Beyond email: could startup Slack change the way you work?

Two million people are already using Slack to chat, send emojis and encourage creativity at work. Nasa and Harvard are on board - will your company be next?

Erica Baker likes poker. So did many of the engineers she spent 10 years working with at Google, in the California headquarters of one of the world's most valuable technology companies. When she was eventually invited to a poker night with other engineers, the group of white, male colleagues fell silent as she walked into the room. "That did not feel good," she says. "I get that it's comfortable to be around people like you, but it's also pretty important to be around people who are not like you - it helps one grow as a human being. That was the point where I started to get fed up with Google."

Around the same time, in late November 2014, Baker joined a local Black Lives Matter protest after the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. When she posted a photo to Twitter, Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Slack, a new chat tool for use at work, sent her a message: "Stay safe." She says, "I just thought, 'Holy crap - that's a tech CEO!' " She left Google to join Slack as an engineer in May 2015.