With more people working from home and communicating with colleagues on various apps, like Slack and Teams, emojis are gaining popularity in the workplace.
In 2015, Oxford English Dictionary chose 😂—a pictogram!—as the word of the year. Five years later, Fred Benensonrewrote Herman Melville’s Moby Dick entirely in emojis (an excellent—albeit nonsensical—read). No matter how much you might try, it’s difficult to escape the emoji explosion in today’s tech world, and this includes in the workplace.
Before I explain why we should embrace this new language, I must note that there’s a difference between using emojis with people inside and outside your organization, and it can be important to distinguish between the two. A survey of 560 workers revealed that “employees of all ages think it’s best to stay away from using emojis with customers.” Similarly, Jennifer Galona of Grammarly says, “Because you can’t be sure how people outside your company will react, it’s generally best to keep emoji use in emails to internal communication.”
That said, there’s a strong argument for crossing those lines in some situations. A study on the use of emojis in healthcare by Petcoff et al. found that patients are able to communicate their feelings better when using emojis than when they try to “fit thoughts into medical lingo.”
Ultimately, whether you use emojis at work depends on context. However, completely ignoring their benefits and having a blanket ban on their use seems, to me, a missed opportunity. Here’s why.
Emojis Convey Emotion
For those of us who work from home and talk to colleagues through our keyboards, emojis offer a solid replacement for facial expressions. Consider the difference in tone between “Would you please update the rota? Thanks.” and “Would you please update the rota? Thanks 😁.” That single smiley at the end makes all the difference by displaying the emotion embedded within the request. Yes, we have punctuation at our disposal to add a tone to our writing, but it just isn’t as powerful as a happy face staring back at us from our screens.
As Yokoi and Jordan wrote in the Harvard Business Review, emojis “can help clarify meaning behind digital communications, as well as the type and strength of emotions being expressed.” A blog post by the staff at Slack, a cloud-based communication platform, supports the view that emojis add value to workplace chat: “They let people convey a broad range of emotions,” it says, “and in a way that words sometimes can’t.”
Similarly, the absence of an emoji or the use of a less positive-looking one could convey a different emotion altogether.
They Save Time
When emojis were first introduced in 1999, a single 👍 might have been seen as an abrupt response to a message. However, now, with everyone always so busy, those fluent in emoji understand that it’s a perfectly acceptable acknowledgment that takes a lot less time than typing, “Thanks for the message. That’s all understood,” while expressing similar sentiments.
We’re not just limited to the “thumbs up,” either. Since we are so used to emojis, we use them selectively to communicate in a way that typed words might not allow. In a survey conducted by Duolingo and Slack, “69% of American respondents say emojis allow them more nuance, while 67% think it speeds up communication.”
Language is constantly evolving to accommodate how we live and work. After all, pretty much every profession uses dozens of acronyms to quicken communication. Emojis are merely the next step in this natural development.
Emojis Add an Informal Touch
Emojis add a more relaxed tone to workplace communications, reflecting a perceived friendlier culture.
One senior leader told the Harvard Business Review that he uses them “as pick-me-ups to energize and to drive positive moods and behaviors.” Whether you work from home or in the office, managers largely dictate the tone and mood, so if they use emojis, they could contribute massively to a more positive atmosphere.
They’re a Modern Language—or Are They?
There’s much debate about whether emojis are a language, and it depends on the definition of “language” you prefer to adopt. If you’re convinced that a language needs to have grammatical rules, for example, then emojis don’t qualify. On the other hand, if you’re happy with defining a language as a system of symbols for expressing thoughts and feelings, then they do.
What there’s not much debate about, though, is that emojis contribute significantly to communication and evolve with time. Many people use them daily when texting their friends and family. What’s more, a new set of emojis is introduced annually, much like prominent dictionaries announcing their words of the year. Both these annual updates reflect recent communicative changes and provide evidence of their use and relevance in the modern world. So, why should the workplace lag behind the outside world?
If we’re being pernickety about things, in 2017, archaeologists in Turkey unearthed a 4,000-year-old pot with a smiley drawn onto its side. Pictorial communication has been around longer than we might have thought, so it’s fair to expect the workplace to keep up.
They’re Useful Read Receipts
Here at How-To Geek, when Jason, our Editor-in-Chief, makes an important announcement on our Slack channel, we writers are expected to add an emoji reaction to show that we’ve understood and read the message.
This has several benefits. First, it saves Jason from having an overload of notifications popping up on his computer with people replying to his message. Also, it keeps the channel tidy, meaning the announcement stays prominent without being watered down by comments. Finally, it’s a quick and easy way for Jason to make a head count of those who have seen and acknowledged the message and those who haven’t, tying in with my earlier point about emojis saving time.
Use Emojis With Caution!
As you can probably tell by now, I’m a big advocate for emojis at work. Do, however, approach their use with caution. For example, 💋, 👅, 💩, and 🍆 are very likely to be deemed inappropriate in the workplace context (if you don’t understand what I mean, check out Emojipedia). About 58% of respondents in Duolingo and Slack’s survey said that they didn’t know that specific emojis have multiple meanings, so if they are used in the workplace, care should be taken to ensure they convey the intended meaning.
If you’re new to using emojis, the best bet is to stay safe, and stick to thumbs-ups and smileys!
All in all, context is key. If you’re new to a workplace, read the room. Are emojis used by others, and are they used often? Are they appropriate for your workplace or the conversation you’re currently having? Emojis aren’t intended to replace traditional forms of written communication—instead, they support it. When used sparingly and appropriately, emojis are vital time-saving, emotion-conveying tools in online workplace chat and should be embraced in the modern world.