Every company has workplace jargon. The larger and more complex the operation is, the more team-specific words and acronyms find their way into internal communication messaging, which can quickly become confusing. This disconnect can make it harder for employees to understand what the priorities of the business are or follow the logic of the company’s leaders when they’re communicating.
Ashleigh Pollart, manager of communications at The Hershey Company, told Ragan that on-the-job jargon has led a few terms to slip into conversations at home.
“We joke that you used to need an acronym library to understand what’s going on,” Pollart said. “Corporate lingo is easy to get caught up in. I even find myself getting called out by my family when I use it at home.”
She added that when her team sets out to translate jargon-laden messaging, it begins with a set of questions to ensure that relatability is at the top of its communications priority list.
“If someone were new to the company, would they understand this?” Pollart asked. “If someone never touched the manufacturing side of things, would they understand this? It’s really easy for all of us to forget what it’s like to not know the language. So we make ourselves pause and evaluate whether this would land for someone who hasn’t lived in our acronyms and internal shorthand.”
Pollart shares some tactical ways that The Hershey Company translates jargon into something easier for employees to grasp.
1. Explain jargon in real time. Pollart told Ragan that in addition to keeping an open dialogue with leaders on how to keep jargon to a minimum when communicating with employees, it’s intervened to help simplify things live. “When we were first trying to tackle the issue of jargon overuse, we’d use a buzzer to alert our leaders if they said an acronym,” Pollart said. “That was in some of our smaller sessions. And then in our larger enterprise sessions, if I was moderating, I would just flag the terms for our leaders as they went along by saying, ‘Hey, can you define that? Can you explain what that is to the broader audience?’ Because we are speaking to all employees.” She said this was effective because it broke down barriers and assisted employees when they were too timid to ask for definitions. “I got so many messages from across the company saying, ‘Thank you for asking them to explain it. I had no idea what they were talking about, and I was too embarrassed to be vulnerable and ask the question.’”
2. Translate complexity for individual audiences. Jargon from the top of the company might not make sense for those not present in the boardroom. Pollart said that the comms team works with managers to break down corporate speak into talking points that can relate to everyday work. “The manufacturing teams do huddle meetings every morning with their leader,” she said. This helps turn corporate-speak messaging into something easily incorporated into the flow of a manufacturing worker’s day. “We’ll take dense, jargon-filled messages from corporate and translate them into conversational bullet points that apply to that team,” she added. “They need the message in language they can say out loud in a short time.”
3. Use AI tools as translation assistants. Pollart said that she’s used Copilot as a helper when she seeks to identify jargon or industry phrases in Hershey’s internal comms messaging. She said she’ll enter a message into the platform and prompt it to find the jargon, and the software identifies the words in question and recommends replacements that fit the voice for the message. “And then even further, I asked it to give some examples of how people may be interpreting the corporate jargon, which is so important because people bring their own perceptions and biases to what they’re reading,” she said. AI helps give Pollart’s team a clearer starting point to rework messages into everyday language. “We don’t want to miscommunicate and AI has helped ensure we’re crystal clear in our internal messaging,” Pollart said.
4. Follow up with explainer sessions when needed. With the complicated external and financial factors that can affect the chocolate industry, sometimes an extra step is needed to get through the density of jargon-filled language. “Some of those really deep conversations around cocoa or around supply — anything that’s impacting us externally, even our performance and the way analysts are reacting to it — we take a step back with our leaders and determine if the topic is worthy of a conversation with employees or a more spoken delivery than something written,” Pollart told Ragan. She said her team scripts or suggests employee-centric questions such as ‘What does this mean for my job?’ or ‘How does this affect my team?’ to ensure leaders explain topics in plain, relatable terms rather than corporate speak for employees. “After every earnings session, we host one of those conversations,” she added. “We work with them to help them explain it in terms that are understandable for everybody, not just one part of the business.”
When communicators translate jargon, they do a whole lot more than just clarify messaging. They can unify the company’s culture by creating a greater understanding of the business.
“You shouldn’t need an MBA to understand what’s happening in your workplace,” she said.
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
