Department

Definition

A group of employees organized around a specific function, united only by their mutual resentment of other departments.

Example Usage

Marketing and sales had never agreed on anything in the company's five-year history, which the CEO chose to ignore while calling them 'aligned departments.'

Source: Corporate organizational terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

High Potential

An employee identified as having the capability and commitment to advance into senior leadership roles. Also known as 'the person who gets better assignments and more mentoring than everyone else.'

👥 Human Resources

Advanced

organizational development

A systematic approach to improving organizational effectiveness through planned interventions, change management, and cultural transformation. HR's attempt to apply social science to fixing workplace dysfunction.

👥 Human Resources

Advanced

Leveling

The process of standardizing job levels and titles across an organization so that compensation can be fairly determined before someone inevitably discovers they're underpaid anyway.

👥 Human Resources

Advanced

Psychological Safety

A workplace environment where employees feel safe taking interpersonal risks without fear of negative consequences—the foundation for effective teams that Google's research made HR care about.

👥 Human Resources

Advanced

quality of hire

An HR metric attempting to quantify how good new employees are, as if human value can be reduced to a number. It's typically calculated long after hiring decisions haunt you.

👥 Human Resources

Intermediate

COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act)

A 1986 U.S. law allowing employees to continue health insurance after leaving their job, though at full premium cost (ouch). It's basically the government saying 'you can keep insurance, just pay what we were subsidizing.'

👥 Human Resources

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Ottawa

The Capital of Canada. Very boring place....