Working from home is no longer a novelty or a luxury, instead, for many it is the new norm and required. With the current trajectory of COVID-19 not slowing down, several organizations around the world are making the decision to extend work from home to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of their employees. This decision means that communicating and collaborating with your colleagues and teams in person is fast becoming a thing of the past and digital collaboration tools have an even greater role to play in the workplace.
Add the human interaction back
Firstly, working remotely removes the human element of having conversations and building relationships. Features such as Lark Video Conference are an enormous help to create an environment as close as possible to being in person with someone but when you are communicating solely through written text it may not feel quite the same. Specifically, it can be hard to express your emotions and get across your individual personality through written text - in words alone. This is where using Emojis can help. Lark offers a suite of emojis that you can use across Lark Messenger and Documents to react, respond, and communicate with your colleagues. From a heart emoji symbolizing love, to a crying emoji showing sadness, to a party emoji conveying a celebration - emojis are able to cover a whole spectrum of emotions in one simple click of a button.
Communicate expressively
Secondly, apart from providing a creative outlet to share your personality and emotions, leveraging emojis can also help with communication efficiency. Signs and gestures in real life often provide a quick and simple way to communicate how you are feeling and whether or not you are in agreement. Emojis are the digital equivalent to in person gestures when you can't be present. A simple thumbs up emoji to an idea, question, or comment from a colleague immediately signals a "yes" response and shows that you are in agreement, without having to write a detailed response back. This not only saves you time from having to type out a response but it also avoids flooding a chat with replies and notifications for your colleagues, especially when you are participating in a larger group chat.
Be inclusive and supportive
For global organizations emojis also have a special role to play in supporting collaboration between teams around the world. There are some symbols and emojis that are universally acknowledged and understood - regardless of where in the world you are located. For example, a smiley face is universally recognized as symbolizing someone being happy, while a broken heart symbol is widely accepted as meaning that you are upset about something. When operating in an increasingly global environment, where sometimes messages may get lost in translation - both verbally and in written form - emojis provide an alternative method to communicate clearly and bring people together across borders.
Through Lark Documents creating, editing, and sharing content is the best experience you can imagine. Docs and Sheets support real-time collaboration, making it easy to work with your colleagues even if you are not physically in person. A key component of collaboration is soliciting feedback and input from your colleagues; however sometimes when working in a large group this can lead to multiple people providing the same comments - duplicating efforts and making it hard to cut through the noise of all the feedback received. One way to avoid this is through communicating via emojis rather than words. For example, instead of saying that you agree with a comment you can use the +1 or thumbs up emoji to convey that sentiment. This allows you to contribute and express your opinion succinctly, without adding more words to the page.
Conclusion
Emojis have become an integral part of communications in the workplace and when used appropriately, they can be very effective - as an emotional outlet, as a mechanism to bridge communication gaps across cultures, and a timely method to collaborate with colleagues. Furthermore, in the current climate of ongoing remote working experiencing fatigue, whether it be from back to back virtual meetings or online chats, is a real challenge. So, when you are simply lost for words or too exhausted to find the right words - don't worry, don't panic, just express how you are feeling through emojis!
Unleash the power of the Emoji for free with Lark today ↓
