Base Pay —> Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Base Pay: Compensation for past wage and benefit losses caused by discriminatory employment practices or procedures. Lost wages include overtime, incentive pay, raises and bonuses.

Balance-Sheet Approach: An approach to international compensation that provides international employees with a compensation package that equalizes cost differences between the international assignment and the same assignment in the home country.

Bargaining Agreement: Also known as a collective bargaining agreement. It is a contract between an employer and union covering wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment for employees in the bargaining unit.

Bargaining Unit: All employees eligible to select a single union to represent and bargain collectively for them.

Base Pay: The basic compensation an employee receives, usually as a wage or salary.

Basic Skills: Reading, writing and communication skills needed to understand the content of a training program.

Behavior Modeling: Copying someone else's behavior.

Behavioral Description Interview: A type of work-family conflict that occurs when employees' behavior in work roles is not appropriate for their behavior in family roles.

Behavioral Rating: Assesses an employee's behaviors instead of other characteristics.

Behavior-Based Conflict: A type of work-family conflict that occurs when employees' behavior in work roles is not appropriate for their behavior in family roles.

Benchmark Job: Job found in many organizations and performed by several individuals who have similar duties that are relatively stable and that require similar knowledge, skills and abilities.

Benchmarking: Comparing specific measures of performance against data on those measures in "best practices" organizations.

Benefit: Indirect compensation given to employees for organizational membership.

Blended Workforce: A structured but flexible mixture of permanent full-time, part-time, temporary employees and independent contractors.

Blue-collar Employees: Blue-collar workers are hourly paid workers employed in occupations that require physical or manual labor.

Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ): A characteristic providing a legitimate reason why an employer can exclude persons on otherwise illegal bases of consideration.

Bonus: A payment made on a one-time basis, which does not become part of the employee's base pay.

Broadbanding: Practice of using fewer pay grades having broader ranges than traditional compensation systems.

Business Agent: A full-time union official employed by the union to operate the union office and assist union members.

Business Necessity: A practice necessary for safe and efficient organizational operations.

Bumping: Type of assessment of HR effectiveness that involves review of customer satisfaction or key indicators (e.g., turnover rate, average days to fill a position) related to an HR functional area (e.g., recruiting, training).

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): A practice that permits senior level employees whose positions have been slotted for elimination or downsizing the option of accepting an alternative position within the organization for which they are qualified to perform and which is currently occupied by another employee with less seniority.

Cafeteria Plan —> Cumulative Trauma Disorders

Cafeteria Plan: A plan in which an employer offers employees a variety of different benefits. The employee is able to choose which benefits would fit their individual needs. Examples of benefits offered in the cafeteria include group-term life insurance, dental insurance, disability and accident insurance, and reimbursement of healthcare expenses.

Call Center: See Contact Center.

Capitated Pricing: Vendors deliver contracted services for a set amount of money per employee per month. This can be a risky strategy for vendors whose profitability is directly tied to how much the services are or are not used (e.g., employee assistance programs).

Career: The sequence of work-related positions a person occupies throughout life.

Career Development: The process by which employees progress through a series of stages, each characterized by a different set of developmental tasks, activities and relationships.

Career Path: A sequence of job positions involving similar types of work and skills that employees move through in a company.

Career Planning: A process by which employees become aware of interests, values, strengths and weaknesses; obtain information about job opportunities; identify career goals; and establish action plans to achieve career goals.

Central Tendency Error: Rating all employees in a narrow band in the middle of the rating scale.

Checkoff: A union contract provision that requires an employer to deduct union dues from employees' paychecks.

Child Labor Laws: Provisions under FLSA are designed to protect the educational opportunities of youth and prohibit their employment in jobs that are detrimental to their health and safety. FLSA restricts the hours that youth under the age of 16 can work and lists hazardous occupations too dangerous for young workers to perform.

Client-Server Architecture: Computer design that provides a method to consolidate data and applications into a single host system (the client).

Climate For Transfer: Trainees' perceptions of characteristics of the work environment (social support and situational constraints) that can either facilitate or inhibit use of trained skills or behavior.

Climate Survey: A tool used to solicit and assess employee opinions, feelings, perceptions and expectations regarding a variety of factors pertinent to maintaining the organizations climate, such as opportunities for growth, management, working relationships and environment, etc.

Closed Shop:A firm that requires individuals to join a union before they can be hired.

Coaching: Daily training and feedback given to employees by immediate supervisors.

Co-Determination: A practice whereby union or worker representatives are given positions on a company's board of directors.

Collective Bargaining:The process whereby representatives of management and workers negotiate over wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment

Commission: Compensation computed as a percentage of sales in units or dollars.

Common Law Employment Test: Refers to the IRS's 20-question common law test which examines the level of control exercised over a worker by an employer in order to determine whether the individual is an employee or an independent contractor.

Compa-Ratio: Pay level divided by the midpoint of the pay range.

Compensable Factors: A practice that permits senior level employees whose positions have been slottehe characteristics of jobs that an organization values and chooses to pay for.

Compensation Committee: Usually a subgroup of the board of directors composed of directors who are not officers of the firm.

Compensatory Time Off:The practice of giving employees paid time off that can be used in the future in lieu of paying them overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 per week. While an acceptable practice in the public sector, the FLSA places very strict limitations on the use of compensatory time off for private sector employers.

Competitive Advantage: A company's ability to make products or offer services that are valued by customers more than those of competing firms.

Competitiveness: A company's ability to maintain and gain market share in its industry.

Compliance Officer: Specially trained agent of the U.S. Department of Labor responsible for ensuring that employers meet OSHA requirements.

Compressed Workweek: Workweek in which a full week's work is accomplished in fewer than five days.

Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM): A manufacturing system that uses computers to direct production of the product.

Conciliation: Process by which a third party attempts to keep union and management negotiators talking so that they can reach a voluntary settlement.

Concurrent Validation: A criterion-related validity study in which a test is administered to all the people currently in a job and then incumbents' scores are correlated with existing measures of their performance on the job.

Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA): The 1985 act that requires employers to permit employees to extend their health insurance coverage at group rates for up to 36 months following a qualifying event, such as layoff.

Constructive Discharge: Occurs when art employer deliberately makes conditions intolerable in an attempt to get an employee to quit.

Content Validity: Validity measured by use of a logical, non-statistical method to identify the KSAs and other characteristics necessary to perform a job.

Contingent Work Force: Temporary, part-time and self-employed workers who are not considered full-time employees.

Continuous Learning: The requirement that employees understand the relationships among their jobs, their work units, and the company and that they acquire skills and knowledge needed for self-improvement and for improving the company's products and services.

Contractual Rights: Rights based on a specific contractual agreement between employer and employee.

Contributory Plan: Pension plan in which the money for pension benefits is paid in by both employees and employers.

Copayment: Employee's payment of a portion of the cost of both insurance premiums and medical care.

Corporate Campaigns: Union activities designed to exert public, financial or political pressure on employers during the union-organizing process.

Correlation Coefficient: A statistic that measures the degree to which two sets of numbers are related to each other.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: The process of determining the economic benefits of a training program using accounting methods.

Craft Union: A union whose members do one type of work, often using specialized skills and training.

Criterion-Related Validity: A method of establishing the validity of a personnel selection method by showing a substantial correlation between test scores and job-performance scores.

Critical Job Dimensions: Elements of a job on which performance is measured.

Cross-Cultural Preparation: The process of educating employees (and their families) who are given an assignment in a foreign country.

Culture: The societal forces affecting the values, beliefs and actions of a distinct group of people.

Cumulative Trauma Disorders: Muscle and skeletal injuries that occur when workers repetitively use the same muscles to perform tasks.

Decertification —> Extrinsic Motivator

Decertification: A process whereby a union is removed as the representative of a group of employees.

Decision Support Systems: Problem-solving systems that usually include a "what-if" feature that allows users to see how outcomes change when assumptions or data change.

Defamation: Injury caused to an individual's character or reputation resulting from another individual(s) issuing false or malicious statements either verbally or in writing.

Defined Benefit Plan: Retirement plan that pays participants a lump-sum amount that has been calculated using formulas that can include age, earnings and length of service.

Defined Contribution Plan: A pension plan that clearly defines the amount of contributions, which is usually a percentage of an employee's salary. The benefits payable at retirement depend on several factors including future investment return and annuity rate at retirement.

Delayering: Reducing the number of job levels within an organization.

Department of Labor (DOL): The federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing a large quantity of federal labor laws, including, but not limited to, overtime pay, child labor, wages and hours, workplace health and safety, FMLA, and various other employee rights.

Development: The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that improve an employee's ability to meet changes in job requirements and in client/customer demands.

Development Planning: A process through which employees identify developmental needs, expected outcomes of their development (such as changes in behavior, new problem solving strategies), and the actions that should be taken for development to occur and create a timetable for improvement to be created.

Direct Applicants: People who apply for a job vacancy without prompting from the organization.

Directional Pattern Model: A career development model suggesting that employees make decisions about how quickly they want to progress through career stages and at what point they want to return to an earlier career stage.

Disabled Person: Under the ADA guidelines, an individual with a disability is a person who: has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such impairment; or is regarded as having such impairment. Disability under Social Security rules are defined as an individual who is unable to perform work that he or she was previously able to perform and the individual cannot adjust to other work because of his or her medical condition(s), which is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death.

Discipline:A form of training that enforces organizational rules.

Disparate Impact: Situation that exists when there is a substantial under-representation of protected-class members as a result of employment decisions that work to their disadvantage.

Disparate Treatment:Situation that exists when protected-class members are treated differently from others.

Distributed Work: Work done outside of the traditional work environment, including at home, while traveling, and anywhere an employee can interact with managers, peers, customers, products or processes using technology.

Distributive Bargaining:The part of the labor-management negotiation process that focuses on dividing a fixed economic "pie."

Distributive Justice: Perceived fairness in the distribution of outcomes.

Diversity: Differences among people.

Diversity Management:Efforts concerned with developing organizational initiatives that value all people equally, regardless of their differences.

Downsizing: The planned elimination of large numbers of personnel designed to enhance organizational effectiveness.

Downward Move: A job change involving a reduction in an employee's level of responsibility and authority.

Drug Free Workplace Act of 1988: Requires some federal contractors and all federal grantees to agree that they will provide drug-free workplaces as a precondition of receiving a contract or grant from a federal agency. Although all covered contractors and grantees must maintain a drug-free workplace, the specific components necessary to meet the requirements of the Act vary based on whether the contractor or grantee is an individual or an organization.

Dual Career-Path System: A career-path system that enables employees to remain in technical careers but earn salaries and have advancement opportunities comparable with those in management careers.

Due Process: The opportunity to defend oneself against charges.

Dues Checkoff: Provision that union dues will be deducted automatically from payroll checks of union members.

Duty:A larger work segment composed of several tasks that are performed by an individual.

Duty Of Fair Representation:The National Labor Relations Act requirement that all bargaining-unit members have equal access to and representation by the union in Contract negotiation and administration (e.g., grievance procedures).

Early Retirement Plan: A benefit plan offered by an organization providing incentives geared toward encouraging employees who are approaching retirement age to voluntarily retire prior to their normal retirement age.

Earned-Time Plan: Plan that combines all time-off benefits into a total number of hours or days that employees can take off with pay.

Efficiency Wage Theory: A theory according to which a paid wage influences the productivity of a worker.

Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Program that provides counseling and other help to employees having emotional, physical or other personal problems.

Employee Handbook: A written or electronic document containing summaries of the employer's policies and benefits designed to familiarize employees with various matters affecting the employment relationship.

Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988: Prohibits most private employers from requiring employees or candidates for employment to submit to a lie detector test. Employees who take a polygraph test may not be discharged or suffer any other negative consequences solely on the basis of the test, without other supporting evidence. The Act strictly mandates how polygraph tests may be administered and how the results are used.

Employee Referral Program: A recruiting strategy where current employees are rewarded for referring qualified candidates for employment.

Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA): The 1974 act that increased the fiduciary responsibilities of pension plan trustees, established vesting rights and portability provisions, and established the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): A plan whereby employees gain stock ownership in the organization for which they work.

Employee Wellness Programs: Preventive programs that attempt to promote good health among employees who are not necessarily having current health problems.

Employment Agency: An employment agency finds jobs for persons seeking employment. Different from a staffing agency, an employment agency may charge an individual an upfront fee to find them a job. The fee may be paid in advance or taken as a percentage of the salary of the placed employee.

Employment Branding: A marketing strategy designed to portray an organization as a desirable place to work (e.g., "one of the most family-friendly"). The goal is to shape the perceptions of potential employees, current employees and, in many cases, the public at large.

Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA): A federal law that governs pension and welfare employee benefit plans. ERISA requires plans to provide participants with plan information including plan features and funding. It also requires that plans provide fiduciary responsibilities for those who manage and control assets. It gives participants the right to sue for benefits and breaches of fiduciary duty.

Employment Contracts: Agreements that spell out the details of employment.

Employment-At-Will Doctrine: The doctrine that, in the absence of a specific contract, either an employer or employee could sever an employment relationship at any time.

Empowerment: Giving employees responsibility and authority to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development or customer service.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO): The concept that individuals should have equal treatment in all employement-related actions regardless of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO): A policy statement that equal consideration for a job is applicable to all individuals and that the employer does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, age, marital status, national origin, disability or sex.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC):The federal agency responsible for publishing guidelines, enforcing EEO laws and investigating complaints of job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age or disability.

Equity: The perceived fairness of the relation between what a person does (inputs) and what the person receives (outcomes).

Ergonomics: The proper design of the work environment to address the physiological demands.

Essential Job Functions: The fundamental job duties of the employment position that an individual with a disability holds or desires; they do not include marginal functions of the position.

Exempt Employees: Employees classified as executive administrative, professional, or outside sales, to whom employers are not required to pay overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Exit Interview: An interview in which those leaving the organization are asked to identify the reasons for their departure.

Expatriate: An employee who is transferred to work abroad, where the employee is not a citizen, on a long-term job assignment.

Experience Rating: A rating that determines the size of an employer's unemployment and workers' compensation taxes, based on that employer's history of laying off employees and its injury rates.

Expert Systems: Computer systems incorporating the decision rules of people recognized as experts in a certain area.

External Analysis: Examining the organization's operating environment to identify strategic opportunities and threats.

Extrinsic Motivator: Organizationally controlled incentives, such as pay, benefits, incentives, achievement awards, etc., used to reinforce motivation and increase performance.

Fact Finder —> Human Resource Specialist

Fact Finder: A person who reports on the reasons for a labor-management dispute, the views and arguments of both sides, and a non-binding recommendation for settling the dispute.

Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) of 1969: The FCRA requires employers that use credit reports and that deny employment on the basis of a credit report to so notify the applicant and to provide the name and address of the consumer reporting agency used.

Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA): The 1938 law that established the minimum wage and overtime pay.

Family And Medical Leave Act (FMLA): The 1993 act that requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave after childbirth or adoption; to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, or parent; or for an employee's own serious illness.

Featherbedding: An unfair labor practice occurring when a union requires an employer to pay an employee for services he or she did not perform.

Federation: A group of autonomous national and international unions.

Financial Accounting Statement (FAS) 106: The rule issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 1993 requiring companies to fund benefits provided after retirement on an accrual rather than a pay-as-you-go basis and to enter these future cost obligations on their financial statements.

Flexible Benefits Plan: Benefits plan that allows employees to select the benefits they prefer from groups of benefits established by the employer.

Flexible Spending Account (FSA): A FSA allows employees to set aside a portion of their earnings on a pre-tax basis into separate spending accounts to fund allowable health care and/or dependent day care expenses. The funds must be segregated as per IRS regulations.

Flexible Staffing: Use of recruiting sources and workers who are not employees.

Flextime:Variable work hours requiring employees to work a standard number of core hours within a specified period of time, allowing employees greater flexibility in their starting and ending times — often around core hours.

Forced Distribution: Performance appraisal method in which ratings of employees' performance are distributed along a bell-shaped curve.

Forecasting: Identifying expected future conditions based on information from the past and present.

Formal Education Programs: Employee development programs, including short courses offered by consultants or universities, executive M.B.A. programs, and university programs.

4/5 Rule: Rule stating that discrimination generally is considered to occur if the selection rate for a protected group is less than 80 percent of the group's representation in the relevant labor market or less than 80 percent of the selection rate for the majority group.

401(k) Plan: A retirement plan named after the tax code provision that allows employees to defer compensation on a pre-tax basis.

Gag Clause: See Nondisclosure Agreement.

Gainsharing: A form of group compensation based on group or plant performance (rather than organization-wide profits) that does not become part of the employee's base salary.

Garnishment: A court action in which a portion of an employee's wages is set aside to pay a debt owed a creditor.

General Duty Clause: The provision of the Occupational Health and Safety Act that states that an employer has an overall obligation to furnish employees with a place of employment free from recognized hazards.

Generalizability: The degree to which the validity of a selection method established in one context extends to other contexts.

Glass Ceiling: A barrier to advancement to higher-level jobs in the company that adversely affects women and minorities. The barrier may be due to lack of access to training programs, development experiences or relationships (e.g., mentoring).

Global Organization: An organization that has corporate units in a number of countries that are integrated to operate as one organization worldwide.

Goals: What in organization hopes to achieve in the medium to long-term future.

Goals and Timetables: The part of a written affirmative action plan that specifies the percentage of women and minorities that an employer seeks to have in each job group and the date by which that percentage is to be attained.

Golden Parachute: A severance benefit that provides protection and security to executives in the event that they lose their jobs or their firms are acquired by other firms and they are negatively affected.

Graphic Rating: Using a scale that allows the rater to mark an employee's performance on a continuum.

Green-Circled Employee: An incumbent who is paid below the range set for the job.

Grievance: An alleged misinterpretation, misapplication or violation of a provision in a union-management agreement.

Grievance Arbitration: A means by which disputes arising from different interpretations of a labor contract are settled by a third party.

Grievance Procedure: A formal channel of communications used to resolve grievances.

Group-Building Techniques: Techniques that help trainees share ideas and experiences, build group identity, understand the dynamics of interpersonal relationships, and get to know their own strengths and weaknesses and those of their co-workers.

Groupware: Software application that enables multiple users to track, share and organize information and to work on the same database or document simultaneously.

Halo/Horn Effect: A form of interviewer bias, occurring when the interviewer rates or judges an individual based on the individual's positive or strongest traits, allowing their overall perception of the person to overshadow any negative traits. Referred to as the "halo effect" when it works in the candidate's favor or the "horn effect" when it works against the candidate.

Hand-Billing: Practice in which unions give written publicity to employees to convince the employees to sign authorization cards.

Handicapped Individual: See Disabled Individual.

Hands-On Techniques: Training methods that provide direct experience (e.g., on-the-job training, simulations, business games and case studies, behavior modeling, and interactive video).

Harassment: Conduct or actions, based on race, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, military membership or veteran status, severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile, abusive or intimidating work environment for a reasonable person. State laws may further define harassment to include additional protections.

Hawthorne Studies: Studies conducted at the Western Electric plant in 1927 suggesting that increases in employee productivity can be realized if employees are treated in a positive manner.

Hazard Pay: A special payment made in addition to an individual's salary for accepting assignments at locations where there is threat of physical danger or for performing positions that are hazardous to the individual's health and well-being.

Health: A general state of physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996: Enacted to make health insurance more portable from one employer to another, the law mandates procedures for both new hires and for exiting employees. New employees can use evidence of previous health care coverage provided by their former employer to reduce or eliminate the new employer's preexisting condition requirements. Exiting employees must be provided a certificate of prior creditable health care coverage to use for this purpose. HIPAA includes other provisions regarding restrictions on preexisting conditions, special enrollment rights, privacy rights and protections.

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO): A health-care plan that provides benefits on a pre-paid basis for employeeswho are required to use only HMO medical service providers.

High-Leverage Training: Training practice that links training to strategic business goals, has top management support, relies on an instructional design model, and is benchmarked to programs in other organizations.

High-Performance Work Systems:Work systems that maximize the fit between the company's social system and technology.

Homesourcing: See Telecommuting

Host Country: The country in which the parent-country organization seeks to locate or has already located a facility

Host-Country National:An employee working in a unit or plant who is a citizen of the country in which the unit or plant is located but where the unit or plant is operated by an organization headquartered in another country.

Human Capital: The collective abilities, knowledge, experience and skills that employees possess. For many (especially "knowledge-based") companies and industries, human capital is a critical asset, arguably more important than physical or financial capital.

HR Audit: A formal research effort that evaluates the current state of HR management in an organization.

HR Generalist: A person with responsibility for performing a variety of HR activities.

HR Help Desk: See Contact Center.

HR Information System (HRIS): A computer database used to gather, store, maintain and retrieve relevant employee and HR-related information.

HR Management: The design of formal systerns in an organization to ensure the effective and efficient use of human talent to accomplish organizational goals.

HR Management System (HRMS): See HRIS

HR Metrics: Measurements used to determine the value and effectiveness of HR strategies. Typically includes such items as cost per hire, turnover rates/costs, training and human capital ROI, labor /productivity rates and costs, benefit costs per employee, etc.

HR Outsourcing (HRO): Entrusting all or some portion of HR operations to a third party. The outside HR service provider may take on specific traditional functions such as payroll, benefits administration or training, or it may handle broader processes such as recruiting or staffing the contact center.

HR Planning: The process of analyzing and identifying the need for and availability of human resources so that the organization can meet its objectives.

HR Research: The analysis of data from HR records to determine the effectiveness of past and present HR practices.

HR Specialist: A person with in-depth knowledge and expertise in a limited area of HR.

IRCA —> LSI

Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986: The IRCA prohibits the employment of individuals who are not legally authorized to work in the United States or in an employment classification that they are not authorized to fill. It requires employers to certify (using the I-9 form) within three days of employment the identity and eligibility to work of all employees hired and it prohibits discrimination in employment-related matters on the basis of national origin or citizenship.

Independent Contractor: An individual who works independently to assist and advise client organizations with various organizational functions and responsibilities on a fee-for-service basis.

Individual-Centered Career Planning: Career planning that focuses on individuals' careers rather than on organizational needs.

Industrial Union: A union that includes many persons working in the same industry or company, regardless of jobs held.

Instructional Design Process: A systematic approach for developing training programs.

Instrumentality: The perceived relationship between choosing a particular job and obtaining a desired outcome.

Integrative Bargaining: The part of the labor-management negotiation process that seeks solutions beneficial to both sides.

Internal Analysis: The process of examining an organization's strengths and weaknesses.

ISO 9000: Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), this set of standards for quality management systems is internationally accepted. Organizations conforming to these standards can receive ISO 9000 certification.

Internet: A tool used for communications and to locate and gather resources Such as software and reports.

Intra-Organizational Bargaining: The part of the labor-management negotiation process that focuses on conflicting objectives of factions within labor and management

ISO 9000: A series of quality assurance standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization in Switzerland. ISO 9000 certification is a requirement for doing business in many countries including the European Community, Austria, Finland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, South America, and Africa.

Job: A grouping of similar positions having common tasks, duties, and responsibilities.

Job Accommodation Network (JAN): A service of the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), within the U.S. Department of Labor, JAN facilitates the employment and retention of workers with disabilities by providing employers, employment providers, people with disabilities and others with information on job accommodations, self-employment and small business opportunities and related subjects.

Job Analysis: A systematic way to gather and analyze information about the content and the human requirements of jobs, and the context in which jobs are performed.

Job Classification: A method of evaluation used for job comparisons, which groups jobs into a prearranged number of grades, each having a class description and a specified pay range.

Job Description: Identification of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job.

Job Design: The process of defining the way work will be performed and the tasks that will be required in a given job.

Job Enrichment: Ways to add complexity and meaningfulness to a person's work.

Job Evaluation: An administrative procedure used to measure job worth within an organization.

Job Fair: A place where employers gather, often at a university, for a short time to meet large numbers of potential job applicants.

Job Family: A grouping of jobs having similar characteristics.

Job Hazard Analysis: Technique Method of isolating potential safety concerns by breaking job into components and having expert raters evaluate the potential for injury associated with each component.

Job Involvement: The degree to which people identify themselves with their jobs.

Job Posting: Programs companies adopt to promote from within, such as publicizing vacancies on bulletin boards, in company newsletters, or in memos.

Job Redesign: Changing the tasks or tile way work is performed in an existing job.

Job Rotation: The process of systematically moving a single individual from one job to another over tile course of time. The job assignments may be in various functional areas of the company or movement between jobs in a single functional area or department.

Job Satisfaction: A positive emotional state that results from the perception that one's job fulfills or allows for the fulfillment of one's important job values.

Job Specifications: Listing of the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) an individual needs to do the job satisfactorily.

Job Structure: The relative pay of jobs in an organization.

Job Withdrawal: A set of behaviors that dissatisfied individuals enact to avoid the work situation.

Joint Union-Management Programs: Programs funded by both employers and unions designed to help employees prepare for workplace changes resulting from new technology and restructuring.

Joint Venture: A cooperative business agreement between two or more companies in which the companies contribute assets, and share ownership and risk. The agreement usually results in the establishment of a new business.

Just Cause: Sufficient justification for actions.

Just-In-Time (JIT) Inventory System: An inventory system that arranges for parts or materials to be delivered as they are needed in the manufacturing process.

Key Jobs: Benchmark jobs, used in pay surveys, that have relatively stable content and are common to many organizations.

Knowledge, Skills, And Abilities (KSAs): KSAs referrs to the education, experience, skills, and personal, mental and physical abilities required to perform a job.

Labor Markets: The external sources from which organizations attract employees.

Landrum-Griffin Act: The 1959 act that regulated unions' actions and their internal affairs (e.g., financial disclosure and conduct of elections).

Learning Organization: An organization whose employees are continuously attempting to learn new things and apply what they learn to improve product or service quality.

Life-Cycle Model: A career development model suggesting that employees face certain developmental tasks over the course of their careers – moving through distinct life or career stages.

Lockout: Shutdown of company operations undertaken by management to prevent union members from working..

Lump-Sum Increase (LSI): A one-time payment of all or part of a yearly pay increase.

Maintenance of Membership —> Overtime

Maintenance of Membership: Union rules requiring members to remain members for a certain period of time (e.g., the length of the union contract).

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: An award established in 1987 to promote quality awareness, to recognize quality achievements of U.S. companies, and to publicize successful quality strategies.

Managed Care: Approaches designed to monitor and reduce medical costs using good management practices and the market system.

Management by Objectives (MBO): A performance appraisal strategy in which subordinates determine and set goals for themselves based on the overall goals and objectives for the organization.

Management Development: Training and developmental programs designed to provide new managers and existing managers with the resources needed to become more effective in their roles.

Management Rights: Those rights reserved to the employer to manage, direct, and control its business.

Managing Diversity: The process of creating an environment that allows all employees to contribute to Organizational goals and experience personal growth.

Mandated Benefits: Those benefits which employers in the United States must provide to employees by law.

Mandatory Issues: Those issues that are identified specifically by labor laws or court decisions as being subiect to bargaining.

Mandatory Retirement Age Law of 1978: A statute which prohibits employers from having policies or practices that call for mandatory retirement of employees under the age of 70, (excepting exempted employees or positions).

Marginal Tax Rate: The percentage of all additional dollar of earnings that goes to taxes.

Market Price: In HR, the prevailing wage rate paid for a job in the immediate job market.

Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs: Maslow developed a hierarchical model for motivation in which basic needs such as physiological requirements and safety must be satisfied before higher-level needs such as self-fulfillment are pursued. A satisfied need no longer motivates, and is replaced by the next higher need.

Maternity leave: Unpaid job-protected leave for the birth, adoption, or foster care placement of a child. See also The Family and Medical Leave Act (FLMA).

Mediation: Process by which a third party assists negotiators in their discussions and also suggests settlement proposals.

Medical Savings Account (MSA): A savings account to which employers and individuals are allowed to contribute on a pre-tax basis. Most MSAs allow unused balances and earnings to accumulate and be used the following year. Most MSAs are combined with a high-deductible or catastrophic health insurance plan.

Medicare: A health insurance program administered by the Social Security Administration which is broken into two distinct categories: 1) Medicare Part A helps with hospital costs; and 2) Medicare Part B requires a monthly fee and is used to pay medical costs for people 65 and older and for some disabled persons under 65.

Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) of 1996: Prohibits group health plans and insurance companies that offer mental health benefits from setting annual or lifetime limits on mental health benefits lower than the limits set for any other condition.

Mentor: An experienced, productive senior employee who helps develop a less-experienced employee.

Mentoring: A relationship in which managers at midpoints in careers aid individuals in the first stages of careers.

Merit Increase Grid: A grid that combines an employee's performance rating with that employee's position in a pay range to determine the size and frequency of his or her pay increases.

Minimum Wage: The lowest amount that employers are legally allowed to pay; the 1990 amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act permits a sub-minimum wage to workers under the age of 20 for a period of up to 90 days.

Minority Business Enterprise (MBE): A small business enterprise that is at least 51 percent owned by one or more minorities or, in the case of a publicly owned business, at least 51 percent of all classes or types of the stock is owned by one or more minorities and whose management and daily business operations are controlled by one or more minorities.

Mission Statement: A statement illustrating what the company is, what the company does and where the company is headed.

Moonlighting: Work outside a person's regular employment that takes 12 or more additional hours per week.

Motivation: The desire within a person causing that person to act.

Multinational Enterprise (MNE): An organization with units located in foreign countries.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): A psychological test used for team building and leadership development that identifies employees' preferences for energy, information gathering, decision making, and life-style.

National Emergency Strike: A strike that would affect an industry or a major part of it such that the national health or safety would be impeded.

National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1947: The NLRA was passed in 1935, providing all employees the right to form, join and assist labor organizations and to bargain collectively with their employers.

Needs Analysis: Method of analyzing how employee skill deficits can be addressed through current or future training and professional development programs.

Negligent Hiring: A legal theory holding employers responsible for their employees injuries if it can be shown that they did not make reasonable inquiries into the employee's background and suitability for the position.

Nepotism: Practice of allowing relatives to work for the same employer.

Network A combination of desktop computers, computer terminals, and mainframes or minicomputers that share access to databases and a method to transmit throughout the system.

New Technologies: Current applications of knowledge, procedures, and equipment that have not been previously used. Usually involves replacing labor with equipment, information processing, or some combination of the two.

Noncontributory Plan: Pension plan in which all the funds for pension benefits are provided by the employer.

Nondisclosure Agreement: A contract restricting an employee from disclosing confidential or proprietary information.

Non-Exempt Employees: Employees who must be paid overtime under the Fair labor Standards Act.

Non-Key Jobs: Jobs that are unique to organizations so cannot be directly valued or compared through the use of market surveys.

Normative Forecasting: A method of projecting future needs in order to determine what developments will be required to meet those needs.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): An agreement reached by the United States, Canada and Mexico instituting a schedule for phasing out tariffs and eliminating a variety of fees and other hindrances to encourage free trade between the three North American countries

Notice: In wrongful discharge cases, this doctrine is used to determine whether or not an employer gave an employee adequate advance notice of the potential consequences of failure to improve some specific behavior or conduct.

Obsolescence: A reduction in an employee's competence resulting front a lack of knowledge of new work processes, techniques, and technologies that have developed since the employee completed his or her education.

Occupational Injury: An injury sustained during the course of employment, which results in the employee requiring medical treatment other then minor first aid.

Occupational Safety And Health Act Of 1970 (OSHA): The law authorizing the federal government to establish and enforce occupational safety and health standards for all places of employment affecting interstate commerce.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): A Department of Labor (DOL) office responsible for overseeing and assuring the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards, providing training, outreach and education, establishing partnerships and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.

Offshoring: The act of moving work to an overseas location to take advantage of lower labor costs. Offshoring usually involves manufacturing, information technology and back-office services like call centers and bill processing. Companies can build their own work center, establish a foreign division, or create a subsidiary in remote locations.

Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA) of 1990: OWBPA amended the ADEA prohibiting all employers from age discrimination in employee benefits programs by either providing equal benefits for older and younger workers or by spending an equal amount on benefits for both groups. It also provides specifications on the requirements for ADEA waivers.

Ombudsman: A neutral third party that helps individuals or groups in conflict resolve disputes by mediating, coaching and facilitating communication between the parties and recommending an appropriate resolution.

On-the-Job Training: Training provided to employees by managers and supervisors; conducted at the actual worksite utilizing demonstration and actual performance of job tasks to be accomplished.

Onboarding: The process of moving a new hire from applicant to employee status ensuring that paperwork is done, benefits administration is underway, and orientation is completed.

O*Net (Occupational Information Network): Administered and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, O*NET is a database that replaced the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) as the nation's primary source of occupational information.

Open-Enrollment Period: The period of time designated by the employer's health or other benefit plan when employees may enroll in new benefit plans or make changes to existing benefit plans.

Organizational Analysis: A process for determining tile appropriateness of training.

Organizational Commitment: The degree to which employees believe in and accept organizational goals and desire to remain with the organization.

Organizational Development: A planned organization-wide effort to improve and increase the organizations effectiveness, productivity, return on investment and overall employee job satisfaction through planned interventions in the organization's processes.

Organizational Socialization: The process by which new employees are transformed into effective members of a company .

Organization-Based Model: A career development model suggesting that careers proceed through a series of stages and that career development involves employees learning to perform certain activities.

Organization-Centered Career Planning: Career planning that focuses on jobs and on constructing career paths that provide [Or the logical progression of people between jobs in an organization.

Orientation: The planned introduction of new employees to their jobs, coworkers, and the organization.

Outplacement: A benefit offered by the employer to displaced employees which may consist of services such as job counseling, training and job-finding assistance.

Outsourcing: A contractual agreement between an employer and an external third-party provider whereby the employer transfers responsibility and management for certain HR, benefit or training-related functions or services to the external provider.

Overtime: In accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), it is the term used to define work that is performed in excess of 40 hours per week.

PTO —> Quota System

Paid Time Off (PTO): Benefit program granting employees a specific number of vacation or personal days with pay. The number of days is generally based on the employer's policy for accrual of paid time off.

Parent Country: The country in which a company's corporate headquarters is located.

Parent-Country Nationals: Employees who were born and live in a parent Country.

Pareto Chart: A bar graph used to rank in order of importance information such as causes or reasons for specific problems, so that measures for process improvement can be established.

Part-time Employee: An individual who continually works less than 40 hours per week (standard workweek hours are based on individual employer policy, therefore, a 40-hour workweek is only a guideline; this number could be higher or lower).

Pattern Or Practice: A theory of discrimination that allows plaintiffs to show that all employer intended to discriminate by showing a statistical disparity between the work force and a relevant comparison group and that the disparity is the result of some discriminatory motive.

Pay: The basic compensation an employee receives, usually as a wage or salary.

Pay Adjustment: Any change made to the pay rate of an employee, such as an increase or decrease to the rate of pay.

Pay Compression: Situation in which pay differences among individuals with different levels of experience and performance in the organization become small.

Pay Equity: The concept that the pay for jobs requiring comparable knowledge, skills, and abilities should be similar even if actual duties and market rates differ significantly.

Pay Grade: A grouping of individual jobs having approximately the same job worth.

Pay Level: The average pay, including wages, salaries and bonuses, of jobs in an organization.

Pay Structure: The relative pay of different jobs (job structure) and how much they are paid (pay level).

Pay Survey: A collection of data on existing compensation rates for workers performing similar jobs in other organizations.

Pay-Policy Line: A mathematical expression that describes the relationship between a job's pay and its job evaluation points.

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: The agency that guarantees to pay employees a basic retirement benefit in the event that financial difficulties force a company to terminate or reduce employee pension benefits.

Pension Plan: An employer benefit plan funded through insurance, a trust, general assets or other separately maintained funds designed to provide employees with a monthly income benefit upon retirement.

Performance Appraisal: A periodic review and evaluation of an individual's job performance compared with a set of standards, and the communication of that information to the employee.

Performance-based Pay: A variable pay strategy that pays employees based on their individual performance and contributions, rather than the value of the job they are performing.

Performance Criteria: Standards commonly used for testing or measuring performances.

Performance Feedback: The process of providing employees with information regarding their performance effectiveness.

Performance Management: The process of maintaining or improving employee job performance through the use of performance assessment tools, coaching and counseling. Continuous feedback is a large part of performance management.

Performance Management Systems: Processes to monitor, measure, report, improve, and reward employee performance.

Performance Monitoring: The practice of monitoring employees while they perform their jobs through the use of surveillance cameras, telephone or computer monitoring.

Performance Planning And Evaluation (PPE): Any system that seeks to tie the formal performance appraisal process to the company's strategies by specifying at the beginning of the evaluation period the types and level of performance that must be accomplished in order to achieve the strategy.

Performance Standard: The expected level of performance.

Perquisites (Perks): Special benefits, usually non-cash items for executives.

Person Analysis: A process for determining whether employees need training, who needs training, and whether employees are ready for training.

Personnel Selection: The process by which companies decide who will or will not be allowed into their organization.

Piece-Rate System: A productivity-based compensation system in which an employee is paid for each unit of production.

Plan Sponsor: An entity that has adopted and has maintained an employee-benefit plan. The plan sponsor is often an employer, but may be a union or a professional association. The Plan Sponsor is responsible for determining employee participation and the amount of benefits involved.

Plateauing: A career development stage in which the likelihood is low that the employee will receive future job assign merits with increased responsibility.

Point of Service Plan (POS): Insurance plan that offers an approved network of medical care facilities and physicians from which policy holders may select (similar to HMOs and PPOs); however, though use of facilities and physicians within the network is encouraged, the POS also allows policy holders to receive their medical care outside of the network.

Portability: A pension plan feature that allows employees to move their pension benefit from one employer to another.

Position: A job performed by one person.

Predictive Validation: A criterion-related study that seeks to establish an empirical relationship between applicants' test scores and their eventual performance on the job.

Preferred Provider Organization (PPO): A group of health-care providers who contract with employers, insurance companies, and so forth to provide health care at a reduced fee.

Pregnancy Discrimination Act Of 1978: An amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions constitutes unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII. The law requires employers offering disability plans to treat pregnancy as they would any other disability.

Pre-Retirement Socialization: The process of helping employees prepare for exit from work.

Principal:In agency theory, the owner of a business; in human resource management, may refer to a manager.

Probation: Used as a form of discipline, it is a specified period of time during which an individual's performance or conduct is closely monitored.

Procedural Justice: The perceived fairness of the process and procedures used to make decisions about employees, including their pay.

Production Cells: Groupings of workers who produce entire products or components of products.

Productivity: A measure of the quantity and quality of work done, considering the cost of the resources it took to do the work.

Professional Employer Organization (PEO): A staffing service that is contracted to assume the employers responsibilities and risk for his/her workforce. Employees are legally co-employed by the PEO, and as such, the PEO shares employer liabilities with the client company.

Profit Sharing: A group compensation plan in which payments are based on a measure of organization performance (profits) and do not become part of the employees' base salary.

Promotion: Advances into positions with greater challenge, more responsibility, and more authority than the employee's previous job.

Protected Class: Legally identified groups (defined by age, color, creed, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status) that are specifically protected by statute against employment discrimination.

Prima Facie Case: Latin for "at first view" or "at first appearance," a prima-facie case is a lawsuit that requires an employer to articulate a reason that sufficiently proves that any decision or action taken was made based on legitimate and nondiscriminatory factors.

Probationary Period: A specified period of time (typically 30-90 days) when a newly hired, promoted or transferred employee's job performance is evaluated. Primarily used by supervisors to closely observe an employee's work and to reject any employee whose performance does not meet required standards.

Psychological Contract: The unwritten expectations that employees and employers have about the nature of their work relationships.

Psychological Testing: Written, visual or verbal assessment administered to determine cognitive and emotional skills.

Qualified Retirement Plan: A plan that meets the requirements of Internal Revenue Code Section 401(a) and ERISA and is thus eligible for favorable tax treatment.

Quality Circle: A carefully selected group of employees who voluntarily meet on a regular basis to identify problems and make recommendation by using various techniques for analyzing and solving work-related problems.

Quid Pro Quo Harassment: Quid pro quo harassment involves expressed or implied demands for sexual favors from a subordinate in exchange for some benefit (a promotion, pay increase, etc.) or to avoid some detriment (termination, demotion, etc.) in the workplace.

Quota System: In affirmative action systems, it is a means of attempting to achieve workplace balance by hiring and/or promoting specified numbers or ratios of minorities or women in positions from which they have been excluded.

Range Spread —> Rural Outsourcing

Range Spread: The distance between the minimum and maximum amounts in a pay grade

Rank-and-yank: When all employees are evaluated, the rank-and-yank philosophy calls for the bottom 10% of employees to be terminated each year, allowing an organization to constantly purge the lowest performers.

Ranking: Listing of all employees from highest to lowest in performance.

Rater Bias: Error that occurs when a rater's values or prejudices distort the rating.

Ratification: Process by which union members vote to accept the terms of a negotiated labor agreement.

Realistic Job Preview: The process through which an interviewer provides a job applicant with an accurate picture of a job.

Reasonable Accommodation: Modifying or adjusting a job process or a work environment to better enable a qualified individual with a disability to be considered for or perform the essential functions of a job.

Reasoning Ability: Refers to a person's capacity to invent solutions to many diverse problems.

Reassignment: Transferring individuals to alternative positions where their talents or skills may be best utilized to their own or the organization's benefit or where they are better able to perform the job in accordance with required standards.

Recency Effect: An error whereby the rater gives greater weight to recent occurrences when appraising an individual's performance.

Recruiting: Process of generating a pool of qualified applicants for organizational jobs.

Recruitment: Soliciting and actively seeking applicants to fill recently vacated or newly created positions using a variety of methods (i.e., internal job postings, advertising in newspapers or electronic job boards/sites, utilizing search firms or listing position with trade and professional associations, etc).

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO): The outsourcing of the recruiting process to a third party.

Red-Circled Employee: An incumbent who is paid above the maximum range assigned to the job grade. Usually employees are ineligible for additional pay increases before range maximums exceed the individual pay rate.

Reengineering: Review and redesign of work processes to make them more efficient and improve the quality of the end product or service.

Referrals: People who are prompted to apply for a job by someone within the organization.

Rehabilitation Act of 1998: A federal statute requiring federal agencies to ensure that electronic and information technology systems are accessible to individuals with disabilities when their jobs require the use of electronic or information technology systems.

Reinforcement: A concept based on the law of effect, which states that people tend to repeat responses that give them some type of positive reward and avoid actions that are associated with negative consequences.

Relational Database: A database structure that stores information in separate files that can be linked by common elements.

Reliability: The consistency with which a test measures an item.

Religious Accommodation: An accommodation made for an employee, such as time off from work, so that he or she may observe a religious holiday or attend a religious ceremony or their day of Sabbath such as Saturday or Sunday.

Repatriation: The process of bringing expatriates home.

Request for Proposal (RFP): A document an organization sends to a vendor inviting the vendor to submit a bid for a product or service.

Resident Alien: A resident alien is a lawful permanent resident of the United States at any time if he or she has been given the privilege, according to the immigration laws, of residing permanently as an immigrant. This status usually exists if the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services have issued a green card.

Responsibilities: Obligations to perform certain tasks and duties.

Restrictive Covenant: A contract clause requiring executives or other highly skilled employees to refrain from seeking and obtaining employment with competitor organizations in a specific geographical region and for a specified period of time.

Retaliation: Punitive actions taken employers against individuals who exercise their legal rights.

Retirement: Leaving a job and work role and making a transition into life without work.

Return on Investment (ROI): A ratio of the benefit or profit derived from a specific investment, compared with the cost of the investment itself.

Reverse Discrimination: Employment policies or practices that result in discriminatory treatment against applicants or employees who are not minorities or members of a disadvantaged group.

Rightsizing: An approach to reducing staff, where jobs are prioritized in order to identify and eliminate unnecessary work. This method uses a selection criteria based on individual jobs, as opposed to people, in order to avoid possibly laying off the wrong employees.

Right-to-Know: An OSHA standard providing workers with protection from hazardous substances in the workplace by requiring employers to keep employees informed of any hazardous substances that they may be working with, as well as the hazards and symptoms associated with the substance.

Right-to-Work Laws: State laws that make union shops, maintenance of membership, and agency shops illegal.

Risk Management: The use of insurance and other strategies to minimize an organizations exposure to liability in the event a loss or injury occurs.

Role Analysis Technique: A method that enables a role occupant and other members of the role occupant's role set to specify and examine their expectations for the role occupant.

Role Behaviors: Behaviors that are required of an individual in his or her role as a job holder in a social work environment.

Rural Sourcing: An outsourcing method that is based on transferring jobs away from higher cost urban areas to lower cost rural ones.

S Corporation —> SWOT Analysis

S Corporation: Business enterprise allowed by the IRS for most companies with 75 or fewer shareholders, enabling the company to enjoy the benefits of incorporation while being taxed as if it were a partnership.

Sabbatical: A voluntary arrangement whereby an employer allows an employee paid or unpaid leave for a specified duration of time in order for the employee to pursue a course of advanced training, teach or perform a public service.

Safety: Condition in which the physical well being of people is protected.

Safety Awareness Programs: Employer programs that attempt to instill symbolic and substantive changes in the organization's emphasis on safety.

Salary: Payment that is consistent from period to period despite the number of hours worked.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted to increase accountability of corporations to their shareholders in the wake of recent accounting scandals.

Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees of Small Businesses (SIMPLE): SIMPLE plans are authorized by the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996. They give businesses with 100 or fewer employees an affordable way to offer retirement benefits through employee salary reductions and matching contributions (similar to those found in a 401(k) plan).

Scanlon Plan: A gainsharing program in which employees share in specific cost savings that are due to employee effort.

Scientific Management: A human resource management theory developed in 1911 that emphasized identifying employees who had the appropriate skills and abilities to perform certain tasks, providing wage incentives to employees for increased productivity, providing employees with rest breaks, and carefully studying jobs to identify the best method for performing a job.

Screening: Usually the first step taken during the interviewing process, involving reviewing prospective candidate applications/resumes, verifying information supplied by the candidate, conducting interviews and examining test results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of optimizing a web site (e.g., identifying and placing targeted keywords on web pages) to ensure the site places well when queried on search engines. It is important for corporate web sites to optimize their visibility on search engines.

Search Firms: An organization or individual consultants working on a retainer or fee basis who provide the service of searching and screening potential professional or managerial candidates for prospective employers.

Section 401(k) Plan:A retirement plan named after the tax code provision that allows employees to defer compensation on a pretax basis.

Security: Protection of employer facilities and equipment from unauthorized access, and protection of employees while on work premises or work assignments.

Selection: The process by which an organization attempts to identify applicants with the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and other relevant qualifications to fill jobs in an organization.

Selection Criteria: Standards that become the basis for selection.

Selection Interview: Interview designed to assess Job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and clarify information from other sources.

Selection Ratio: The percentage of people selected versus the total number of applicants that apply for a vacancy.

Self-Directed Learning: A program in which employees take responsibility for all aspects of learning.

Self-Directed Work Team: An organizational team composed of individuals who are assigned a cluster of tasks, duties, and responsibilities to be accomplished.

Self-Efficacy:The employee's belief that she/he can successfully learn the content of a training program.

Self-Employed: An individual who has earned income for the current or preceding year from self-employment, within the meaning of I.R.C. §401(c) (2), or an individual who would have had such income, except for the fact that the relevant business did not incur a profit for the year.

Semi-skilled Worker: Persons with the ability to read, write and communicate but are usually not required to have educational or apprenticeship credentials to qualify for jobs. Training time is short, task specific and generally doesn't require much in terms of reasoning skills.

Seniority: Status determined by the length of time an employee has worked for a specific employer, department or position within the organization.

Serious Health Condition: A health condition requiring inpatient, hospital, hospice, or residential medical care or continuing physician care.

Severance Pay: A form of short-term salary continuation voluntarily awarded to employees who are being terminated. Severance payments often equal one week's pay for each year of service.

Sex Discrimination: Discriminatory conduct or actions based on sex or pregnancy, as it relates to conditions of employment, benefits, pay and opportunities for advancement.

Sexual Harassment: Actions that are sexually directed, are unwanted, and subject the worker to adverse employment conditions or create a hostile work environment.

Situational Constraints: Factors in the work environment that affect a trainee's motivation to learn.

Situational Interview: An interview procedure where applicants are confronted with specific issues, questions, or problems that are likely to arise on the job.

Skill-Based Pay: See Knowledge-based Pay.

Social Support: The willingness of managers and peers to provide a trainee with feedback and reinforcement.

Sourcing: The developing of lists of potential candidates. Also relates to the task of requisitioning, or creating job descriptions, approval workflows and actual job postings. Most e-recruitment software providers include modules for requisitioning.

Special-Purpose Team: An organizational team that is formed to address specific problems and may continue to work together to improve work processes or the quality of products and services.

Specificity: The extent to which a performance measure gives detailed guidance to employees about what is expected of them and how they can meet these expectations.

Standard Deviation Rule: A rule used to analyze employment tests to determine disparate impact; it uses the difference between the expected representation for minority groups and the actual representation to determine whether the difference between the two is greater than would occur by chance.

Standard Error Of Measure: The average unsigned error of measurement in a series of measurements of the same element.

Standard Occupational Classification (SOC): Used by Federal statistical agencies to classify workers into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating, or disseminating data. All workers are classified into one of over 820 occupations according to their occupational definition. To facilitate classification, occupations are combined to form 23 major groups, 96 minor groups, and 449 broad occupations. Each broad occupation includes detailed occupation(s) requiring similar job duties, skills, education or experience.

Statutory Rights: Rights based on laws.

Stock Option: A plan that gives an individual the right to buy stock in a company, usually at a fixed price for a period of time.

Straight Piece-Rate System: A pay system in which wages are determined by multiplying the number of units produced by the piece rate for one unit.

Strain-Based Conflict: A type of work-family conflict that results from the stress of work and family roles.

Strategic Alliance: A cooperative business agreement between two or more companies (which may include suppliers, customers, or competitors) designed to accomplish participating companies' strategic objectives through pursuing a common business goal.

Strategic Choice: The organization's strategy, the ways ail organization will attempt to fulfill its mission and achieve its long-term goals.

Strategic Congruence: The extent to which the performance management system elicits job performance that is consistent with the organization's strategy, goals, and culture.

Strategic Human Resource Management: A pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable ail organization to achieve its goals.

Strategy Formulation: The process of deciding on a strategic direction by defining a company's mission and goals, its external Opportunities and threats, and its internal strengths and weaknesses.

Strategy Implementation: The process of devising structures and allocating resources to enact the strategy a company has chosen.

Strike: Work stoppage in which union members refuse to work in order to put pressure on an employer.

Structured Interview: Interview that uses a set of standardized questions asked of all job applicants.

Substance Abuse: The use of illicit substances or the misuse of controlled substances, alcohol, or other drugs.

Succession Planning: The long-term grooming of a small number of replacements for top executives, typically with one replacement per position.

Suggestion System: A formal method of obtaining employee input and upward communication.

Summary Plan Description: A reporting requirement of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) that obligates employers to describe the plan's funding, eligibility requirements, risks, and so forth within 90 days after an employee has entered the plan.

Supply Flow: The places where a company prefers to obtain the human resources to fill open positions.

SWOT Analysis: A strategic planning tool used to collect and evaluate information on an organization's current Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats involved in a specific project or business venture.

Taft-Hartley Act —> Turnover Costs

Taft-Hartley Act: The 1947 act that outlined unfair union labor practices.

Task: A distinct, identifiable work activity composed of motions.

Task Analysis: The process of identifying the tasks, knowledge, skills, and behaviors that need to be emphasized in training.

Tax Equalization Plan: Compensation plan used to protect expatriates from negative tax consequences.

Technique Of Operations Review: Method of determining safety problems via an analysis of past accidents.

Telecommuting: The process of going to work via electronic computing and telecommunications equipment.

Theory Y Management: A management philosophy that suggests that employees will contribute to company goals if they are given the opportunity to participate in decisions concerning their job and to take responsibility for their work.

Third Country: A country other than a host or parent country.

Third-Country National: Employees born in a country other than a parent or host country.

360-Degree Feedback Process: A performance appraisal process for managers, that includes evaluations from a wide range of persons who interact with the manager. The process includes self-evaluations as well as evaluations from the manager's boss, subordinates, peers, and customers.

Time-Based Conflict: A type of work-family conflict that occurs when the demands of work and family interfere with each other.

Tin Parachutes: Relatively small amounts of monetary compensation given to employees dismissed as a consequence of a merger or acquisition.

Total Compensation: The activity by which organizations evaluate the contributions of employees in order to distribute direct and indirect monetary and non-monetary rewards fairly within the organization's ability to pay and within legal regulations.

Total Quality Management (TQM): A comprehensive management process focusing on the continuous improvement of organizational activities to enhance the quality of the goods and services supplied.

Training: A learning process whereby people acquire skills or knowledge to aid in the achievement of goals.

Training And Development: Any attempt to improve current or future employee performance by increasing an employee's ability to perform through learning. It can be accomplished by changing the employee's attitudes or increasing his or her skills or knowledge.

Training Objectives: Statement of what the employee is expected to do, the quality or level of performance, and conditions under which the trainee is expected to perform.

Training Outcomes: A way to evaluate the effectiveness of a training program based on cognitive, skill-based, affective, and results outcomes.

Transaction Processing: Computations and calculations used to review and document HR decisions and practices.

Transfer: The movement of an employee to a different job assignment in a different area of the company.

Transfer Of Training:The use of knowledge, skills, and behaviors learned in training on the job.

Transnational Process: The extent to which a company's planning and decision-making processes include representatives and ideas from a variety of cultures.

Transnational Representation: Reflects the multinational composition of a company's managers.

Transnational Scope: A company's ability to make HR decision from all international perspective.

TRASOP: The Tax Reduction Act Employee Stock Ownership Plans of 1975.

True Negatives: Correct predictions that applicants will perform poorly, who in fact do perform poorly.

True Positives: Correct predictions that applicants will perform well, who in fact perform successfully.

Turnover: Process in which employees leave the organization and have to be replaced.

Talent Management:: The implementation of an integrated strategies or systems designed to increase workplace productivity by developing improved processes for attracting, developing, retaining and utilizing people with the required skills and aptitude to meet current and future business needs.

Team Building: A training program designed to assist a group of people to work together as a team while they are learning and performing tasks.

Temp-to-Perm: The process of hiring employees on a temporary basis, usually through a temporary staffing agency, with the understanding that if the individual's performance meets or exceeds expectations, he or she will be offered a permanent position within the organization.

Temporary Employee: An individual who works on either short- or long-term assignments with an employer while lacking the benefits of permanent employees. They are normally utilized by employers to meet seasonal or other demands that they do not have the internal resources to meet.

Theory X Management: Theorizes that some people have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it whenever possible. These people need to be controlled and coerced by their managers to achieve production.

Think Tank: A group organized for the purpose of intensive research and problem solving, especially in the areas of technology, social or political strategy, or demographics.

Third-Party Sexual Harassment: Harassment of an employee by someone other than another employee, such as a client, customer, vendor or service provider.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Pertaining to organizations with at least 15 employees, Title VII is a provision of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in virtually every employment circumstance on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, pregnancy or national origin.

Trade Secret: A trade secret consists of any formula, pattern, device or compilation of information used in one's business, which gives the business an opportunity to obtain an advantage over competitors who do not know or use it.

Training Needs Analysis: A method used to determine what people need to learn and which training programs may be beneficial. The analysis produces a training needs report that identifies training needs and the interventions needed to reduce key performance gaps.

Transformational Leadership: A form of leadership focusing on change and innovation. The transformational leader is the leader who is able to energize, align, and excite followers by providing a compelling vision of the future.

Trend Analysis: Forecasting an organization's staffing needs by analyzing past employment patterns in order to identify trends that may be expected to continue.

Turnover Costs: The practice of transferring problem or performance-challenged employees from one position or department to another with the expectation that the employee may improve under a new supervisor or in a different work atmosphere.

Uncertainty —> V-Time

Uncertainty: A lack of predictability or an inability to tell what things are or will be like; a state of unpredictability.

Unemployment Insurance: A statutory benefit that provides a weekly income during short periods of unemployment to workers who have been laid off. The system is run and funded by state and federal taxes paid by employers.

Underutilization: (i.) The situation when individuals possess skills and/or training exceeding their current job responsibilities. (ii.) The situation when the percentage of representation of a protected group in the workforce, occupational category, job group or job classes is less than the percentage of such persons available in the base.

Underwriter: A person or organization (e.g. an insurance company) that ensures money will be available to pay for insured losses.

Undue Hardship: Condition created when making a reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities would pose significant difficulty or expense for an employer.

Unfair Labor Practice (ULP): An unfair labor practice (ULP) is a violation of a right protected by the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute. The ULP procedures provided by the Statute are part of the basic mechanisms by which the parties are protected in the exercise of their rights.

Unfair Recognition: Breach of duty by a union to represent fairly all employees covered by the union management contract.

Unfunded: Pension programs established on the goodwill of the employer rather than on money to be used to pay pension obligations.

Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA): A statute that minimizes the disadvantages to an individual that can occur when that person needs to be absent from his or her civilian employment in order to serve in the military.

Union: A formal association of workers, promoting the interests of its members through collective action, having legal authority to negotiate with the employer on behalf of the employees and to administer the ensuing agreement.

Union Authorization Card: Card signed by an employee to designate a union as his or her collective bargaining agent.

Union Instrumentality: The degree to which union membership can result in obtaining valued outcomes such as pay raises.

Union Local: The grass-roots unit of the labor organization that represents the employees who are in the same union unit at a given workplace.

Union Security Provisions: Contract provisions to aid the union in obtaining and retaining members.

Union Shop: A provision in about thirty states that if the company has a union, employees must join within a set period of time following initial employment (usually 30 to 60 days).

Union Steward: An employee of a firm or organization who is elected to serve as the first-line representative of unionized workers.

Unionization or Unionizing: The effort by employees and outside agencies (unions and associations) to band together and act as a single unit when dealing with management over issues related to their work.

Unit Labor Cost: The total labor cost per unit of output: the average wages of workers divided by their levels of productivity.

Unqualified Pension Plan: A plan not set up under the guidelines of ERISA.

Upward Feedback: A performance appraisal process for managers that includes Subordinates' evaluations.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS): The USCIS is responsible for the administration of immigration and naturalization adjudication functions and establishing immigration services policies and priorities.

Utility: The degree to which the information provided by selection methods enhances the effectiveness of selecting personnel in real organizations.

Utility Analysis: An assessment of the dollar value of training based on the difference in job performance between trained and untrained employees, the number of individuals trained, the length of time training is expected to influence performance, and the variability in job performance among untrained employees.

Utilization Analysis: An analysis that identifies the number of protected-class members employed and the types of jobs they bold in an organization.

Utilization Review: An audit and review of the services and costs billed by health-care providers.

Valence: The level of satisfaction a job applicant expects to receive from a job that ranks high in some attribute.

Valid Predictor: Any test used for staffing that predicts or correlates with actual job performance.

Validity: The degree to which a predictor or criterion measures what it purports to measure or demonstrates the job-relatedness of a test by showing how well an applicant will perform based on the test predictions.

Validity Generalization: Demonstrating that the jobrelatedness or validity of one test in one situation applies equally to other situations.

Vanishing Performance Appraisal: When the giving and receiving of performance appraisal feedback is no longer a pleasant experience, it is avoided and just vanishes.

Verbal Comprehension: Refers to a person's capacity to understand and use written and spoken language.

Vertical Loading: Adding duties to a job that are different from those already in the job and that require different skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Vested: Pertains to qualifications required to become eligible for an organization's pension benefits.

Vesting: The right of employees to receive benefits from their pension plans.

Veterans Benefit Improvement Act of 2004: Amended portions of USERRA, imparting certain reemployment and benefit protections to employees engaged in military service. Requires that employers extend the period for health care coverage and provide covered employees with appropriate notice of their rights, benefits and responsibilities under USERRA.

Virtual HR: The use of technology to provide HR programs via an employee self-service platform. Typically includes use of such items as voice response systems, employee kiosks, etc.

Virtual Reality: Computer-based technology that provides trainees with a three-dimensional learning experience. Trainees operate in a simulated environment that responds to their behaviors and reactions.

Virus: A destructive, unauthorized code that someone has intentionally built into a piece of hardware or software.

Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973: Requires federal contractors to take the affirmative action of employing and promoting qualified handicapped persons.

Voluntary Benefits: Benefits paid for by the employee through payroll deductions with the employer paying for administration (e.g. life insurance, dental, vision).

Voluntary Leave: Leave without pay that is taken on a voluntary basis by employees for specified duration, often used as an alternative to layoff.

Voluntary Reduced Working Time: An alternative work schedule that allows employees to voluntarily agree to reduce their work time and pay.

V-Time: See Voluntary Reduced Working Time.

Wage And Salary Administration —> Zone of Employment

Wage and Salary Administration: The activity involved in the development, implementation, and maintenance of a base pay system.

Wage Surveys: Published reports of what several different companies are paying for different types of jobs.

Wage-Dividend Plans: A special type of cash plan where the percentage of profits paid to employees is determined by the amount of dividends paid to stockholders.

Wages: Payments directly calculated on the amount of time worked.

Undue Hardship: Condition created when making a reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities would pose significant difficulty or expense for an employer.

Wagner Act: The major comprehensive labor code enacted in 1935, also know as the National Labor Relations Act, intended by Congress to restore equality of bargaining power between labor and management.

Weighted Application Blank: An application blank in which varying importance or weights (as a predictor of future success) is accorded the various responses.

Weighted Checklist: Identical to a critical incidents format but with various points to differentiate the varying importance of different incidents.

Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit: A federal income tax credit that encourages employers to hire long-term family assistance recipients, who begin to work any time after December 31, 1997, and before January, 2004. Established by the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, the tax credit can reduce employers' federal tax liability per new hire.

Wellness Programs: Programs designed to maintain or improve employee health before problems arise.

Wellness Tests: Health assessments of employees that include measures of blood pressure, blood cholesterol, high density cholesterol, skin fold evaluation of diet, life-change events, smoking, drinking, and family history of chronic heart disease.

Well-Pay: Extra pay for not taking sick leave.

Whipsaw: The process where unions use one contract settlement as a precedent for the next and force the employer to settle all contracts before work is resumed.

Wide-Area and Multi-Craft Bargaining: A negotiating structure that exists in the construction industry where several separate construction unions may settle with a contractor together.

Wildcat Strike: An illegal strike (forbidden by contract).

White-Collar Employees: Employees who are paid on a salaried basis and whose jobs do not require the performance of work of a manual nature. Such individuals are normally employed in the capacity of managers, supervisors, or technical workers and meet the criteria of the FLSA white collar exemption test.

Work/Life Employee Benefits: There are over 100 varieties of work/life benefits. Most make employees' lives outside of work more convenient and free up their time. Some accomplish this by reducing the number of things employees need to worry about and take care of, reducing stress and saving time. Other work/life programs provide counseling and support services. Many give employees choices — e.g., in the benefits they receive, and when and from where they work — and extra time off to spend however they wish. The commonality is that work/life benefits make employees' non-work lives better, so that their working lives are less distracted and more productive — and employees become more committed and loyal to the organization.

Work Measurement: The determination of standard times for all units of work activity in any task. Includes the assessment of "actual effort" exerted and the "real effort" required to accomplish a task.

Work Pacing: Refers to the rate or flow of work and who controls the rate or flow.

Work Sample Test: A test that consists of an actual simulation of the job or critical tasks associated with the job. An example would be a typing test used to select a secretary.

Work Sampling: The process of taking instantaneous samples of the work activities of individuals or groups of individuals. Activities are then timed and classified according to predetermined categories. The result is a description of the activities by classification of a job and the percentage of time for each activity.

Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) of 1988: WARN requires employers (with 100 or more employees) that are planning a plant closing or a mass layoff to give affected employees at least 60 days' notice of such an employment action. Not all plant closings and layoffs are subject to the Act.

Workers' Compensation: State laws enacted to provide workers with protection and income replacement benefits due to an illness or injury suffered on the job. Employers must carry appropriate workers' compensation insurance, as required by state law, or have a sufficient source of funding for claims incurred.

Workers' Compensation Insurance: A health insurance program offered by an employer to cover (compensate for) worker sickness and disability.

Work-Flow Design: The process of analyzing the tasks necessary for the production of a product or service and allocating these tasks to particular work units or individuals.

Workers' Compensation: State laws enacted to provide workers with protection and income replacement benefits due to an illness or injury suffered on the job. Employers must carry appropriate workers' compensation insurance, as required by state law, or have a sufficient source of funding for claims incurred.

Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) Regional entities were created to implement the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 in the United States. The WIB's main role is to direct federal, state and local funding to workforce development programs. WIBs conduct and publish research on these programs and the needs of the local job market. They also oversee "one-stop" career centers, where job seekers can investigate about various programs in their area.

Workforce Planning: The assessment of the current workforce in order to predict future needs, both demand and supply. E-recruitment software often includes modules for workforce planning.

Workforce Utilization Review: A comparison of the proportion of workers in protected subgroups with the proportion that each subgroup represents in the relevant labor market.

World Wide Web: Service on the Internet that provides browser software allowing the user to explore the items (home pages) on the Web.

Written Warning: Written documentation given to an employee describing specific disciplinary infractions, such as inappropriate conduct, poor performance or violation of work rules/policies.

Wrongful Discharge: The unjust or unfair termination of an employee based on breach of a written or oral implied contract or a violation of public policy.

Yellow-Dog Contracts: Contracts, signed by employees upon employment, agreeing not to join a union.

Yield Ratios: The percentage of applicants who successfully move from one stage of the recruitment and selection process to the next.

Zero-Balance Reimbursement Account or Zebra Plan: A flexible spending plan in which no money is set aside initially, but employees are reimbursed for some expenses as they occur.

Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB): A system that starts with no initially authorized funds. In a zero-based budget, each activity or program to be funded must be justified every time a new budget is prepared and resources are allocated accordingly.

Zone of Employment: The physical area within which injuries to an employee are compensable by workers' compensation laws.