The department that turned firing into a growth opportunity.
Someone who bounces from relationship to relationship like a romantic pinball machine, unable to tolerate even a moment of solitude. They've perfected the art of relationship repetition—identical insecurities, recycled arguments, same tragic ending with a fresh face. Why reflect on your failures when you can just upgrade to the next model?
The art of convincing talented people that your company is better than it actually is, using promises of growth, culture, and work-life balance that may or may not materialize. The corporate equivalent of dating, except with background checks and non-disclosure agreements.
The strategic effort to create workplaces that welcome and support people from different backgrounds. Easy to talk about; genuinely difficult to implement without tokenism.
The annual period where employees frantically read health plan documents they don't understand while HR assures them everyone will eventually understand the deductibles.
State laws prohibiting mandatory union membership as a condition of employment—legislation that allows workers to enjoy union benefits without paying dues.
A confidential counseling and support service provided to employees facing personal or professional challenges. Often underutilized despite genuine value because employees don't know it exists.
A numerical rating of employee satisfaction and commitment, derived from surveys that employees fill out while muttering about their workload.
Educational programs designed to reduce prejudice in hiring and management decisions, with questionable efficacy but excellent optics.
US federal law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities and requiring workplace accommodations, whose spirit is frequently circumvented through creative interpretation.
Employees who are either exceptionally valuable or exceptionally difficult to replace, kept happy through a combination of favors, competitive compensation, and prayers.
When employees leave a company by their own choice, as opposed to being laid off or fired. It's the metric that keeps HR executives up at night because it indicates something they could've controlled.
The methodical process of assessing performance, value, or quality by examining evidence and determining numerical or qualitative outcomes. HR's favorite pastime: turning subjective opinions into seemingly objective metrics.
An employee identified as having the potential for advancement to senior leadership—basically the golden child who gets better projects and more attention.
Information gathered about competitors' compensation, benefits, and practices to inform HR strategy—corporate espionage but legal and boring.
The department responsible for managing salaries, bonuses, health insurance, and all the perks that make you feel almost adequately paid for your work.
Strategies and systems for capturing, organizing, and sharing organizational knowledge and expertise. It's the process of documenting things so that when someone leaves, you don't have to completely restart.
The people you employ who actually do the work while management takes credit for it. In HR, this is the nice word for 'headcount' that makes it sound more human-like and less like an inventory spreadsheet.
The process of officially signing someone up to participate in a program, class, or organization—the bureaucratic moment when you become a statistic. It's the headcount that justifies the program's existence in spreadsheets everywhere.
The legal obligation employers have to maintain a safe workplace and protect employees from foreseeable harm, often honored more in breach than in observance.
A standardized unit of measurement representing one full-time employee's work capacity, used to calculate staffing levels when you have a delightful mix of full-time and part-time workers.
An annual or semi-annual evaluation where managers document what they forgot about your work since last review, often contradicting the praise they gave in real-time.
The bureaucratic obstacle course of background checks, reference calls, and invasive questioning designed to ensure you're 'safe' before they commit. It's HR's way of covering their liability while pretending to protect organizational integrity.
The practice of using terminology that doesn't exclude people based on identity, gender, or other characteristics—or at least making a visible effort to try before someone emails 47 corrections.
The practice of publicly identifying and criticizing individuals for perceived misconduct or insensitivity—workplace accountability that bypasses HR and goes straight to social media.