Revealed: The Latest Workplace Acronyms You Need To Know: Understanding The New Workplace Acronyms. A new survey by Adobe finds Americans, especially in tech and Gen Z, often struggle with common workplace acronyms. Over 30% of Gen Z thinks PDF means “Printable Document File,” and 20% of tech workers don’t know what it stands for. The study also reveals state-by-state searches for acronym meanings, with “WFH” and “EOW” topping the charts. Surprisingly, 1 in 3 tech workers admit to pretending to know tech acronyms. Watch this video on FinStream: “Revealed: The Latest Workplace Acronyms You Need To Know.”

Article: Are You Faking It With Acronyms at Work?

Confused by work acronyms? You’re not alone! This survey reveals many workers pretend to understand, with common terms like DEI, WFH, and even PDF stumping many.

By Samanda Dorger

Do you sit in meetings nodding and pretending to know what DEI or 2FA means, or other acronyms used at work? A survey of 1,034 employed Americans conducted by Adobe found that 45% of workers say they pretended to know an acronym, but only 13% say they always look it up. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to assess employee performance, but 1 in 4 employees had no idea what this acronym stood for. Among Gen Z workers, 81% surveyed were unfamiliar with the term DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion.) And 94% of boomers didn’t know 2FA (two-factor authentication) while 85% didn’t know the acronym OOO, (out of office.) Most millennials didn’t know RTW (return to work) or EEO (equal employment opportunity.) In the tech industry, one in three workers just pretend to know what common industry acronyms stand for: 64% don’t know RSS (really simple syndication) and 20% of tech workers don’t even know what PDF stands for (portable document format.) Across the 50 states, the most-searched tech acronyms among workers were AI and NFT. AI stands for artificial intelligence and NFT is a non-fungible token. NFTs are digital assets that provide ownership or proof of authenticity for a digital art, music, or other digital content.

Here are some other common acronyms that stumped a number of workers. How many of them do you know?

TIA

TLDR

PTO

ROI

WFH

EOW

SSDD

GOAT

Here’s what they mean:

TIA = Thanks in advance

TLDR = Too long, didn’t read

PTO = Paid time off

ROI = Return on investment

WFH = Work from home

EOW = End of week (EOD = end of day)

SSDD = Same stuff, different day

GOAT= Greatest of all time

When you get stuck in the alphabet soup, the University of Southern California has an acronym finder that can help out.

Check out the complete results of the survey and learn a few more acronyms at Adobe’s blog.

About the author: Samanda Dorger

Samanda Dorger is a freelance editor at MarketWatch and TheStreet. Her award-winning images have been exhibited and published around the world. She has taught journalism and photography at several California colleges, and has a master’s in photography from the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, and a B.A. in journalism from San Jose State.