Use Emoji For Workplace Communication

Are Emoji Appropriate To Be Used In The Workplace?

Image: Emoji

Emoji are the famous digital pictograms used widely in various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, etc. In total there are 3304 Emoji in the Unicode Standard by March 2020. The most recent Emoji release is Emoji 13.0, which successfully added 117 new Emoji (Emojipedia, 2020).

Have you ever wonder who is the creator of Emoji? When were Emoji invented?

If you ask the search engine, Google or Bing, probably it will show you the same result as I found, which is:

The distinction between these keyboard stroke created symbols and Emoji is that the latter are small pictures, first introduced by Shigetaka Kurita in Japan in the late 1990s to provide contextual cues and emotional context on a mobile internet platform. (Skiba, 2016)

The first set of Emoji was released in the year 1999 and created by Shigetaka Kurita. “Emoji” is a transliteration of the Japanese words, which are 绘(e=picture), 文(mo=write), 字(ji=character) (Jacopo Prisco, 2018). But some of the definition stated that the meaning of emoji is picture (絵, pronounced eh), plus letter, or character (文字, mōji) (Johanna Mayer, 2019).

They are graphic symbols with predefined names and Unicodes, representing not only facial expressions, abstract concepts and emotions or feelings, but also animals, plants, activities, gestures or body parts, and other objects (Rodrigues et al., 2018). The word “Emoji” remains the preferred plural of Emoji in writing, though it’s less clear if this applies to the spoken word (Emojipedia, 2016).

Recently, human beings tend to express their feeling and be more comfortable by sending Emoji through chat. It makes an important checkpoint in the timeline of language evolution and human development. Simplicity, convenience and conduciveness for emotional expression are the main motivations attracting users to use Emoji.

What are the facts?

Image: The percentage of total Emoji used in various languages during communication

The popularity of Emoji is increased day by day. What are the insights that we really need to know?

1. Facebook revealed that more than 900 million Emoji without texts are sent on Messenger every day (CTV News, 2018).
2. Roughly 92% of online users reported that they sent Emoji while they were chatting in the year 2016. 50% of all the messages sent included Emoji (Emogi, 2017).
3. Nearly 50% of all the messages sent on Instagram contained Emoji (Dimson, 2015).
4. “Emoji” was named as the word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary in the year 2015. It reflected the popularity of Emoji in online communication. (Fullwood et al., 2015).

Are Emoji suitable to be used in the workplace?

Image: A doubt icon

Emoji never fail to provide the feeling of comfort to people while chatting virtually. Looking back to a decade ago, getting an email that contains an Emoji in the workplace would be definitely like spotting a tiger in the centre of New York City. It never happens, and if it did, people wouldn’t know how to react to this. (Laura Macpherson, 2020).

According to the older generation, it seems like Emoji are not suitable to be used for workplace or business communication. However, The younger generation has different opinions about this. They don't have any bad feelings while receiving Emoji in business-related emails. To explore further, some of the positive and negative results of using Emoji in the workplace or for business purpose are discussed.

Positive feedback and pros about the use of Emoji in the workplace:

1. Referring to Jon Gitlin (2020), 46% of young adults who are aged between 18 and 29 agreed that Emoji are suitable to be used for business purpose. The remaining 26% of them had a middle stand and 28% of them thought that Emoji are inappropriate to be used in the workplace.
2. According to Eric Griffith (2019), 63% of respondents said that Emoji increase the credibility of human beings to communicate and 73% of respondents agreed that Emoji increase the likeability of a person to communicate.
3. Referring to Peter (2017), among 1000 American workers, 76% of them have used Emoji for business purposes.
4. Emoji help writers to convey thoughts and feelings digitally by filling the void for facial expressions enhancing verbal communication (Hamza Alshenqeeti, 2016).
5. 55% of the emails now are read by using mobile devices (Return Path, 2017). Thus, there is a rise in the need to optimize the email subject lines. The length of the character in the email subject lines can be reduced by replacing some of the words with Emoji (Masooma Memon, 2019).
6. Emails that contain Emoji will be highly read by receivers. The increment rate is 45% (Werner, 2012).

Negative feedback and cons about the use of Emoji in the workplace:

1. According to Jon Gitlin (2020), 14% of professionals, especially who aged at least 45 years old, did not agree that Emoji can bring a positive impact on business communication.
2. Referring to Robert Half (2016), 57% of the employers (boss) think that it’s not appropriate at all to use emoji at work. While only 4% of employers (boss) see it is very appropriate to use emoji at work.
3. Emoji may make the users to be judged as less professionalism. A feeling of not taking the matter seriously will be given from the sender to the receiver. According to research, Emoji may not have a positive impact in a professional setting (Ella Glikson, 2017).
4. Not all the Emoji are supported by all the platforms. The receiver may not be able to interpret the Emoji if the receiving device does not support the display of similar Emoji, hence the receiving device will show a big black box or a question mark (Digi Domain, 2020).
5. The encoded meaning in Emoji will be reduced when multiple Emoji are implemented in a single line of text messages. The effectiveness of message delivery is reduced simultaneously (Lisa Furgison, 2020).

Image: Robert Half

Personal Reflection

The world is changing day by day so as human behaviour, human tend to think that using emoji at work show the unprofessional and it is not proper to use emoji at work. But different personnel have a different preference for the message writing style.

Therefore, here’s some small little personal suggestion for using emoji at work based on my personal opinion:

1. Do not use too much of emoji, it will confuse your reader and will distract your reader.
2. Use emoji that are commonly use, for example, smile face with open mouth, thumb and okay.
3. Understand the receiver before using emoji, know your audience. Because not all emoji is suited for the culture of the receiver.

Using emoji not only make our sentence clearer and it will tend to attract the reader as well, for me personally I will prefer to receive emails subject line that contains emoji because I will know what is the message conveying from the first sight. I see a tree or earth emoji mean this is about the environment, I see a bank note emoji I know this is money related, therefore this is very convenient when it is not overwhelmed.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, in my opinion, I agree that Emoji should be used in the workplace as it can help to convey the messages interactively and effectively. Nevertheless, Emoji may also lead to miscommunication if the receiver misinterprets the messages. Absolutely, adapting to the new trend of using in the workplace is still a long journey to go but I believe that the journey will be like the way of how the world changes to adapt to use text conversation instead of verbal conversation for business purpose.

Image: A Good icon.

References

1. CTV News (2018). Nearly a Billion Emojis Sent Each Day on Facebook Messenger. Retrieved from https://www.ctvnews.ca/
2. Digi Domain (2020). Using Emojis & Emoticons in Digital Marketing. Retrieved from https://digidomain.in/
3. Dimson, T. (2015). Emojineering Part 1: Machine Learning for Emoji Trends. Instagr. Eng. Blog 30.
4. Ella, G., Arik, C. and Gerben, A. V. K. (2017). The Dark Side of a Smiley: Effects of Smiling Emoticons on Virtual First Impressions. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
5. Emogi (2017). “2016 Emoji Report.” Retrieved from https://emogi.com/
6. Emojipedia (2016). “Emojis” on the Rise as Plural. Retrieved from https://emojipedia.org/
7. Emojipedia (2020). How Many Emoji Characters Are There?. Retrieved from https://emojipedia.org/
8. Eric Griffith (2019). Adobe Trend Report Shows More Emoji Use at Work. Retrieved from https://www.pcmag.com/
9. Fisher (2019). 5 Surprising Facts About Emojis. Retrieved from https://www.gofisher.net/
10. Fullwood, C., Quinn, S., Chen-Wilson, J., Chadwick, D. and Reynolds, K., (2015). Put on a Smiley Face: Textspeak and Personality Perceptions. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 18(3): 147–151.
11. Hamza, A. (2016). Are Emojis Creating a New or Old Visual Language for NewGenerations? A Socio-semiotic Study, 7(6), 57–69.
12. Jacopo Prisco (2018). Shigetaka Kurita: The man who invented emoji. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/
13. Johanna Mayer (2019). The Origin Of The Word ‘Emoji’. Retrieved from https://www.sciencefriday.com/
14. Jon, G. (2020). Is it OK to Use Emojis at Work? Retrieved from https://www.surveymonkey.com/
15. Laura, M. (2020). How Professionally Communicate With Emojis at Work. Retrieved from https://frontapp.com/
16. Lisa, F. (2020). Should Your Email Have Emojis?. Retrieved from https://juvlon.com/blog/
17. Lisbon Emoji and Emoticon Database (LEED): Norms For Emoji and Emoticons in Seven Evaluative Dimensions. Behav. Res. Methods 50, 1–14.
18. Massoma, M. (2019). Should You Use Emojis in Your Email Subject Line? Retrieved from https://www.getresponse.com/
19. Peter. (2017). 11 Emojis That Make You Look Really Unprofessional at Work. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/
20. Return Path (2017). Mobile is Now The Preferred Platform for Reading Email With More Than Half of All Email Opens. Retrieved from https://returnpath.com/
21. Robert Half (2016). Do Emojis Belong in the Workplace? Retrieved from https://www.roberthalf.com/
22. Rodrigues, D., Prada, M., Rui, G., Garrido, M. V., and Lopes, D. (2018). Motives, Frequency and Attitudes Toward Emoji and Emoticon Use. Telematics and Informatics, 35 (7), 1925 — 1934.
23. Skiba, D.J. (2016). Face with Tears of Joy Is Word of the Year: Are Emoji a Sign of Things to Come in Health Care?. Nursing education perspectives, 37(1), 56 — 57.
24. Werner, A. (2012). Thinking About Using Symbols in Your Email Subject Lines? Experian Marketing Services.