate to jump in

• Participation drops between events

Slack shows activity—but not meaningful engagement.

4. No visibility for leadership

When communities live in Slack:

• Leaders can’t see participation trends

• Impact is anecdotal, not measurable

• Success depends on stories, not signals

This makes it hard to:

• Justify investment

• Secure sponsorship

• Scale successful initiatives

5. Communities become fragmented

As organisations grow, Slack sprawl sets in:

• Multiple channels for the same community

• Regional or chapter spin-offs

• Event threads mixed with discussion threads

Without a clear structure, communities become harder to navigate and easier to abandon.

Why Slack feels “good enough” — until it isn’t

Slack works well in the early stage of a community because:

• The group is small

• Everyone knows each other

• Context lives in people’s heads

But growth changes everything.

The moment you introduce:

• New members

• Chapters or regions

• Regular programming

• Leadership reporting

Slack stops scaling with you.

What employee communities actually need

Successful employee communities are supported by infrastructure, not just tools.

That infrastructure provides:

• A clear home for each community

• Persistent knowledge and resources

• Event visibility and attendance tracking

• Member discovery and participation signals

• Continuity as leaders rotate

This doesn’t replace Slack—it complements it.

Slack remains the conversation layer.
Community infrastructure becomes the system of record.

What successful organisations do differently

High-performing organisations:

• Use Slack for day-to-day conversation

• Use a dedicated platform to:

  • Organise communities

  • Track participation

  • Preserve knowledge

  • Measure outcomes

This reduces admin for community leads and gives leadership real visibility into what’s working.

👉 (Internal link suggestion: link “dedicated platform” to your /what page)

Slack vs community infrastructure (at a glance)

The real risk of relying on Slack

The biggest risk isn’t inefficiency—it’s missed opportunity.

Without the right infrastructure:

• Insights never surface

• Momentum fades

• Communities stagnate

• Leaders lose confidence

Employee communities don’t fail because people don’t care.
They fail because the systems don’t support them.

Final thought

Slack is a powerful communication tool—but it was never designed to run employee communities.

As ERGs and internal communities become more strategic, organisations need to move beyond “just another channel” and build something that can grow with them.

That’s where dedicated community infrastructure makes the difference.