The department that turned firing into a growth opportunity.
A state of dissatisfaction that drives change; the opposite of complacency. When people are discontented, they're motivated to demand better conditions, though management usually wishes they'd just keep quiet.
Officially assigned or appointed to a specific role, duty, or responsibility—basically getting picked first, but sometimes you don't want to be picked.
A corporate initiative to improve workplace representation while maintaining that the hiring pool was 'just not diverse enough.'
Work beyond the minimum required, performed voluntarily. The metric companies use to measure if you actually care.
The strategic effort to create workplaces that welcome and support people from different backgrounds. Easy to talk about; genuinely difficult to implement without tokenism.
The legal obligation employers have to maintain a safe workplace and protect employees from foreseeable harm, often honored more in breach than in observance.
A tax-advantaged benefit allowing employees to set aside pre-tax money for childcare or eldercare costs, saving approximately 30% in taxes but requiring careful usage-or-lose-it planning.
Compensation arrangements where employees forgo current earnings in exchange for higher payments in the future, often including stock options, RSUs, or non-qualified deferred compensation plans. It's basically a promise: 'we'll pay you later... probably.'
DEI—organizational initiatives aimed at recruiting diverse talent, ensuring equitable treatment, and fostering inclusive cultures. The corporate response to 'we should probably fix systemic problems,' with varying degrees of sincerity.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs that companies implement while continuing to promote the same homogeneous leadership. It's the performative art of checking boxes.
A group of employees organized around a specific function, united only by their mutual resentment of other departments.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging—an expanded framework adding belonging as essential to organizational culture. The latest evolution acknowledging that diversity without belonging just makes people feel unwelcome.
A secondary reporting relationship drawn as a dashed line on an org chart, where a person takes input from someone outside their direct chain of command. It is a matrix structure in miniature, and it causes confusion in equal measure.