A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old adage goes. And in the world of corporate communication, that means an emoji can convey more than just an image.
According to a 2022 study commissioned by the workplace messaging platform Slack and the language learning platform Duolingo, hybrid workers increasingly prefer to use emojis over just words.
The survey polled 9,400 workers across 11 different countries. Almost two-thirds of respondents said "using emoji at work allows them to communicate more nuance with fewer words" while more than half said "emoji use can speed up workplace communication."
So how do Slack's own employees feel about emojis?
"We love emojis," Slack's senior director of product management, Olivia Grace, told Insider. "They let people convey a broad range of emotions efficiently, and in a way that words sometimes can't."
Grace added that working in a hybrid work model — where people can't always lean on body-language cues that come with face-to-face communication — emojis have helped employees acknowledge one another, clarify intent, and add color and fun to work.
While Slack's standard library offers 1,850 emojis, the platform also allows users to upload pictures to create custom emojis. As a result, Slack's own library has over 50,000 emojis.
Still, Slack employees gravitate towards a small handful of these emojis over and over again. Slack shared its top used emojis and reactions on public channels with Insider. See the list below.