Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Workplace jargon 'isolates staff'

Needless jargon in the workplace is baffling employees and widening the divide between management and staff, a survey suggests.

Investors in People said that the proliferation of phrases such as "blue-sky thinking" and "brain dump" was damaging to British industry.

About a third of the 3,000 workers polled said they felt inadequate when wordy terms were needlessly used.

Others believed bosses were being untrustworthy, or hiding something.

A guide to workplace gobbledygook:

Blue-sky thinking: Idealistic or visionary ideas - not always with practical application
Get our ducks in a row: Have arrangements efficiently ordered
Brain dump: To tell everything you know about a particular topic
Think outside the box: Don't limit your thinking to within your job description; be creative
Joined-up thinking: Taking into account how things affect each other - not looking at something in isolation
Drilling down: Getting more detail about a particular issue
Push the envelope: Improve performance by going beyond commonly accepted boundaries
The helicopter view: An overview
Low-hanging fruit: The easiest targets

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