Once a playful garnish in text messages between friends, emojis have infiltrated business communications from Slack to Teams, SMS and email. And while they may seem harmless, the ubiquitous icons represent a growing compliance risk that firms may not be equipped to handle.
In highly regulated industries, every piece of communication — every 👍, every 🔥 and even the occasional 😂 — is now under compliance scrutiny. Like a skilled boxer wearing silk gloves, emojis can land an emphatic punch, and compliance teams that ignore them do so at their own peril.
This certainly holds true in wealth management, where all written communications must be captured and monitored. Regulators are aware that these tiny symbols can carry big implications, and while agencies — including the SEC and FINRA — have not yet issued explicit rules on the matter, emojis still constitute written communications.
Decoding emojis? Context is 👑
The real challenge for compliance teams isn’t just tracking emoji usage, it’s understanding what they actually mean. Since a single emoji can convey a variety of meanings depending on its placement, its sender or even the recipient’s mood, decoding context is key.
For instance, a 😉 or 📈 can blur the lines between friendly and inappropriate giving rise to harassment and misconduct risks. Compliance teams need to ensure workplace culture doesn’t cross into problematic territory.
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A 🔥 emoji could mean “great job” in a team chat — but in a finance setting, it might hint at something way riskier, like endorsing a company based on undisclosed material information. A simple ✔️ could mean “approved” or “seen,” but does it also imply agreement? That’s up for debate, and misinterpretation could be costly.
In other contexts, emojis have the potential to trigger market manipulation concerns. For instance, a trader dropping a 🚀 or a 🌕 might just be enthusiastic — or they could be subtly hyping up stocks to mislead investors. There’s also the matter of coded messaging, where a pre-agreed upon “random” emoji might act as a signal for something more sinister.
Emojis are also subject to interpretation based on generational differences. A recent survey found that 65% of workers used emojis to “help convey their intended tone or set the vibe.” But the same study also found that 88% of Gen Z workers found emojis useful, compared to just 49% of baby boomers.
That 💀 your junior colleague just sent? They’re probably only trying to tell you they feel embarrassed, not signaling the end of the market as we know it.
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Good💡s for best practices
Your employees are going to use emojis — the shortcut is ingrained into their everyday lives. So rather than trying to ban them, it’s better to set some ground rules and define what’s 🚫.
Some emojis have clear compliance risks (we’re looking at you, Mr. Eggplant). Make it clear to your team what’s acceptable in a professional setting. Train employees to use emojis responsibly and ensure that they understand that emojis, like any other form of 🗣️, can be misinterpreted.
Firms can leverage technology solutions to interpret and flag digital intent while providing maximum contextual insight. Rather than flagging emojis in isolation, the right tech can present them in a fully threaded conversation, providing all the information needed to interpret intent accurately.
As regulatory expectations change, such solutions can adapt to ensure ongoing compliance with industry standards by capturing emojis, gifs and other digital shorthand.
By proactively addressing these challenges, businesses can foster a streamlined, modern communications culture, one in which boomer and Gen Z employees can coexist peacefully — and compliantly.
