The Emoji (R)evolution At Work

Emojis boost connection and collaboration for remote-first and hybrid workers

Zooming in, emojis have a bigger impact on connection and collaboration for respondents who work in a remote-first or hybrid setting. However, for people who work in an office environment, the impact of emojis is greater on their productivity. This may be because there are more opportunities in an office for incidental connection and socializing, as opposed to remote-first or hybrid settings, so office workers don’t rely as heavily on emojis to connect and collaborate.

Remote-first and hybrid workers use emojis the most 💻

This might not come as a surprise considering the above findings, as many remote-first workers often rely more on text based communications when working together, either online or asynchronously. 

67% of Baby Boomers love seeing emojis in email, whereas Gen Z prefer to see them in instant messaging

Zooming out, when we look at the different generations of respondents, emojis are used in a variety of different communication tools.

For Gen Z (82%) and Millennials (87%), instant messaging (Slack, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams or similar) is the most preferred, whereas Gen X (84%) and Baby Boomers (85%) opt to include emojis most in text messaging (SMS). 

Interestingly, across all generations, documents are mostly kept emoji-free. Gen Z (15%) may sometimes sprinkle them in, but you probably won’t see a 😇 or 🐶 in a doc from a Boomer (6%).

However, where email is concerned, the results are flipped. Boomers (67%) will be happy to see your emojis in an email while Gen Z (28%) may not need a lot of them to get the message. 

Who in the team uses emojis the most (and what emojis do they use)?

When it comes to frequency of use, 91% of respondents who identified as a Manager or Team Leader said they used them at work (with 49% admitting to using emojis daily). Closely followed by team members at 89% (46% daily) and interns at 79% (35% daily). 

Are you curious about what emojis are the most used by managers in our study? Turns out they’re very similar to the ones used by both team members and interns. While all three groups have the 👍, 😊 and 😂emojis in common, the remaining two are different in flavor.

Managers use emojis to be supportive and offer praise (🙏👏), while team members and interns use emojis that are more expressive or responsive (❤️😁). This is perhaps reflective of the relationships between the three roles, but further study would be required to confirm this. 

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🤬🖕🍆💩🍑 Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X know these emojis are a no-no at work. Are Baby Boomers just trying to be polite?

Not many workplaces have a set of rules or conventions for how to use emojis. There might be guidelines around what is and isn’t appropriate for overall usage, but for individual emojis and their intended meaning, it’s culturally – and often workplace – specific. 

A significant finding here is that Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z have intuitively learned what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to which emojis are a no-no at work. Their top 5 emojis are the same, just in slightly different orders when asked to rank them, while  Baby Boomers only share two of those emojis (💩🤬). 

Baby Boomers get a bad wrap when it comes to technology and keeping up with the younger generations nipping at their heels. But for a generation that hasn’t been using the Internet, let alone emojis, for their whole lives, they perhaps understand some of the nuance but might just be trying to be polite. 
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Out of 94 countries, Australia uses emojis the most at work 🐨🦘

As you may have experienced, emojis can have multiple meanings – and these meanings not only differ from context to context, they can also differ country to country, including how often they’re used. 

To determine which country used emojis the most and least at work we compared the results of statistically significant samples from each country, with a large enough representation.

Based on this approach, interestingly, the USA ranks fifth highest Emoji users globally, preceded by:

When it comes to the biggest daily users of emojis, South Africa leads with Australia and New Zealand following closely behind, with the Philippines and the USA bringing up the rear. 

The bottom line: Emoji usage offers valuable insights into how our teammates think, feel and like to communicate at work

What we’ve learned is that there are different types of people who will naturally engage with emojis and equally, those who don’t. It’s important not to stereotype your teammates based on how much (or how little) they use emojis. But you can use F4S’ research into emoji usage to better understand each other and optimize connection, collaboration and productivity at work.

Introducing F4S for Zoom!

Want to learn how to use emojis for better time spent in Zoom? Discover your communication style – and those of the people you meet and work with – by signing up to F4S for Zoom.