Community Chest: To Emoji or not to Emoji, that is the Question
2 minute read | February 26, 2018
OK, so that’s as far as our knowledge of Hamlet extends, and for those of you die hard Shakespeare fans, we appreciate that the above may be in bad taste, apologies.
Back to the matter in hand. Should we use emojis or emoticons in business communications? We scoured the internet to see what everyone in the ether thinks and found out the following:
It may make your colleagues think you are less competent
This is according to researchers from Ben-Gurion University and Amsterdam University. Whilst this may mean you can duck out of being assigned important tasks, it can also put a dampener on those thoughts of promotion. And in the workplace you can’t guarantee they’re going to engender feelings of warmth.
They can convey tone
Apparently, emoji free communication can suffer from the ‘negativity effect’ and for business usage you are best sticking to the face emojis rather than fireworks or musical notes.
However, what tone are they conveying? A few things to consider…
- Emoji fonts can differ between platforms which can turn a grinning emoji into a grimacing emoji in the blink of an eye
- If you’re not sure what it means then don’t use it – you don’t want to accidentally be offensive
- If your subject matter is serious then the use of emojis is never appropriate
Limit your emojis
If you must emoji, the advice out there is to limit yourself to 1 emoji for every 3 paragraphs. Live chat however opens the floodgates to once every few sentences.
Culture Club
Although the use of emojis is fairly consistent in all age groups on social platforms, culture and gender can sometimes create a divide so in the workplace it’s wise to use judgment and mirror the sender.
And finally, if your workplace culture is not a fit then it’s probably best to avoid them altogether.
On that note, if you’d like to help celebrate emojis then you can, on World Emoji Day!
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