From dry promotions to shadow policy: New workplace trends and jargons you should know about

The Covid-19 pandemic forced many employees to switch to the work-from-home model and now, roughly four years later many companies have either resumed full-time work or adopted the hybrid work model. Meanwhile, the recent rise in the use of Artificial Intelligence has also changed the workplace in many ways. All of this has lead to many new workplace jargons and trends. From dry promotions to shadow policy, here we list down some such new workplace trends and jargons you should know about.

In the last few months several factors have lead to a rise in job-cuts globally. One reason being the rise of Artificial Intelligence at the workplace which had led to many job cuts-- be it technology or content writing for instance. This in turn has given rise to a new workplace trend, called 'dry promotions' which might be a matter of concern for many employees. The idea of dry promotions is that while an employee gets a new and better role and desgination at work which comes with added pressure and responsibilites, his/ her salary remains unchanged.

It has been over four years since the Covid-19 pandemic forced employees to work from home, and now things have returned to normal. Many companies have now switched to a hybrid or complete work from office set-up. However, employers are still struggling to convince employees to come back to office. And so, many companies are increasingly using the 'office peacocking' way to lure employees back to office. They are renovating offices to bigger and better designs, upgrading the kitchen, canteen and break out areas, switching to better furniture-- all in the hope of making the work place look and feel more fancy so that employees return to office. This is commonly known as 'office peacocking'. While this trend has been there for a while, it has picked up more post the pandemic.

With many companies and employers expecting their employees to be back in office-- be it for hybrid or full time work model-- many employees too have found a way around it. In fact, it has given rise to the 'Coffee Badging' culture at many workplaces. Many employees often go to work to make their presence felt, grab a coffee and then leave either to work-from-home or remotely for the rest of the day-- this is termed as 'Coffee Badging'.

Many companies have now switched to full-time work-from-office set-up. However, it is often noticed that some managers allow work-from-home off the record to a few employees, which is against the company's policies. This practice is casually called 'Shadow policies' at the workplace.

While AI has taken over many jobs, some companies are still sticking to humans when it comes to reliable work. We are referring to the term 'Ghost Work' which is used when work is being performed by a human, however the customers believe that it is being done by an automated process. The term 'Ghost Work' was first coined by Mary L. Gray, an anthropologist, and Siddharth Suri, a computer scientist, in their 2019 book titled 'Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass'.

While TikTok is banned in India, the social media platform is quite popular in many other countries. In the past few months, a trend called #QuitTok has gained much attention and momentum among many people. Opposite of 'Quiet Quitting', in Quit Tok an employee records the exact moment when they resign-- be it over Zoom or in person-- and how their employer reacted. This was first posted by Christina Zumbo, a former Australian government employee, back in 2022 and since then many employees have resonated with her and followed her footsteps. However, 'Quit Tok' can also backfire in certain cases as such employees can be refused from being hired or re-hired by their previous companies in the future.