Are you fed up of being encouraged to ‘think outside the box’, ‘peel the onion’ or ‘make hay’ at work?
Experts have compiled a list of 15 of the most frustrating workplace-based metaphors, euphemisms and analogies in a bid to encourage employees to recognise and ditch some of the corporate jargon in 2018.
Thousands of companies across the UK are guilty of letting ‘management speak’ slip through the cracks to clog up conversations and email exchanges, yet it’s these elaborate words and phrases that can often disguise a person’s true meaning or intent.
Instead of dressing up opinions and requests with throwaway idioms, office workers are being encouraged to simply say what they mean to avoid unnecessary frustrations and confusion at work.
Chris Meredith, CEO of LondonOffices.com, who carried out the research, commented: “Being told to send something ‘over the wall’ is unnecessary and meaningless when it would be just as easy – if not easier – to ask your colleague to send something over to a client, and you might even struggle to guess what your colleague was getting at if you were hearing the phrase for the first time.
“Similarly, being asked not to ‘boil the ocean’ is pointless and potentially confusing when you could have simply been asked not to waste time on a meaningless task – can you see the irony here?
“Office jargon has been a part of the corporate model for as long as we can remember, but with more and more people becoming irked and exasperated with deep-rooted boardroom dialect, it seems that 2018 might be the time to ditch these age-old habits and start saying what we really mean.”
Here is the list of the 15 most baffling business buzzwords:
Blue sky thinking
To generate creative ideas free from any practical constraints.Punch a puppy
To do something a bit nasty or unpleasant but which will be good for business.Peel the onion
To examine a problem in detail.To wash its own face
To justify or pay for itself.Open the kimono
A creepy way to ask someone to reveal information.Bleeding edge
When an idea is more than simply ‘cutting edge’.Make hay
To be productive or successful in a short period of time.Think outside the box
To approach a business problem in an unconventional way.Over the wall
To send something to a client.Boil the ocean
To waste time on a meaningless task.Helicopter view
A broad view of the business.Low hanging fruits
Avoiding the complicated route and opting to tackle the easy tasks and business wins first off.Look under the bonnet
To analyse a situation or problem.Get all your ducks in a row
Get organised.Square the circle
Bring together two things which are normally entirely different.
