Top office buzzwords we’re embracing in 2021

Still working from home? Add these helpful terms to your vocab, if you haven’t already

Love it or hate it, working from home has unlocked many new achievements and possibilities for us. Amongst them? Discovering the power of virtual meetings, learning how to put our best Zoom faces forward, and mastering the art of juggling work and family demands while at home.

ICYDK, a bunch of WFH-related terms have also emerged, to help us better express ourselves in this seemingly new normal. According to Instant Offices, these are some of the buzzwords to add to your office lingo, stat.

Office buzzwords for 2021

1. Blursday: Is it Thursday? No, it’s Blursday. This word perfectly describes how easy it is to lose track of the days of the week, thanks to the disorienting effects of lockdown measures, and working from home.

2. Coronacation: Add “coronavirus” and “vacation”, and you get a forced stay-at-home vacation caused by the pandemic. Until it’s safe to travel overseas, coronacation perfectly sums up how we’ll be clearing our annual leave.

3. Covidiot: An insult used to describe someone ignoring public health advice, specifically advice about Covid-19.

4. Lunch and learn: A voluntary training session or presentation that takes place during employee lunchtime. These sessions aim to bring people from across a company together in an informal collaborative learning environment, to help with their professional development.

5. Quaranteam: Also known as a social bubble, a quaranteam is a group of people who interact with each other but nobody else – theoretically preventing the risk of Covid-19 transmission within the group.

ALSO READ: Corporate jargon decoded: Are your colleagues full of BS? ('business speak' lah)

6. Quarantini: A DIY cocktail mixed at home, when your fave local pub or wine bar is closed due to lockdown restrictions.

7. Remote working: Working off-site instead of in the office.

8. Unmute: Despite the amount of virtual meetings we’ve clocked by now, we’d always still encounter colleagues who forget to unmute their microphones during meetings while they are supposedly talking. So we always go: “Are you on mute?”

9. Virtual happy hour: The perfect occasion to enjoy that quarantini. Virtual happy hour is an online gathering via a platform like Zoom or Skype, where you can socialise with your workmates or friends while safely isolating at home.

Because WFH can feel really isolating, here are other ideas to beat the feelings of loneliness.

10. Waist-up fashion: Thanks to the increase in virtual workplace meetings, many employees have started relying on “waist-up fashion” – a well-groomed appearance from the waist up, with comfy tracksuit bottoms and slippers safely out of view of the camera.

Check out these chic, Zoom-friendly headbands, glasses and luxury accessories worth investing in.

11. Workation: A vacation during which an employee also works. Sounds like most of us who are trying to clear leave.

12. Zooming: The online meeting platform Zoom gained popularity as more businesses started communicating remotely. Now it’s become common to use Zooming as a verb, or to talk about being Zoom-ready.

The videoconferencing software has also become popular for social occasions, aka Zoom parties.

This article was first published in Her World Online.