How business bingo threatens employee confidence

If you’ve spent any of your professional life in an office setting, you’re probably familiar with corporate jargon. Verbs like ‘touching base’, ‘aligning on the workflow’, or industry specific abbreviations can be unclear for the uninitiated. It’s easy to laugh at or ridicule, but a new study shows the use of jargon can actually harm your internal culture.

In the experiment, “participants were asked to imagine starting a new job and received an email containing either jargon-laden or jargon-free language. 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.” In other words, corporate jargon negatively impacts (new) employees by breaking down their confidence in their own abilities. It confuses them about their tasks and what is expected of them, and therefore makes them question themselves.

The obvious solution would be to ask for clarification when you don’t understand the jargon, but not every co-worker is as comfortable doing this. Especially new employees potentially fear they are conceived as stupid or lacking common knowledge. The researchers found that young people were especially impacted. Even though they are more likely to know the meaning of jargon words, they are less likely to ask for clarification; something that older employees are more willing to do. 

In a time wherein many companies are desperately trying to simplify the lives of customers (through clear communication and easy UX), it’s easy to forget the importance of internal simplification. Yet this study shows that simplifying the employee experience, for example through your company lingo, also leads to more confident employees.