It's not 'laying people off', it's 'synergy-related headcount restructuring'

Thanks to my friends at 26, I've been alerted to this quite extraordinary bit of corporate language-mangling by Nokia Siemens Networks.



And that's just the first paragraph.

I'm not sure what people feel is gained by this sort of language. We all know what they mean, so why not be straight about it? They've merged, and that means they don't need so many people. It's an unpleasant fact of corporate life, but it is a fact and we all know it.

Jargon like this makes the brand look silly - surely they don't think anyone is fooled by it? It also makes them look a bit shifty and deceptive, unprepared simply to stand by its actions.

Listen to this: "At the completion of the planned synergy-related headcount restructuring activities, Nokia Siemens Networks expects to have in the range of 7,000 employees in Finland, from an initial base of approximately 9,200."

Seven stodgy paragraphs in and they're not letting go of that enormous phrase, "synergy-related headcount restructuring activities". And they've tied themselves in linguistic knots trying not to say, "We're cutting 2,200 jobs." Of course, we can all do the maths and we can all see through the smoke. So why bother?

All this reminds me of a recent News Quiz on Radio 4, in which Jeremy Hardy ruminated that new jobs are always "created", but cut jobs are simply "lost", as if the organisations were not involved. "Oh, sorry, Bob, your job's lost. We don't know where it's gone. It never turned up. Better not come in. Ever again."