Nine in ten Brits confused by 'corporate speak' as Gen Z named top office jargon culprits

From "synergy" to "leveraging" and "shifting the needle", as many as nine in ten Brits admit they are confused on a daily basis about 'meetings speak', with 89% wishing colleagues would use simple everyday language instead of 'boardroom talk'.

'TLDR' which means 'too long, didn't read', 'let's whiteboard this', 'shift the needle', 'close the loop' and 'EOD' which refers to the 'end of day' are amongst the most baffling terms.

One in ten have been left puzzled after being asked to 'align offline', while a further 12% have absolutely no idea what a 'key takeaway' means.

Sales and marketing departments are the worst offenders, followed by IT and HR, while generational divides are stark – Gen Z are considerably more likely to use corporate waffle than Millennials, suggesting the trend shows no signs of slowing down.

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According to a survey of 2,000 adults, commissioned by network SMARTY, a third confess they have pretended to understand phrases in meetings, purely to save face.

Simon Hall, Lingo expert and creator of the award-winning course in writing, public speaking and storytelling at the University of Cambridge, says: "Jargon is one of the most common challenges in work and everyday life.

"Buzzwords and corporate phrases are used to make things sound clearer or more impressive but quite often, they end up confusing people instead.

"I've started to believe as we transition from work to our personal life, often on the same devices, we're only encouraging jargon, as people get locked into a workplace mindset and way of communicating. It's hard to switch off the corporate brain- I can speak from experience.

"As I always say when I'm teaching: keep it simple. Because simple isn't stupid. Simple is smart. The irony is that people don't use jargon to be confusing; they use it in an attempt to sound professional. But clarity is professionalism, it's as simple as that."

The study also revealed that half (48%) reckon abandoning the jargon would make workplace conversations online or face-to-face more effective.

'Corporate speak' emerges an average of nine times weekly, while out for drinks with mates (49%), at family get-togethers (32%), while watching telly (29%), at family dinners (28%) and parties (23%).

One in ten (9%) admitted to deploying 'work talk' on a date with 'I'll ping you' (18%), 'best practice' (14%), 'reaching out' (12%) and 'just flagging' (10%) the most frequent culprits.

A spokesperson from SMARTY Mobile said: “At SMARTY we know life is complicated enough without having to decode jargon from colleagues and friends.”

SMARTY is developing an online jargon-busting tool to help customers translate corporate language into everyday speech.