Hi there,
Love them or hate them, emojis are all over Slack.
But are you using them to your advantage?
My hot take: Put your emojis to WORK. 🔥
⚡ Supercharge of the Week
Remote Octopus recommends leveraging emojis as a visual cue in team Slack collaboration.
These visual cues will simplify collaboration. Plus they’ll streamline what can feel like a firehose of Slack messages for your colleagues.
FIRST
Identify your most commonly used Slack message categories, such as upcoming key milestones or team call reminders. Select which emojis will signify each specific type of message. Aim for identifying 3-6 for your most commonly used message types, but likely no more than 10. No one needs to learn an entire new emoji language!
Examples might include:
☎️ for team call reminders
🤖 for scheduled messages while OOO
💎 for upcoming key milestones
📅 for a quick call agenda
🎯 for a conversation goal
NEXT
Document the emoji meanings in a Google Doc, Confluence, or Notion page. Just a quick list of which emoji signifies which type of Slack message.
Note you might use these emoji types for a specific project or for your functional team – or across all of your cross-functional communication. If they’re for your functional team, ensure this is a collaborative process with team buy-in.
THEN
Time to spread the word! Share the emoji meanings with your colleagues, linking to the documentation for future reference. A quick Slack message will do.
EXAMPLE IN ACTION
Hi all! We’ll be leveraging a few key emojis in our project Slack channel. Dropping the meanings below & also linking here for future reference.
📅 for a quick call agenda
🎯 for a conversation goal
💎 for upcoming key milestones
FINALLY
Put those emojis to work!
EXAMPLE IN ACTION
🤖 Hello from OOO! Setting a quick timed Slack as a reminder of this Friday’s deadline for final sign off on the project timeline by Maren and Aisha.
EXAMPLE IN ACTION
☎️ Reminder: Our team call is today at 2 pm ET! Please review the agenda before we hop on together.
🐙 Remote Octopus Resources
Ready to level up operational excellence for your team? Check out our resources:
Are you feeling the crunch of remote, cross-functional collaboration? Drop a question here. Your questions will guide future newsletter topics & deliver recommendations straight to your inbox. 📬
