Note: Sophie Downes, assistant editor at Inc., is stepping in for Cameron while he is away from the computer today.
Good morning,
Luke Thomas, the founder of software startup Friday, needed a better way to gauge employees’ moods. It’s not just that he wants to be a sensitive boss--his company’s app helps supervisors manage remote employees with quick questionnaires about their progress and goals. He turned to a somewhat surprising tool: emojis, the 3,304 colorful, nonalphanumeric symbols cataloged by the Unicode Consortium. Today, the “emoji question” is the most popular query among thousands of employees who use the Friday app at organizations from LinkedIn to the Tampa Airport. Emoji responses might seem cheesy, Thomas says, but they’re a fast, powerful way for employees to tell their managers how they’re feeling.
Marcel Danesi, professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto and the author of The Semiotics of Emoji, agrees. Emojis serve as an “informal visual dialogue,” he says, affirming that people are human and mean well. And neuroscientists have found that emojis activate both verbal and nonverbal parts of the brain, indicating that they enrich communication in ways normal letters and numbers can't. That might explain the little symbols’ endurance--they date back to 1999--and their ubiquity.
To be sure, emojis can also lead to misunderstandings, and can be inappropriate in business contexts. (Hint: Don’t use crying-laughing faces in client emails.) But for many companies, they’re helping streamline communication and adding a bit of levity to the (remote) work day.
Read our story to learn more about how emojis became part of everyday work, and why 2020 might be the biggest year yet for the humble smiley face. |
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