3 Reasons Gen Z Workers Are Rejecting Corporate Jargon
They think it's weird and exclusionary — if they even understand what it means.
apidEye | Getty Images Signature | Dean Drobot | Canva Pro If you're like most workers, other than high-level management (and probably even if you are at that level), one of the things that probably annoys you most about the corporate world is the bizarre use of corporate jargon.
It often seems like every meeting is peppered with phrases that don't really mean anything and don't serve any actual purpose.
We say "unrealistic expectations" in real life and everyone knows what that means, so why are we required to say the idiotic "blue-sky thinking" at the office? It's silly. And as they enter the corporate world, many Gen Z workers are simply unwilling to play along.
Gen Z workers are rejecting corporate jargon like 'circle back' and 'low-hanging fruit.'
The bizarre word salad we use at work is even stranger when you think about the fact that we all just… do it without really being initiated into it. It's not like you're handed a translation guide when you start a job, after all. We all just start saying these silly phrases, and it somehow signals that we know what we're talking about.
There is no better example of how ludicrous this all is than when the show "30 Rock" had Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon deliver an instantly successful pitch presentation to her boss that was literally nothing but a bunch of buzzwords like "synergy" and "deal mechanics" strung together into a nonsensical sentence.
But while older generations have long lampooned it, Gen Z has largely decided to simply not play along at all, according to Emily Durham, a recruiter and TikToker who spoke to Business Insider about the matter.
"Gen Z isn't playing the corporate language game," Durham told Business Insider. "They're not using that same jargon that I think we were so forced into."
Here are three examples of jargon Gen Z isn't having and the reasons why they've decided not to play these games.
1. Gen Z is rejecting corporate jargon like 'blue-sky thinking' and 'circle back' because they simply don't understand it.
A 2023 survey conducted by LinkedIn and the language-learning app Duolingo spoke to more than 1,000 corporate professionals aged 18-76 to get their thoughts on corporate phrases like "blue-sky thinking" and "circle back."
Their findings were pretty surprising — or probably not at all if you're a Gen Z worker who's recently entered the workforce.
Fittingly, given that Duolingo was conducting the survey, 60% percent of young workers said they're rejecting corporate jargon because it feels like a different language they simply don't understand — and this is far from just being annoying. Workers across the age spectrum, but especially Gen Zers, have found that this "foreign language" has caused actual problems at work.
According to Robyn Garrett, a content creator, author, and CEO who analyzed 15,000 comments to compile a list of the most-hated corporate jargon, "circle back" is the most hated phrase of all.
2. Workers say confusing phrases like 'low-hanging fruit' and 'boiling the ocean' cause mistakes and a loss of productivity.
I'll never forget the first time someone told me I was "boiling the ocean" in a meeting and then I sat through the rest of it having absolutely no idea what was going on because I had no idea what it phrase meant. (For the record, it means to take on a task that is unreasonably ambitious.)
fizkes | Shutterstock
But I'm definitely not alone in that experience — LinkedIn and Duolingo's survey found that 40% of workers said they'd had a misunderstanding or made a mistake at work because they didn't know what one of these phrases meant.
That wastes time and costs, and makes work more difficult. Gen Z as a block is already pretty outspoken about work boundaries and insisting on work-life balance. No surprise, then, that they're not willing to sacrifice time and productivity to this corporatespeak nonsense!
3. Gen Z feels corporate jargon like 'double click' and 'bandwidth' are exclusionary and add to the inequity of the workplace.
This was the biggest issue Gen Zers had, but it was also the one they most shared with other age cohorts — 61% of all the professionals Linked & Duolingo spoke to said they felt that those who were the most adept at corporate jargon got ahead in the workplace faster. In short, speaking utter nonsense gives them an advantage.
Workers also reported feeling "left out" because they didn't understand corporate jargon, and for those for whom English is already a second language, this is all magnified — they were the most likely to say they found jargon stressful, detrimental to productivity, and exclusionary.
That's basically what it's for anyway — to separate, stratify, and weed out those who don't belong, like having the "right" jeans or shoes in middle school.
And it's why all this jargon and so-called "corporate accent" being lampooned by TikTok creators like Lisa Beasley (aka "Corporate Erin") resonates so strongly — we've all been on the outside looking in at some point, and we've all been forcibly indoctrinated into it.
Workers of color have long spoken out about how corporate jargon is often a coded stand-in for exclusionary "professionalism" standards, and the fact that it literally doesn't seem to accomplish anything beyond separating workers into in-groups and out-groups — and in fact, LOWERS productivity — means it's long past time for it to go.
As Durham put it to Business Insider, "[Gen Z is] aware that this was made up by somebody's grandfather 70 years ago, and it stuck. They don't really feel like they need to pretend that they like it." Here's to hoping the rest of us quickly follow suit, if for no other reason than it's profoundly annoying.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.