These confusing office abbreviations make people at work hate you

Ardent 13 Going On 30 fans will remember Jenna’s face when her frazzled editor Richard suggested they ‘take apart the FOB’ and ‘overhaul the BOB’ of Poise magazine. She was, in a word, bewildered.

You don’t have to be the protagonist of an age swap rom-com to struggle withindustry-specific jargon and abbreviations though, as recent research proves.

Experts at Wix examined a range of business articles from The Guardian and Indeed to collate a seed list of 45 common office acronyms and initialisms. 

Then, they looked at the ones people searched for most alongside the likes of ‘meaning’ and ‘definition’, to work out what’s got the nation asking ‘what the heck does that stand for?’ on a regular basis.

In first place, KPI generates a whopping 662,400 Google searches per year in the UK alone, more searches than there are people living in Belfast’s population (643,000).

KPI stands for ‘key performance indicator’ and is a quantitative measurement used in most workplaces when accessing performance, from sales, retail, and marketing to healthcare. What makes it especially confusing is that the actual metric is different from place to place, so can be ‘t-shirts sold’, ‘customers who were happy with their service’ or any number of things.

Next up was CRM, with 543,400 yearly searches from flummoxed workers around the country.

To give you a helping hand, CRM or ‘customer relationship management’ is a term used for systems and tools and techniques that manage potential and existing customer relation, either through tracking data and activity or automating processes.

In third was VPN, followed by SEO, FTE, and AWOL rounding out the top five. Each of these received a whopping 300,000 annual searches, suggesting that these ‘time-saving’ initialisms aren’t all that practical — at least for the recipient.

Commenting on the findings, a spokesperson from Wix said: ‘Jargon or abbreviations may make communication faster but it can also open up the opportunity for misunderstandings, especially with entry-level employees that may already be struggling with the adjustment to their new role.’

They urged that if you must use these terms, it’s important to ensure staff or colleagues are trained on what they mean, alongside encouraging open dialogue so people feel ‘comfortable and safe’ to ask questions and seek clarification.

Otherwise, you risk the ire of the people you work with, who’ll either disengage from what you’re saying or mark you down as a blowhard trying to sound important.

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A previous study from LinkedIn and Duolingo found that 69% of people think their colleagues use too much jargon at work. This disproportionately grinds the gears of millennial and gen Z workers, 54% of whom have secretly looked up a word in a meeting as a result — twice as many as baby boomers.

To make matters worse, four in five (83%) of those surveyed have used a word they didn’t understand in a professional situation, in an attempt to keep up appearances. And so the cycle of unintelligible business-speak continues.

Dr Hope Wilson, learning and curriculum Manager at Duolingo said: ‘There’s no need to feel ashamed if you use jargon in the workplace, but it’s helpful to be aware that these words can cause others to feel confused or left out.

‘When possible, consider other terms that convey the same meaning that have a higher likelihood of being understood by all.’

How’s that for a personal KPI?

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