The 5 most annoying work terms that will dominate 2021

Between business and private life, a slew of annoying, hollow terms have dominated everything from conference rooms to social media since everyone ran out of “Tiger King” episodes to watch last spring.

Here are five, in particular, that will make fingers angrily scroll and eyes disdainfully roll in 2021.

Accountability

Though accountability is a slightly older concept, emerging as early as 2016 in the #MeToo era, we now see it everywhere. The rise of accountability happened in 2020 with policing reform, sexual harassment accusations and governmental corruption coming to a head. Everything from Forbes to Smart Company and USA Today have covered accountability in all its forms – but sadly, an exhaustive deep-dive into a vague yet important concept has taken away from much of its true intent.

As culture tends to distort language, accountability has taken on a completely empty meaning. Rather than making changes that feed into their understanding of their mistakes, “accountability” now means apologizing in the public sphere, on Twitter, in a Zoom text chat, or in a YouTube video appropriately titled “Taking Accountability.”

If this vacant display of performative confessions is already getting on your nerves, buckle up, because 2021 is going to be one big accountable roller coaster.

Journey

Whether it’s a customer journey, a personal journey, or a spiritual journey, in 2021, you’re going to be tired of hearing about it. Where does everyone have to go, you might be thinking? Weren’t we just stuck in one place for a year? How can that be a journey?

As early as 2010, we’ve heard about customer journey maps, but lately, this term could be ingratiated into your workplace in ways you don’t expect as the tide of New Age jargon begins to seep into business culture. Additionally, you might be noticing this fad occurring on social media, as more people begin to talk about their journeys, where they sought to, as Planet of Success puts it, “pose profound questions about their purpose in life” during these many months indoors.   

Even if this term is up and coming, you better believe that when you get back into the office, you’ll be hearing about Becky from payroll’s “journey of emotional growth” during quarantine, wishing you were working from home again. Just try not to raise your eyebrows too hard – but if you do, well, that’s your journey.

Unconscious bias

The newest golden child of your HR department, unconscious bias is defined by the Office of Strategic Diversity and Inclusion Programs as “social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness.” The argument is that no matter who you are, you hold unconscious biases, and the categories you place people into without realizing it, such as black or white, rich or poor, native or immigrant, are all ways people silently judge those around them.

Platform Executive’s list of the most annoying business words of 2021 defines unconscious bias as “terrifyingly common within larger corporates, with new training courses being created hourly. HR professionals love using this as a method of control but are terrified of it being used against them by staff.”

Just because systemic racism unequivocally exists, and biases can be everywhere, that doesn’t mean that the thought-provoking and serious issue of racial relations in this country needs to be annexed and twisted by misguided corporations looking to hop onto the newest neo-liberal fad, all to make their company look more “woke”. Even the Harvard Business Journal reports that in a recent study, it’s proven that unconscious bias training simply accentuates biases between coworkers by giving these things names, labels, and causing a hyper-awareness about them.

So while your HR department might be patting themselves on the back for being trendy, you’re going to feel so guilty about your unconscious bias that you��ll avoid communicating with coworkers of a different skin color or gender, all for fear of being outed as a racist, sexist, bigoted liability. That could get a bit annoying.

Third space

Third space is an older term that’s regained popularity with the rise of working from home – and soon, you’ll be sick of hearing it.

Iconic Offices defines a third place as one in which people can work, like their car, a park, a coffee shop or outdoor restaurant. While one’s first place is their home, and second is their office, their “third is typically a space outside of these areas where one can carry out a job function as well as meet and interact with other like-minded people.” The ideal third space is one with inspiring ambiance and amenities like WiFi or bathrooms, or perhaps just peace and quiet away from your noisy family.

One’s “third space” might not seem annoying now, but you might start pulling your hair out when your colleagues or bosses keep telling you, “sorry if my camera is off, I’m in my third place,” or “just know I’m in my third place, if we lose our connection.” It creates this sense of dishonesty, painting a veneer of productivity over what could be either an excuse to multitask or a way to avoid conflict in your first two workplaces. After a while, you’ll find yourself thinking, Brett, you’re not “brainstorming in your third place”, you’re just working from your car because your son’s throwing a tantrum.

Humaning

Mondelēz, the international snack conglomerate, released a video on November 11^th, 2020. “Today,” it said, “we need to stop marketing and start humaning”. According to a rather skeptical article from Marketing Week the company’s launch statement defines humaning as “when storytelling becomes storydoing” – a sufficiently nebulous definition for a likewise meaningless term.

In reality, the closest definition could potentially be humanizing, when a subject is transformed from an impersonal concept to a relatable one. It can be closely compared to the pull towards other buzzwords, like “customer-centric” or “customer journey.”

But regardless of its confusing definition, “humaning” won’t stop making its way into your conference room or your boss’ emails, as this kind of word has slithered into the business world before.

Guardian reports that this is what those in the linguistics field refer to as the “verbing of a noun,” a cringe-worthy action that tends to fool the speaker into thinking they may be accomplishing more than they really are. You might have heard “solutioning” before, or perhaps “pain pointing,” which are both examples of this pattern. So it’s safe to say you might hear how your marketing department is humaning their synergy sometime soon.