Office Icons: Emojis In The Digital Workplace

The ubiquity of emojis in some of the most unserious corners of the internet, like in Twitter/X memes, flirtatious DM convos, and TikTok meaning-swapping pranks, has arguably solidified them in our collective consciousness first and foremost as playfully casual, sometimes unhinged conversational companions.

But anyone who spends their working hours click-clacking away at their email job, posting updates to and networking on LinkedIn, or circling back and touching base with coworkers on corporate messaging platforms is well aware that emojis have also made a place for themselves in the internet’s professional spheres as tools for business-minded individuals, companies, and brands to stand out and connect with each other online.

Keep reading to learn how emojis are used in the digital workplace and in professional communications, content, and discourse.

👔 Corporate-Coded Emojis

Before we dive into how emojis are used in professional communication, it’s worth mentioning a handful of certain emojis that represent all sorts of work-related, office-adjacent ideas, concepts, and things.

The 💼 Briefcase and the 🏢 Office Building are natural choices to talk about work, business, and office life. And the 👔 Necktie is many a white-collar worker’s quintessential corporate uniform (though, ironically, many vendors’ versions overlay it on a blue shirt, many with a blue collar).

The 🖥️ Desktop Computer and 💻 Laptop are for many associated with work projects, whether creative and design-oriented or highly code-based and technical, and the 📧 Email and the 📅 Calendar can stand in for the infrastructural elements of working culture that keep everyday office life running.

The 📎 Paperclip, 🗄️ File Cabinet, 🗃️ Card File Box, 🗂️ Card Index Dividers, and 📝 Memo are emojis that evoke real-world relics of the pre-digital era in which files were physical sheets of paper and Rolodexes were original social networks. Today, the 📁 File Folder and 📂 Open File Folder can represent the sorting systems of these analog days or their contemporary computerized counterparts.

Emojis like the 📈 Chart Increasing, the 📉 Chart Decreasing, and the 📊 Bar Chart are often invoked to talk about all things money, markets, and financial forecasts and reports.

@emojipediaofficial This #EmojiOfTheWeek has a great ROI 📈🤑 #emojis #finance #money #stocks #stockmarket #internet #internettrends #internetculture ♬ Trap, hip hop, dark beat ♪(963369) - Ninja_Muzik_Tokyo

And then there are, of course, a few emojis to talk about the actual people doing work in professional settings—among them the 🧑‍💼 Office Worker, the 🧑‍💻 Technologist, and their gendered equivalents.

Many people have found that using these emojis and similar ones in any sort of work-related context is generally a safe bet, since they can reference the building blocks of office life for many professionals.

📣 Emojis on LinkedIn

As the world’s most popular professional networking platform, LinkedIn is a hotbed of activity for working people to express their views, share news and updates, find and hire for new jobs, and connect with other business-minded individuals.

Whereas social media platforms like Instagram tend to feature photos, short-form video, and other multimedia visuals, graphics, and memes, LinkedIn trends heavily towards text-based posts, with any featured infographics or videos usually feeling more polished and high-production. 

That doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t room for visual elements like emojis in LinkedIn posts. In fact, they can often be welcome additions to content published across the platform, argues PR professional Don F. McLean, who says that emojis of all types can add warmth and personality on LinkedIn, helping users connect with brands and companies that might otherwise feel more impersonal and distant.

Brands and individuals can often gravitate towards certain “safe for work” emojis that feel comfortably corporate or representative of working life and the creative process without being too edgy or scandalous. 

The 💡 Light Bulb can be an emoji paired with the sharing of new insights, the 🚀 Rocket can be popular to talk about new product or feature launches and releases, and the 📣 Megaphone and 🗣️ Speaking Head are typical emojis for making a big announcement. Debuting a major product or feature launch or celebrating a new hire could merit a 👏 Clapping Hands, a 🎉 Party Popper emoji, the ✨ Sparkles, or a simple ☺️ Smiling Face or any of its iterations. 

As visual elements, cues and calls to action, emojis can attract more attention and engagement to a post, drawing a reader’s eyes away from the drudgery of scrolling through walls of only text, improving readability, and making information easier to digest. 

Many people use emojis as bullet points in longer lists, with a common choice being the ✅ Check Mark Button, the 🔹 Small or 🔷 Large Blue Diamond emojis, the ➡️ Right Arrow, or anything else leaning more neutral and inoffensive in color and aesthetic. 

The👇Backhand Index Pointing Down,  👉 Backhand Index Pointing Right, Down Arrow, or Right Arrow can be go-to choices to direct a reader to a URL to click, which itself can be marked with a 🔗 Link. Similarly, a 📌 Pushpin can direct a reader’s eyes to a key resource or bit of bulletin-worthy information.

Certain companies might use emojis to represent themselves and their brand colors or aesthetic, with colored heart emojis, animals, or objects related to their core offering or mission being prime examples.

LinkedIn uses native emoji support on the web and its mobile apps, meaning users can navigate through a built-in emoji picker that renders emojis from Samsung on Samsung devices, from Google on all other Android devices, and from Apple on Apple devices (though the LinkedIn emoji library hasn’t been updated with the newer emojis approved by Unicode after Emoji 4.0).

And the platform offers emoji reaction options for responding to comments, including:

• the 👍 Thumbs Up – called “Like”
• the 👏 Clapping Hands – called “Celebrate”
• the ❤️ Red Heart – called “Love”
• the 💡 Light Bulb – called “Insightful”
• the 🤔 Thinking Face – called “Curious”

All in all, many people find that using emojis on LinkedIn is a great way to embellish and enhance a given text post to add character and humanity to content that otherwise might come off as too stuffy, corporate, or PR-ified. 

But knowing which emojis are okay to use on LinkedIn can be context-specific, of course. Fun, lighthearted emojis that feel celebratory obviously might not read well or make sense in a more serious post about corporate ethics, mass layoffs, or financial hardship, where emojis might feel inappropriate. 

💻 Emojis In Professional Communications

Just like emojis can add fun, color, and intrigue to conversations between friends, family, and romantic partners, they also have their place in corporate communications between colleagues—though it’s fair to say that different rules often apply. 

The appropriateness of using an emoji in a professional message is, of course, dependent on several variables—like which emojis are being used, in what context, and who the audience is. 

A more informal Slack DM to a work bestie, after all, might be a perfect place for a ❤️ Red Heart, but that doesn’t mean it also belongs in an email to the CEO of a thousand-person company. 

But overall, the general consensus is that emojis aren’t unwelcome in professional messaging channels—and in many cases, they can enhance communication. 

According to a 2022 Adobe Report, a majority of workers reported that emojis can help make remote work seamless, enjoyable, and personal, especially for teams that have rarely, if ever, met in person and can’t rely as much on face-to-face interactions and social gestures and cues. 

The report found that 68% of respondents liked when their colleagues used emojis at work, and a similarly sized share said that emojis positively impacted their views of their coworkers’ likability and credibility.

Additionally, the report said that U.S. emoji users agree that using emojis at work can help quickly share ideas in 79% of cases, make team decision-making more efficient 62% of the time, and boost creativity in 58% of instances.

🙌 Emojis As Work Messaging Platform Essentials

It’s clear that if emojis were once considered unprofessional in workplace communications, that trend seems to be a thing of the past.

Emoji usage has even been built into the experience of chatting digitally with coworkers on some popular platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams—which has its own Teams-specific animated 3D version of Microsoft’s Fluent emoji set—encouraging the usage of these visual symbols between colleagues and among organizations at large.

In fact, a key feature of Slack is the ability to add built-in, native emoji reactions to messages—ones that themselves can also contain emojis inline with other text, which can also be accessed by typing in plain-text shortcodes. 

A manager seeking confirmation from members of their team that a given directive, message, or assignment was acknowledged, for example, might look for their reports to react with the ✅ Check Mark Button, the 👍 Thumbs Up, or the 💯 Hundred Points. Adding a ➕ Plus reaction to a given message can indicate that you agree with or support a colleague’s idea, as can the 🔥 Fire or the 👏 Clapping Hands, both of which can be used to celebrate big wins and achievements alongside the 🎉 Party Popper and 🙌 Raising Hands, among plenty of others. Emojis like the Keycap Digits 1️⃣ 1, 2️⃣ 2, and 3️⃣ 3 can even be used to represent the various choices to vote for in a poll posed by the member of an organization. 

Some teams, especially those in less formal fields and industries, depend heavily on emoji usage to express their creativity and add playful personality to what could otherwise be drab and monotonous corporate correspondence.

A particularly funny meme or a witty remark might elicit a 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing or a ☠️ Skull and Crossbones (“I’m dead!”) reaction. A message bemoaning the onslaught of work awaiting a certain team or employee in the weeks ahead could add an irony-laden 🫠 Melting Face to convey overwhelm. An 🤯 Exploding Head might be the perfect choice to respond with shock or surprise to unexpected company news or updates that catch employees off guard. 

Slack even allows for the uploading of custom emojis and Slack-native emoji packs, meaning companies can add their own distinct flair to their organization-internal emoji expression.

With a wealth of ways to use emojis in professional conversations—with emojis even in some cases a way to convey coded antagonism or “Slack rage” towards coworkers—it seems the emojis in the digital workplace are here to stay.

👍 Employees’ Emoji Usage By Generation

Though emojis have arguably become more prevalent across the board in professional communications, it probably comes as no surprise that there are generational divides in how—and how often—workers use emojis.

Boomers, and to some extent Gen X-ers, according to one study by Mailsuite, tend to trend much more conservative in their usage of emojis in emails and other communication with their colleagues and clients—partly having to do with the fact that these generations report being less confident that they’re using emojis correctly in the first place, but also because they’re more likely to view emojis as unprofessional. Older generations as a whole tend to use emojis sparingly, directly, and literally both in the workplace and outside it, with minimal room for alternate interpretations.

The 👍 Thumbs Up is by and large the most popular emoji used by American workers in emails and other professional communications—reportedly being used by 54% of the American workforce. It’s considered a safe and reliable way to convey warmth, friendliness, and approval without going overboard on emoji usage. Even though it’s usually associated with Boomers, Gen Z is actually reported to use it more than any other generation (with Boomers not far behind). 

Boomers are less likely to venture into the territory of using other common emojis like the ❤️ Red Heart, the 😂 Face with Tears of Joy, or the 😉 Winking Face, which are more popular with Gen X and Millennial workers, and they’re especially hesitant to use emojis with new clients or with senior management, whereas younger generations report doing so much more often—with Gen Z reporting doing so 53% of the time.

Overall, the appropriateness of emoji usage is open to a wide range of interpretations across age groups. Seemingly harmless emojis like the 👍 Thumbs Up and the 🙂 Slightly Smiling Face sent by a Boomer can be interpreted as passive-aggressive by Gen Z emoji users in certain contexts, and a 😂 Face with Tears of Joy or 🔥 Fire sent by a Millennial can seem uncool or cringe to younger recipients. 

And on the contrary, the loosey-goosey approach that Gen Z has to emoji usage—as an extension and enhancer of their everyday language—can often get totally lost in translation when received by older generations. 

All in all, many would argue that emojis clearly belong in the digital workplace. But in an ever-changing professional landscape, it can be hard to know which emojis hit the right note—and which ones are risky business.