The department that turned firing into a growth opportunity.
The collection of non-salary benefits and amenities companies offer, from gym memberships to free snacks. Often used to distract from below-market compensation with ping pong tables and kombucha on tap.
The percentage of employees who leave during a given period, the metric that determines whether HR gets bonuses or blame. It's gaming season when departments argue over whether layoffs count as 'voluntary attrition.'
A rigorous hiring methodology involving extensive interviews to ensure only 'A players' are hired, popularized by Bradford Smart. It's exhausting for everyone involved and assumes you can actually define an 'A player.'
A fixed amount of compensation paid regularly (usually monthly or biweekly) that makes you feel professional until you calculate your actual hourly rate. Unlike wages, salaries imply you're too important to be paid by the hour, which is great until you realize you're working 60-hour weeks for the same money. The hallmark of white-collar employment and the reason people learn to say 'I'm on salary' with a mixture of pride and exhaustion.
Fair Labor Standards Act—the 1938 federal law establishing minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor standards. It's the reason you get paid extra for working more than 40 hours, assuming your employer classifies you correctly.
Performance Improvement Plan—often the final step before termination disguised as developmental support. Plural form emphasizes that these are being distributed liberally, usually during reorganizations.
Job applicants who disappear mid-process without explanation, failing to show up for interviews or accept offers. Turnabout is fair play, given how companies ghost candidates, though HR finds it less amusing when the tables turn.
The formal process of passing power, position, or property from one party to the next, whether it's a CEO, a monarch, or your aunt's prized ceramic cat collection. In corporate and political circles, succession planning is the art of ensuring the ship doesn't sink when the captain retires. Also known as "musical chairs for grown-ups with actual consequences."
A system where tenure and time-served trump talent and performance when determining privileges, promotions, or layoff protection. It's the organizational equivalent of "I was here first, so I get the good parking spot," which works great until you realize the person with seniority peaked in 1987. The union's best friend and the merit-based manager's worst nightmare.
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.
In HR-speak, a physical, mental, or cognitive condition that may require workplace accommodations, protected under various laws that employers pretend to understand fully. It's the reason your office now has ramps, adjustable desks, and a 47-page accommodation policy that no one has actually read. Modern workplaces treat this as both a legal minefield and an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to diversity via poorly-designed stock photos.
In HR land, the polite corporate term for 'people yelling at each other about who ate whose yogurt,' escalated to include formal grievances, arbitration, and occasionally lawyers. These disagreements can range from genuinely important issues like discrimination to Jerry insisting his cubicle is 2.3 inches smaller than Sarah's. Most companies have a 47-step dispute resolution process designed to make everyone too exhausted to continue fighting.
Professionals who've been around long enough to remember when onboarding meant showing someone the bathroom location. In military contexts, those who've served their country; in corporate contexts, those who've survived enough restructurings to write a memoir. They're the ones who sigh knowingly during meetings when history repeats itself for the third time.
The gender-neutral superhero appointed to investigate complaints and fight institutional injustice—without the cape but with significantly more paperwork. This official mediator stands between aggrieved individuals and the organizations that wronged them, theoretically wielding the power to actually fix things. It's basically a customer service manager with actual authority and fewer people yelling at them.
The corporate ritual of evaluating, measuring, and quantifying things—whether it's employee performance, property value, or how badly a project is going. It's the professional wrapper around judgment calls, complete with forms, metrics, and the illusion of objectivity. Everyone loves talking about "360-degree assessments" until they're the ones being assessed.
The systematic observation and tracking of employees' activities, performance, or communications, ostensibly for productivity and security purposes. Modern monitoring ranges from benign time-tracking to dystopian keystroke logging and AI-powered webcam analysis. It's either "accountability" or "Big Brother" depending on which side of the surveillance you're on.
In HR contexts, the complete compensation and benefits offering presented to an employee, including salary, bonuses, health insurance, retirement contributions, and various perks. It's how companies describe "what we're paying you" while making it sound more impressive by bundling in the dental plan and free coffee. Negotiating your package is essential because base salary tells only part of the story.
Firing someone for a legitimate, documented reason rather than at-will whimsy. Typically requires progressive discipline, warnings, and enough paperwork to deforest a small country.
When one recruiter handles every step of hiring from writing the job description to extending the offer, rather than passing candidates along an assembly line of specialists. It's the HR equivalent of farm-to-table, but with humans.
Intentionally treating someone differently because of their protected characteristics like race, gender, or age. Unlike adverse impact, this is discrimination on purpose—and it's very illegal.
The practice of openly sharing salary ranges, compensation formulas, or actual employee pay—radical honesty that supposedly reduces wage gaps but makes everyone uncomfortable at company parties.
Laws that prohibit requiring union membership or dues as a condition of employment—deceptively named legislation that weakens unions while sounding like it protects worker freedom.
An interview technique asking candidates to describe specific past situations rather than hypotheticals, based on the radical theory that past behavior predicts future performance. Questions always start with 'Tell me about a time when...'
Formal programs, training, and educational opportunities provided to employees to build skills and advance careers. Often abbreviated as L&D, it ranges from useful technical training to mandatory workshops everyone sleeps through.