Why Using Workplace Jargon Can Hurt Your Company’s Performance
Why Using Workplace Jargon Can Hurt Your Company’s Performance
A new study found that using buzzwords and insider terms increases the risk of confusing employees and makes them feel worse about their work and themselves.
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Business jargon, corporate-speak, and buzzwords are nearly universal workplace constants that people use whether they love them or hate them. Now a pair of studies reflect just how ingrained office lingo is, with one warning that those trendy business terms may be doing more harm than good in helping employees get their work done.
That latter conclusion was the main finding in the study Jargon in the Workplace Reduces Processing Fluency, Self-Efficacy, and Information Seeking and Sharing, published this week by the International Journal of Business Communication. It analyzed an experiment in which 1,826 participants were asked to imagine they were starting a new job based on work descriptions they’d received in email — messages that were either studded with jargon or pointedly free of it. The results weren’t encouraging for employees and managers who like making frequent references to right-sizing, future proofing, empowering themselves through emotional intelligence, and other phraseology popular in business environments.
In fact, the study found that jargon often winds up becoming verbal junk that trips workers up and may sour them on the work being discussed.
“The results suggest that the use of jargon not only impairs processing fluency but also undermines employees’ confidence in their self-efficacy to complete work tasks, which ultimately reduces effective communication through information seeking and sharing intentions,” the analysis said. “This underscores the need for organizations to be mindful of language complexity to promote better information flow and team dynamics.”
In other words, it advises employees and managers alike to lose their jargon, which mostly creates clutter.
Fans of business expressions like workplace “rockstar,” workers “wearing many hats,” or a company’s “fast-paced environment” may love the way those terms make them sound savvy and attuned to evolving speech trends. But according to University of Florida assistant professor of advertising and study co-author Olivia Bullock, they can have detrimental effects on listeners who aren’t fans of business jargon.
“It doesn’t just make them feel bad about the information they’ve been given … It makes them feel bad about themselves,” Bullock told the University of Florida News site. “You need people to be willing to collaborate, share ideas and look for more information if they don’t understand something at work. And jargon might actually be impeding that information flow across teams.”
In fact, the study found an interesting clash in how different people react to obtuse or confusing office terms. Younger people were less prone to being thrown off by workplace idioms than older participants. But more senior co-workers were more likely to ask for clarification of terms that perplexed them — perhaps from a sense of confidence about seeking guidance when needed.
“It gives credence to the idea that younger people are more vulnerable to these workplace dynamics,” of working around confusion when jargon gets thick, Bullock said, before offering several examples of corporate-speak herself. “If you’re onboarding younger employees, explain everything clearly. … If you can’t ask for more information or share that information downstream, you’re creating silos, and that’s disrupting your workflow and environment.”
Despite her own lapses, Bullock is adamant that resisting the temptation to echo jargon will pay off in clearer communications and employees who understand their jobs better.
“Always reduce jargon,” she said. “The benefit of using jargon doesn’t outweigh the cost.”
What are the chances of that happening? Not good, if a new survey by English language tutoring platform Preply is any indication. It indicates jargon will persist, but also identified several terms that people really hate.
Its poll of 1,551 employees found 76 percent of respondents said using business “jargon makes someone sound more professional.” Sadly, that was precisely why 71 percent said they also parrot trending office lingo.
About 40 percent of participants said they use or hear jargon on a daily basis, with the most frequent expressions cited being “win-win,” “ASAP,” “moving forward,” “on my radar,” and “on the same page.”
Among the most annoying terms specified by survey participants were “new normal,” “boots on the ground,” “move the needle,” and the potently obnoxious “growth hacking.” But while respondents’ dislike of those expressions is easy to understand, far more baffling was their fondness for “debrief,” “table this,” “blue-sky thinking,” and the fabricated pseudo-word “ideate.”
Contributors to a recent Reddit thread on current jargon offered other examples of their own they’d like to see vanish.
“Every kind of corpspeak that drives me insane: touchingbase, circlingback, impactful, pivoting, facilitating, optimizing, leveraging, unpacking, moving the needle,” said MrBreffas. “Nobody can use plain language anymore — all this crap is designed to sound important when all you are talking about is whether to order more water bottles or get a water cooler for the office.”
“The use of the word ‘content’ substituted for words like news, story, script, book, directions, etc. etc. etc.,” added FabulousDiscussion80, amid numerous other commentators who want the term “influencer” banned.
Other redditors took another tack by citing words that are now commonly being misused in daily speech, and which further junkify jargon when repeated incorrectly in the workplace.
“Literally,” said SusanLFlores, protesting the word’s maddeningly frequent figurative use. “It makes me cringe.”
And What About Your Customers
You guessed it, customers feel the same way concerning the use of buzzwords and company jargon. Many times your sales associates us it to sound knowledgeable about their industry but what the customer wants is to understand how your product or service meets their needs. Using company jargon only creates possible confusion for the customer.
Are you monitoring what your associates are saying to your customers? We can help. We here to monitor and measure your customer's experience in order to protect your company brand.
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