Emojis are differently interpreted depending on the viewer's gender, culture and age, researchers say. — AFP Relaxnews
Confusing communication could cost your company – but the right emojis could help.
In a new survey from software development company Atlassian, more than a third of respondents – knowledge workers from the US, France, Germany, India, and Australia – lose more than 40 hours per year trying to decipher "unclear written communication" at work. That's an entire workweek of lost time.
Almost two-thirds of respondents say they've encountered difficulty interpreting messages from colleagues at least “a few times a month”. Some even said they experience this daily. Molly Sands, the head of Atlassian's Teamwork Lab, deems this “emotional overhead”.
However, one thing that can help, according to the report, is incorporating emotions into workplace messages. Indeed, teams are three times more likely to be “highly productive” if they are encouraged to “infuse emotion...into their written communications and everyday interactions”.
Emojis can be a helpful tool in this regard. In fact, 65% of surveyed workers use them to do exactly this, and 78% of respondents said if an email or chat message has an emoji, they are more likely to open or read it.
"Cheap trick? Maybe," Sands says. "But it's effective."
That said, there's a generational difference between the respondents who say emojis are useful – 88% of Gen Z workers versus 49% of Boomers.
Also, emojis can cause their own confusion. A 2024 report from Preply, the online language learning marketplace, found 81% of respondents have been confused due to someone else's emoji use – and almost half witnessed this leading to an “uncomfortable situation”.
For instance, does the money with wings emoji mean losing or gaining money? Does the emoji showing a gust of air mean "dashing away" or farting? Respondents weren't totally sure – and you can see how misinterpretations might get messy.
Apart from integrating emotions, and emoticons, into their writing, the report recommends that workers be careful to share the right amount of information and avoid ambiguous language.
"In our modern era of workplace apps and distributed teams," Sands says, "you have to be intentional about what you share and explicit in the way you say it." – Inc./Tribune News Service
