Businesses should rethink the way staff use their time in offices, says the boss of the messaging platform Slack.

With the rise of hybrid working, lots of people now divide their working week between home and going into their workplace.

But being in the office should be an opportunity to do things that cannot be done at home, argues Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive.

Sitting at a desk with headphones on is not one of them, he says.

Of course the boss of an online messaging platform is not going to go so far as to say staff should leave their laptops at home, but he does say it would “put a strong line in the sand about what the purpose is of getting together”.

Slack has headquarters in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and India.

Reflecting on its offices before the pandemic, Mr Butterfield says: “The 80% of the floor space that we dedicated to kind of factory-farm, battery-chicken housing for people to use their desks all by themselves and listen to their headphones, and not talk to anyone else… was a bit of a waste.”

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