When it comes to emojis, well, they get a smiley face and a thumbs up from me. I love a well-placed emoji or, even better, several. My Instagram profile features six – the peace sign, the coffee cup, the watermelon slice, the aeroplane, the palm tree and the sun – to signify some of the stuff I’m most into (yoga, coffee, food and travel in case you don’t speak emoji).

My text and WhatsApp conversations are often liberally sprinkled with them, especially in conversation with my little sister. In a thread just the other day in which she shared the news that she had a place in the Chicago marathon, the runner and American flag emojis featured heavily. A birthday text isn’t a birthday text without at least a couple (I favour the gift-wrapped present, the slice of cake and the glass of wine, pint of beer, or fancy cocktail, depending on the recipient’s tipple of choice, repeated several times).

As well as the birthday-related ones, the emojis that pretty much always appear in my recently used emoji window include the pineapple, the palm tree, the watermelon slice, the pink bikini, the smiley face sporting sunglasses, the bicycle, the runner, the surfer and the slice of pizza. Make of this list what you will. The others tend to be seasonal.

The idea for writing a post about emojis came from an article I read recently that revealed Sheryl Sandberg – Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, author of Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, one of the biggest selling and widely referenced business books of recent years and constant presence on those #100 most influential/powerful etc lists – has been known to use the smiley face emoji in work emails.

Obviously I had to discuss the issue of emojis and specifically whether it was ok to use emojis at work with team Rock My Style. As I’m sure you’ll have probably guessed as a team we’re pretty much pro emojis in most contexts, and use them in work communication. Adam and Charlotte admitted to having had entire conversations about work via the medium of emojis. While Lauren and I will happily use emojis in Rock My Style communications, we’d be less likely (read extremely unlikely) to use them in conversations with our other employers. As a general rule, when it comes to emojis at work, my feeling is – like with the use of an X at the end of a communication – I’ll always follow the other person’s lead, particularly if they’re in a more senior role.

So if it’s ok (within some companies) to send an emoji at work, is there ever a time that it’s not ok to send one? I would say when responding to bad news. Which might sound obvious but I did receive a sad face emoticon (the precursor to emojis, remember them?) in response to me telling someone that my mum had died. Yes, really. And if I was to leave freelance life and take on a management role in the future I would think carefully before starting to use emojis in conversation with my team, I imagine it would be hard to have a serious conversation about, say, possible redundancy with someone you usually communicate with via pineapples, rainbows and the winking face…

Where do you stand on emojis? If you do use emojis have you ever used them in a work context? Which emojis do you use most frequently? And in what circumstances would you never ever use them? Which emojis should exist? Any emoji related thoughts at all do leave a comment below. 🙂

The awesome emoji Easter egg DIY in the picture is from the awesome Studio DIY blog