The department that turned firing into a growth opportunity.
The total package offered to employees: salary, bonuses, health insurance, retirement plans, and other perks. Often abbreviated as C&B, because abbreviating makes everything sound more professional.
An individual tasked with driving organizational transformation and getting people to embrace new processes. Usually the most hated person in the department until the change actually works.
Teaching employees skills from other departments or roles—ensuring everyone can cover for everyone else's vacations.
A performance evaluation technique where managers document specific examples of effective and ineffective employee behaviors throughout the review period. Basically keeping receipts, but for HR purposes.
A subjective assessment of whether a candidate will mesh with existing team dynamics and company values, often used as a polite cover for 'we just didn't vibe with them.' Has been criticized for perpetuating homogeneity and unconscious bias.
A benefits program allowing employees to choose from various options like a cafeteria line, allocating dollars across health insurance, retirement, and other perks. Provides choice while ensuring everyone complains about different things.
The shared beliefs, behaviors, symbols, and unspoken rules that define how a group operates; the invisible operating system that determines whether your workplace is toxic or terrific.
An improved compensation package your current employer suddenly produces after you resign, proving they could have paid you more all along but needed the threat of your departure to motivate them. A relationship red flag disguised as a raise.
Short for comparative ratio, measuring how an employee's pay compares to the market midpoint for their role. The metric that confirms your suspicions about being underpaid weren't just paranoia.
A presentation outlining company values, expectations, and working principles, famously popularized by Netflix. It's essentially a manifesto explaining why the company is different and special, though most sound identical.
The specific skills and knowledge that make someone valuable in their role. Not the things you're pretending to be good at on LinkedIn.
Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act—allows employees to continue health insurance after leaving, at eye-watering full cost. It's the law that proves your employer was subsidizing most of your healthcare all along.
The structured approach to transitioning individuals and organizations from the current state to a desired future state. In practice, it's PowerPoints about change curves while employees panic about their jobs.
A formal document explaining why your company pays what it does, usually involving phrases like 'market competitive' that somehow justify paying 10% below actual market rates. It's a philosophical treatise on why you deserve less money than you think.
A vesting schedule where retirement or equity benefits become fully available all at once after a specific period, rather than gradually. You get nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly everything.
The state of sticking together or working as one unit—what HR desperately hopes team-building exercises will achieve.
The power to tell people what to do and actually have them listen—the holy grail of leadership. Also: a direct order that questions are not welcome to ask about.
A provision requiring employees to return compensation if certain conditions aren't met—basically, we might take back your bonus if you leave soon.
When your current employer suddenly matches or exceeds a job offer you've accepted elsewhere. It's the corporate equivalent of 'wait, don't leave, I do love you.'
Enforcing strict discipline or pushing employees to work harder. Thankfully, now mostly metaphorical.
The total financial and non-financial benefits offered to an employee—salary, benefits, PTO, and whatever other things we're offering to make up for mediocre pay.
A hiring philosophy focusing on candidates who bring new perspectives and diversity rather than simply fitting existing culture. The enlightened evolution of 'culture fit' after everyone realized that just meant 'people like us.'
The panicked attempt by a company to keep an employee from leaving by suddenly remembering they're worth something after they've accepted another job.
To provide payment, benefits, or other consideration in exchange for services rendered or losses incurred—the art of making someone feel better about their suffering through the universal language of money.