Employees hate these 10 annoying corporate buzzwords - you can totally guess Number 1

Ever found yourself gritting your teeth in a meeting when someone suggests "circling back" on a topic or "touching base" later? You’re not alone. A recent study conducted by the research team at the AI transcription tool Notta.ai reveals the top 10 corporate buzzwords that employees find most irritating.

The study analysed over 5,000 Reddit comments from nearly 100 subreddits, using natural language processing (NLP) technology to rank these oft-used phrases based on their annoyance factor. Unsurprisingly, “circle back” was crowned the most aggravating piece of office jargon.

Here is a look at the 10 most annoying corporate buzzwords:

Circle back

Synergy

Lean

Touch base

Agile

Bandwidth

Leverage

Reach out

Low hanging fruit

Take this offline

Why employees hate corporate jargon

Corporate jargon is meant to streamline communication, but its overuse can often have the opposite effect. As the AI research indicates, millennials and Gen Z employees can get annoyed with the most common office lingo.

“This study exposes a disconnect between corporate language and effective communication,” Kiyoto Tamura, spokesperson and COO of Notta, was quoted as saying by Fortune magazine.

“We’ve also noticed that while some jargon terms persist, new ones are being introduced, especially from the tech industry. Terms like ‘bandwidth’ and ‘agile’ are now misused outside their original contexts. Meanwhile, traditional business terms like ‘synergy’ and ‘leverage’ continue to be among the most annoying jargon used in corporate settings,” said Tamura.

“Employees are frustrated with unclear directives and a lack of actionable communication in their work environment,” Tamura added.

The COO of Notta suggested replacing these offensive words with more specific terms. For example, instead of saying “let’s circle back,” an employee can specify the exact time to follow up on a certain issue.