What are the best practices for using emojis and gifs in internal communications?

As work environments become more casual, and many companies employ younger generations, the use of emojis in work communication is not noteworthy. If you have a fun, casual culture, no one will think twice about the emojis. As in all communications, the key is to know your audience. Very few people will be offended by a smiling face ?? but it may not be appropriate in an email from the legal department. Although, some lawyers are super fun, so maybe they should use extra smiley faces. Regardless of your culture and style, you always want to be inclusive, respectful, and positive—with your words and your emojis.

Emojis yes, GIFs no, in the workplace. For internal communications at work, we often use a thumbs-up (though I've been told recently that it's very old school) or a smiley face as an acknowledgement to an instant message. For intranet updates and news items, I use bold font or colour for emphasis. We translate into multiple languages so need to remove any chance for ambiguity, and want to be globally inclusive, so when it's formal communications it's Strunk & White all the way.

When used thoughtfully and in the right context, emojis and gifs can inject humor and create a more approachable tone in your internal communications. However, their appropriateness will depend on your specific organization's culture and norms. If your workplace tends to encourage creativity, informality, and a relaxed atmosphere, emojis and gifs can be more readily embraced. In more formal or conservative environments, you'll likely need to use restrain to align with expectations.

I use emoji a lot in posts on our internal social networks, but rarely use GIFs and, even then, it would have to be a studio-designed and approved campaign GIF rather than one found online. I would say most GIFs are too informal for official channels and best kept to team-level groups. That said, colleagues sometimes reply to our ‘official’ posts with GIFs which seem to land well.

We’ve been advised from a digital accessibility perspective to only include emoji at the end of sentence, not in the middle. I understand emoji can be disruptive to colleagues using screen readers and other assistive technology.

An additional consideration is whether or not all systems, colleagues, and customers (when appropriate) have the systems to see your emojis/gifs. We all know Apple is an early adopter of emerging emojis and more gif generators are available on the Apple store but there are also Play Store specific apps and programs with their own custom emojis. The only thing worse than getting an undesired emoji, is getting a garbled emoji.

We use emojis to respond to posts on slack and it enables the writer to see who has read your post, actioned it or is reviewing it etc This really saves a lot of time as adding a quick emoji addition saves you typing a reply

Keep in mind that not all individuals may have equal access to visual elements like emojis and gifs. Some individuals may rely on screen readers or have visual impairments that make it challenging to interpret these elements. Ensure that your communication remains accessible and inclusive by providing alternative text descriptions.