The department that turned firing into a growth opportunity.
A contract restricting employees from joining competitors or starting competing businesses for a specified period after leaving. Increasingly unenforceable legally but still used to intimidate departing employees.
Employees entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act, typically hourly workers. The classification that means you actually get paid for working extra hours, unlike your salaried colleagues.
The delicate art of two or more parties pretending they have more options than they actually do until someone blinks first. In HR contexts, it's the formal dance between employer and employee where both sides know the salary range but spend weeks acting surprised by each other's numbers. Mastery of this skill requires equal parts poker face, patience, and the ability to say 'let me think about it' convincingly.
A talent assessment tool that plots employees on performance versus potential, creating nine categories from 'star' to 'why are they still here?' It's how companies decide who gets promoted and who gets managed out, all on a tidy 3x3 grid.