If there is an Academy Award for the best piece of business double-speak, Nokia Siemens Networks must be a shoe-in with their recent corker: they’re undergoing “synergy-related headcount restructuring”. As far as euphemisms go for sacking people, it’s a gem. No, they’re not firing 9,000 people, they’re just undergoing a simple “synergy-related adjustment”.
So, euphemisms, eh? The dictionary definition of a “euphemism” is “the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt”. I’ve lost my job before, and it felt pretty bloody offensive, harsh and blunt to me. Maybe that’s because my employer and I were never “in talks” during a “consultation period”. My boss didn’t look at “restructuring options”, and nor was he considering how to “streamline” operations as he “downsized” the business proposition.
He just told me to pack my things and not to come in the next day. Would a bit of sensitive wordplay have softened the blow? With Christmas gone and a tough job market, do the staff at Cooper Clegg or Arjowiggin’s Dartford plant in the UK, just retrenched, appreciate the softly softly phrasing in the media coverage? No, really, I’m asking – do euphemisms help if you’re facing the long cold winter of the job centre?
I assume euphemisms help the employer reconcile himself to making the job cuts. The same must go for any union regularly facing tough decisions that put hundreds of jobs in jeopardy but protect the working conditions of thousands across the industry.
If there’s one piece of business double-speak to rival Nokia’s entry to those euphemism awards, it was one of my mate’s job titles. The guy, who works for an international corporate institution, put me in stitches when I saw the nonsensical role on his business card: “Global solutioning manager”. It turned out that the specific global solution that he was responsible for solutioning was to solve that recurring problem: too many people and not enough jobs.
He was a specialist in “synergy-related headcount restructuring”. He fired people.
The ramifications of being a professional job cutter slipped me by at the time because I was too busy laughing at his ridiculous job title. But who knows, perhaps the verb “solutioning” will soon become a popular entry in the lexicon of modern business gibberish. Business people certainly have a track record of flocking to new jargon; “synergy”, “leverage”, and, of course, the printing industry’s perennial (and ever more popular) favourite: “adding value”.
But to call “adding value” a euphemism is a little unfair. Sure, it’s a vague substitution for something more specific, but it’s not a negative term. “Euphemism” seems too harsh, too blunt – it has become a dirty word in its own right.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if we needed to find a more mild or indirect term to use in its place?
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