Friday 30 August 2019 12:01 am | Updated: Thursday 29 August 2019 2:36 pm

Revealed: The office jargon buzzwords Londoners detest

Did you get the memo? Business jargon is driving London’s workers up the wall.

Yes, it appears that office workers spared a little of their bandwidth to feeding back on their most-hated phrases that pollute emails, meetings and general workplace chatter.

Mobile business current account provider Anna (Absolutely No-Nonsense Admin), touched base with 2,000 Londoners in order to discover which business jargon they think should be dropped going forward.

Getting rid of the most cringe-worthy phrases is not blue sky thinking, the firm insists, as offices would benefit from more clarity and less and today have begun a campaign against such “cringe-worthy business speak.”

Anna’s survey reports that Londoners most hated phrase is “touch base,” followed by “going forward” and “blue sky thinking.”

Workers turning-on their out-of-office messages for their summer holidays said that referring to their time off as “annual leave” is one of their biggest peeves.

The survey showed that 74 per cent of Londoners wished to ban the term and replace it with “holiday”.

Here are London’s top 10 most hated office jargon phrases – and useful translations to help us all realise what they actually mean.

Phrase	Translation
1. Touch base	“Let’s Talk”
2. Going forward	In the future
3. Blue sky thinking	Crazy ideas we can’t afford
4. Think outside the box	Think of something I haven’t thought of
5. Annual leave/ Out of Office	Holiday
6. Reach out	Get in touch
7. Low-hanging fruit	Easy stuff
8. Can we chat?	I’m leaving/ you’re leaving
9. Closing the loop	Making a decision
10. Let’s take this offline	You’re making it awkward, please stop

Daljit Singh, head of work culture at Anna, said: “Business language should be straightforward and nonsense-free. Madonna sang about the joys of a much-needed ‘holiday’ – not ‘annual leave’.”