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ESL Guide

Human Resources

  1. Accountability: responsibility for action & accompanying consequences
  2. Affirmative Action: policy or program that requires employers to take positive steps to ensure employment of applicants & treatment of employees during employment without regard to race, sex, creed, color or national origin
  3. Arbitration: non-public process to settle disputes by an impartial third party for a binding decision
  4. Benefits: any form of payment as part of compensation not paid directly to the employee
  5. Collective Bargaining: negotiation between an employer and a labor union usually on wages, hours, and working conditions; mutual obligation conferred in good faith
  6. Communication: transfer of information, ideas understanding or feelings between people
  7. Comparable Worth: Determination of values of dissimilar jobs
  8. Compensation: Every type of reward an individual receives in return for their labor
  9. Corporate Culture: system of shared values, beliefs and habits within an organization
  10. Development: Individual growth not related to a specific present or future job
  11. Discipline: Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior; especially training that produces moral or mental improvement
  12. Work Redesign: creating an environment and tasks of a job to fit worker characteristics
  13. Equity: perception by workers that they are being treated fairly
  14. Flex: allowing employees to choose between different alternatives with certain limitations
  15. Going Rate: average pay most employers provide for the same job in a particular area or industry
  16. Incentives: relating a reward/compensation to productivity directly
  17. Informal Organization: (interpersonal relationships in the organization that affect decisions within it, but are either omitted from the formal scheme or aren’t consistent with that scheme); unofficial relationships within an organization
  18. Injunction: a prohibiting legal procedure used by employers to prevent certain union activities
  19. Job Analysis: process used to identify the important skills & knowledge for a specific job
  20. Job Description: description of the tasks, duties & responsibilities associated with a given job
  21. Job Enlargement: Addition of tasks at the same level of skill and responsibility to keep workers from getting bored
  22. Job Enrichment: The addition to a job of tasks to make it more challenging, meaningful & interesting at a higher level of responsibility
  23. Job Overload/Job Under Load: When employees have more work than they can reasonably handle; Job Under Load - not enough to do
  24. Job Specification: Minimum qualifications a person needs to perform a job
  25. Leadership: Communicating vision to those in the organization and providing the tools and knowledge necessary to accomplish the vision
  26. Mediation: negotiation to resolve differences conducted by some impartial party
  27. Mentoring: An on-the-job approach to management development on a one-to-one basis from a more experienced organizational member
  28. Motivation: the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior
  29. Networking: the process of building strategic alliances by a person or company in an effort to better themselves and positioning for their career or company
  30. Operative Employees: (all workers in an organization except managers an professionals, such as engineers, accountants, and professional secretaries); non-exempt employees
  31. Organizational Development (OD): applying organization-wide behavioral theories to improve a firm’s effectiveness
  32. Orientation: the initial training and development effort for new employees that strives to inform them about the company, the job, and the work group
  33. Performance Appraisal: A formal system of periodic review and evaluation of an individual’s job performance
  34. Policy/Procedures: Policy - a pre-determined guide established to provide direction in decision-making. Procedures - the ways of going about doing certain organizational duties.
  35. Productivity: The amount of output produced per unit of an input; output/input
  36. Recruitment: Process of attracting and encouraging new candidates for organizational jobs
  37. Social Responsibility: obligation of managers to protect interest of groups other than themselves
  38. Standardization: degree of uniformity of procedures and conditions in test administration
  39. Team Building: conscious effort to develop effective work groups
  40. Training: organizational developed activities to develop or maintain one’s skills