HR Jargon Do You Need to Know?
Every profession has its own language or jargon.
Here are some of the words you might hear coming out of an HR manager’s mouth
and what they really mean when they use them.
A Seat at the Table:
Imagine a group of decision makers sitting
around the table making a decision. Anyone who is there has a “seat.” It’s just
a description of who is invited to the meeting. HR often talks about having a
“seat at the table” to emphasize that someone needs to be there to ensure the
people perspective is taken into consideration.
Additionally, the terms refers to a seat with
the executive leadership in the executive conference room.This is where HR
wants inclusion and input to decisions made that affect the strategic direction
of the company and the successful deployment of the people to attain the goals.
Balanced Scorecard:
This term comes out of Harvard Business School,
and as such, can be explained in either a very complicated manner or in this
way: everything matters. You can’t just ignore your people and focus on the
numbers.
The scorecard looks specifically at four
different areas: Learning and Growth, Business Process, Customers, and
Finances. Often, the HR Business Partner is heavily involved in the learning
and growth portions of determining this scorecard for each senior person.
Competencies of Core Competencies:
These are generally the skills needed to do a
particular job, but the reference is often a little fuzzier. Skills imply
something concrete like - must know how to do financial modelling - while
competencies can also include soft skills such as problem solving abilities.
When HR managers talk about Core Competencies,
they refer to the knowledge, skills and abilities that are absolutely critical
to the job. So, while it’s nice to have an accountant with good interpersonal
skills, all accountants must be able to work with numbers.
Corporate Culture:
Every company has its own culture. Cultures can
develop naturally without any effort, but often the HR department will attempt
to build a specific culture. You’ll see mission statements and team building
activities and a number of other activities designed to create a specific
culture within the organization.
Good HR departments make weeding out bad
managers (or training bad managers to become good managers) a priority in
creating a good corporate culture. Bad HR departments focus on mission
statements and then wonder why the culture is still toxic.
Downsizing, reorganization, restructuring, or
rightsizing:
As a general rule, these all mean that a company
is going to lay off a number of employees. It’s possible to reorganize and
restructure and keep all of the employees, but in reality, if you hear
discussions about company-wide reorganizations, freshen up your resume, because
you might need it.
Family Friendly:
Businesses often claim that they are family
friendly when they have policies that are meant to support working parents.
Benefits such as flexible schedules, on-site day care, and generous sick leaves
to care for yourself and your sick children are often cited as important
aspects of a family friendly business. HR departments are usually the ones who
develop and implement such policies.
Gross Misconduct:
if you do something that is so bad that the
consequence is that the company immediately fires you, your actions were gross
misconduct. For instance, if you set fire to the boss’s office, it doesn’t
matter that you had a perfect performance appraisal the week before, the boss
will fire you. Gross misconduct is generally determined by company policy
rather than by law. But, just because the employee handbook doesn’t say no
arson allowed doesn’t mean that the company won’t fire you - and have you
arrested - for that action.
Let go:
One of many euphemisms for fired. Now, of
course, there are two main types of “fired.” The first is when an employee is
terminated for business reasons unrelated to performance. This is generally
known as “layoff.” The
second is a true firing - when an employee has done something wrong. That
something wrong includes poor performance as well as something terrible like
stealing.
Onboarding:
When you’re hired, you have a bunch of paperwork
to fill out. This is the very basic step that is done for all new employees and
in some cases, this is the entire “onboarding” program. Some companies have
elaborate programs that involve cultural integration and building a general
company knowledge base. The goal of all onboarding programs is to bring new
employees into the company and get them working effectively.
Talent = people, management = management. When
HR people talk about talent management, they are really just talking about
making sure that they recruit, train, manage, develop and retain the best
people.
Sometimes talent management programs don’t
include everyone in the organization, but only high potential employees and
current leaders. Both management and HR departments are involved in a talent
management system.
80/20 Rule:
This terminology is used for lots of different
situations, but in HR, it typically means that 80% of the problems are caused
by 20% of the employees. HR departments may also speak of “frequent fliers.”
There are employees who seem to have problems with everything and everybody and
take up a great deal of HR time.
These words are certainly not a complete list of
HR jargon, terms that non-HR people need to understand. But, hopefully, they
will help you understand a bit more of what is being said - when HR speaks.
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