Corporate buzzword cloud dissolving into a clear, plain English dictionary

If you’ve ever watched two neurosurgeons chat over coffee, you’ll know specialist jargon can be glorious. In the right hands it is a scalpel: precise, efficient and a blessed relief from paragraph-long explanations. The same goes for every field from quantum physics to tax law.

But in business-speak the scalpel is often replaced by a feather boa—colourful, distracting and entirely useless. “Low-hanging fruit”, “sunset the legacy stack”, “leverage our synergies”: phrases that promise profundity but generally drip with verbal Miracle-Gro and not much else.

Sadly, the corporate world has taken this innocent tool, blunted it beyond recognition and now brandishes it like a toddler with a breadknife. Business-speak promises verbal efficiency but usually delivers opacity, pseudo-profundity and an excuse not to think too hard. As André Spicer memorably noted, it’s “vacuous management-speak dressed up as strategic insight”. The Guardian

Worst of all are the euphemisms that actively conceal bad news. And few are more pernicious than the current corporate favourite that has oozed across the quad: “rightsizing.”

Rightsizing: What it Really means (spoiler—”smaller”)

Even the normally understated Cambridge Dictionary concedes that rightsize means “to make an organisation smaller by reducing the number of people working for it.”

Note the complete lack of any suggestion that the process might occasionally involve champagne recruitment drives. The shrinkage is baked in; the “right” size is, almost invariably, less.

“Right-sizing exercises” were already haunting British lecture theatres a decade ago, as The Guardian’s lament for the humanities reported. theguardian.com
Since then the jargon has migrated from Silicon Valley to Senate House quicker than you can say “research excellence framework”.

Sixty-seven UK institutions currently have redundancy schemes on the go, a trend cheerfully described by commentators as “right-sizing the sector.” isrf.org The University of Edinburgh plans to shave £140 million off its wage bill by “identifying the right size and shape of our staff body”. Translation: fewer bodies. ucu.org.uk
Lincoln, meanwhile, says brutal cuts to 220 posts are essential so it can “find the right size and shape” for the future—apparently bean-counters are now tailors as well. timeshighereducation.com

Spot the pattern: every time the phrase crops up, payroll numbers go down.

Why The Euphemism is so objectionable

  • It’s inaccurate. “Right” implies careful optimisation; in reality these are emergency cuts after years of financial bravado.

  • It’s cowardly. If leaders truly believed in the virtue of mass sackings they would say “We’re firing people.”

  • It shifts the shame. Leavers shoulder the trauma, stayers wrestle survivor’s guilt, senior managers bask in “doing the right thing”.

  • It’s bad business. Routine lay-offs damage engagement and profitability in the long run—Harvard Business Review has been saying so for years. hbr.org

Redundancies don’t just remove salaries; they vaporise institutional memory, crater local economies and hollow out research capacity. Yet the glossy presentation will announce the institution is now “more agile”—rather like a gymnast who’s “lost weight” after an amputation.

Language shapes policy. Keep calling mass sackings “rightsizing” and we normalise spreadsheet sadism as prudent housekeeping. Call them what they are—redundancies in their hundreds—and suddenly the morality (and the maths) look a lot murkier.

What to Do instead of Playing Buzzword Buckaroo

  1. Use the Queen’s (plain) English.
    If you truly must lop off heads, call it redundancy, job losses or—brace yourself—sacking people. Your staff have PhDs; they can cope with syllables.

  2. Refuse to translate gibberish for free.
    When the memo says the university will become “leaner”, email back:
    “Just checking—does ‘leaner’ mean fewer colleagues and larger workloads? Ta.”
    Copy-in HR. Enjoy the silence.

  3. Play Buzzword Bingo—out loud.
    Keep a visible card in meetings. When “right-size”, “agile pivot” or “future-proofing” is uttered, shout “Full house!” and demand a straight answer. (Yes, it’s career-limiting. So is a P45.)

  4. Insist on the arithmetic.
    No more PowerPoints with rainbow doughnuts. Ask: “Exactly how many posts, which departments, and over what timescale?” Numbers concentrate minds; euphemisms evaporate under the spotlight.

  5. Unionise your vocabulary.
    Agree collectively never to parrot management’s euphemisms. The minute staff stop repeating nonsense, leadership is forced either to speak plainly or look patently ridiculous. Both outcomes are acceptable.

  6. Reward candour.
    When a senior manager finally says “We’re making redundancies,” resist the urge to boo. Applaud the honesty—then debate the strategy. The goal is clarity first, accountability second.

  7. Remember that language sets precedent.
    If we allow “rightsizing” today, tomorrow brings “talent de-densification” and “knowledge off-shoring”. Nip it in the bud before we all need a glossary to find the exit.

Bottom line: Sack the euphemism, interrogate the plan, and keep your irony fully loaded. Because once we translate polite fiction into plain fact, the real discussion—about funding, priorities and the future of higher education—can at last begin.