Trending HR Buzzwords

Employee Experience (EX):

It's how employees feel about their journey with an organization, encompassing all interactions from hiring to exit. Unlike engagement, which focuses on the present, EX influences productivity, quality of work, retention rates, absenteeism, and customer relations.

The Great Resignation:

This term describes the surge in job resignations since 2021 due to pandemic-induced changes. Factors include job insecurity, pay, work-life balance, limited growth opportunities, career changes, caregiving, inflexible arrangements, relocation, and feeling undervalued.

Quiet Quitting:

Employees establish work-life boundaries to maintain balance, rejecting overwork and solely impressing superiors. It signals unhappiness or burnout, sparking discussions on healthy workplace boundaries. More U.S. workers comfortably leave jobs within a year. They prioritize pay and work-life balance, seeking better opportunities. This trend has grown in recent years.

Quiet Firing:

Managers disengage or mistreat employees, leading them to voluntarily leave. Tactics include withholding raises, micromanaging, lack of respect, exclusion, tough questioning, increased workload without pay, and isolation. It avoids termination documentation and legal issues.

Anti-Perks:

These are benefits employees perceive as harmful to their productivity or well-being. Examples include free dinner, catered lunches, massages, nap rooms, video games, unlimited vacation, fitness rooms, pet-friendly offices, mandatory fun events, and alcohol. While some enjoy these perks, others prioritize better pay, positive work culture, and respect.

Digital Nomad:

A digital nomad embraces a nomadic lifestyle, working remotely from various locations with internet access. This includes libraries, hotels, cafes, co-working spaces, and even recreational vehicles. Some choose this lifestyle temporarily, while others travel extensively. Countries like Anguilla, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Croatia, Costa Rica, and more offer nomad visas for extended stays.

Industry Hopping:

It involves transitioning into different sectors. Many seek higher-paying careers with flexibility. Affordable educational opportunities like coding boot camps and online classes facilitate industry transitions.

Emotional Intelligence:

It's the ability to understand, perceive, and manage emotions effectively. It includes self-regulation, self-awareness, social skills, empathy, and motivation. Employers assess emotional intelligence for handling stress and leadership roles.

Skills Gap:

The disparity between employers' skill requirements and candidates' experience. Emerging technologies change skill needs. To manage the gap, companies re-skill employees, transition workers, hire freelancers, recruit new talent, and acquire firms.

Soft Skills:

Interpersonal skills enabling effective collaboration. Unlike job-specific hard skills, soft skills are transferable. They include attitude, flexibility, communication, time management, problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership. Employers value them for fit, promotions, and retention.

Ghost Jobs:

These are job postings that companies don't intend to fill soon. They may remain online after hiring, be posted in advance, or not exist at all. Companies use ghost jobs to assess the talent pool and keep resumes of qualified candidates. Recruiters rely on them to have contacts for future positions.

Hustle Culture:

It's the mentality that employees must work extra hours to advance their careers. It encourages longer work hours and faster pace. Rejecting hustle culture means setting boundaries for a better work-life balance and prioritizing personal time.

Labor Hoarding:

When companies retain employees during tough times instead of layoffs, they save money in the long term. It avoids costs of recruiting, rehiring, and training later. The pandemic changed how companies approach layoffs due to experiencing staff shortages and understanding the long-term impact.

Gaslighting:

It's psychological manipulation that causes self-doubt by questioning one's version of events. Gaslighting can lead to emotional instability. It can occur in the workplace through persistent negative accounts of performance, questioning reality, negative gossip, false mistakes, denial of statements, public criticism, belittlement, and exclusion from job-related events.

Side Gig or Side Hustle:

It's a secondary job that provides extra income alongside the primary job. It can be full-time, part-time, or freelance work. Side gigs gained popularity due to rising costs of living and limited wage growth. Examples include accounting, delivery driving, fitness coaching, freelance writing, graphic design, photography, selling goods, software development, tutoring, video blogging, and web development.

Green-Collar Job:

A green-collar job is employment in the environmental sector, focusing on sustainability and conservation. Examples of green-collar jobs include agriculture, alternative fuels, conservation, engineering, renewable energy, and waste management.

Quiet Hiring:

Quiet hiring is when businesses fill skill gaps without hiring new full-time employees. This can involve assigning current employees new roles or hiring short-term help like contractors or freelancers. It helps companies prioritize their needs and can evoke mixed reactions among employees.

Rage-Applying:

Rage-applying occurs when individuals apply to multiple jobs out of frustration with their current role.

Polymath:

A polymath is someone with extensive knowledge across various subjects. Historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Galileo exemplified polymathic qualities by excelling in multiple fields.

Tech Shame:

Tech shame refers to feeling judged for experiencing technical issues at work. Newer employees are more likely to experience tech shame compared to longtime employees.

Rolling Recession:

In a rolling recession, sectors take turns making job cuts instead of a widespread layoff across industries. Tech layoffs received significant attention recently, while other sectors remained relatively stable.

Quiet Thriving:

Instead of quiet quitting, quiet thriving focuses on finding enjoyment and positive aspects in a job. Strategies for quiet thriving include shaping the job with management, building relationships with colleagues, documenting achievements, seeking advice from mentors, and establishing work boundaries.

The Great Regret:

During the Great Resignation, millions of people left their jobs. However, a recent study shows that one in four individuals now regrets their decision. Many report new jobs not meeting expectations or facing difficulties in the job search.

Hush Trips:

Hush trips involve employees working remotely from vacation destinations without disclosing their location to their managers. This raises concerns regarding secrecy, security, and potential tax implications.

Toxic Workplace:

Toxic workplaces foster negative behaviors such as manipulation, belittling, and discrimination. Signs of a toxic workplace include high employee turnover, lack of trust, excessive stress, office gossip, and low morale.

Great Betrayal:

The Great Betrayal refers to employees feeling that workplace loyalty and stability are not as reliable as they appear. Many workers are choosing freelance work for the freedom and flexibility it offers.

Proximity Bias:

Proximity bias occurs when leaders show favoritism towards employees in the office. Managers with proximity bias tend to overlook or undervalue remote or distributed team members.

Social Loafing:

Social loafing is when individuals exert less effort in a group setting compared to working alone. To prevent social loafing, divide tasks, assign individual responsibilities, set expectations, recognize team efforts, and avoid creating large groups where task allocation becomes challenging.

Glass Cliff:

The glass cliff describes the promotion of women to leadership roles during challenging times, setting them up for potential failure. It expands on the concept of the glass ceiling, which highlights the obstacles women face in reaching leadership positions. Recent examples include CEO promotions at Bed, Bath & Beyond and Twitter.

Un-retirement:

During the Great Resignation, many retirees are choosing to return to the workforce. Reasons for un-retirement include rising inflation, seeking purpose, and abundant employment opportunities. These individuals often take on roles as consultants, mentors, or contractors, sharing their valuable experience.

Empathy Gap:

The empathy gap refers to the difficulty people have in understanding or relating to others' experiences and emotions. It can hinder understanding across cultural, socioeconomic, and marginalized groups, as individuals struggle to grasp emotions they haven't personally encountered.

Body Doubling:

Body doubling is a technique to help individuals with ADHD focus and complete tasks. It involves having another person physically or virtually present to provide support and accountability, ensuring the person stays on task.

Quiet Ambition:

Quiet ambition signifies a shift in priorities, where individuals focus on personal fulfillment rather than solely pursuing job success or financial gains. They seek careers that align with their personal dreams and allow for a balanced life, rather than sacrificing personal life for work.

Talent Debt:

Talent debt refers to disengaged and underperforming employees who are costly to retain. During the Great Resignation, companies held onto employees to compensate for talent loss, resulting in a pool of unenthusiastic workers. The level of employee disengagement is currently the highest in a decade, leading to talent debt.

Threat Rigidity:

Threat rigidity describes businesses' tendency to resist change and cling to past practices when facing challenges. This rigid response limits growth and innovation by ignoring shifts in the business environment.

Loud Quitting:

Loud quitting occurs when disengaged employees openly express their unhappiness and take actions that harm the organization. This can involve badmouthing superiors, performing tasks poorly, or leaving negative online comments. It differs from quiet quitting, as employees directly act out their dissatisfaction.

Remote Work:

Remote work involves employees performing their job tasks from a location other than the traditional office, often facilitated by digital communication and collaboration tools. See related definitions for Digital Nomad, Hush Trips, Proximity Bias.

Hybrid Workforce:

A hybrid workforce combines on-site employees with remote workers, utilizing technology to collaborate, allowing flexibility and optimizing productivity through a mix of in-person and virtual work arrangements

The Big Stay:

Following the Great Resignation, more employees are choosing to remain in their current jobs in 2023, marking "The Big Stay."