| Acceptability | The extent to which a performance measure is deemed to be satisfactory or adequate by those who use it.
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| Action learning | Teams work on an actual business problem, commit to an action plan, and are accountable for carrying out the plan.
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| Action plan | Document summarizing what the trainee and manager will do to ensure that training transfers to the job.
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| Action steps | The part of a written affirmative plan that specifies what an employer plans to do to reduce underutilization of protected groups.
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| Adventure learning | Learning focused on the development of teamwork and leadership skills by using structured outdoor activities.
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| Agency shop | A union security provision that requires an employee to pay union membership dues but not to join the union.
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| Agent | In agency theory, a person (e.g., a manager) who is expected to act on behalf of a principal (e.g., an owner).
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| Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) | A method of resolving disputes that does not rely on the legal system. Often proceeds through the four stages of open door policy, peer review, mediation, and arbitration.
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| Alternative work arrangements | Independent contractors, on-call workers, and contract company workers who are not employed full-time by the company.
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| Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) | A 1990 act prohibiting individuals with disabilities from being discriminated against in the workplace.
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| Analytic approach | Type of assessment of HRM effectiveness that involves determining the impact of, or the financial costs and benefits of, a program or practice.
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| Anticipatory socialization | Socialization that occurs before an individual joins a company. Includes expectations about the company, job, working conditions, and interpersonal relationships.
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| Appraisal politics | A situation in which evaluators purposefully distort a rating to achieve personal or company goals.
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| Apprenticeship | A work-study training method with both on-the-job and classroom training.
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| Arbitration | A procedure for resolving collective bargaining impasses by which an arbitrator chooses a solution to the dispute.
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| Assessment | Collecting information and providing feedback to employees about their behavior, communication style, or skills.
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| Assessment center | A process in which multiple raters evaluate employees' performance on a number of exercises.
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| Associate union membership | A form of union membership by which the union receives dues in exchange for services (e.g., health insurance, credit cards) but does not provide representation in collective bargaining.
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| Attitude awareness and change program | Program focusing on increasing employees' awareness of differences in cultural and ethnic backgrounds, physical characteristics, and personal characteristics that influence behavior toward others.
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| Attitudinal structuring | The aspect of the labor- management negotiation process that refers to the relationship and level of trust between the negotiators.
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| Audiovisual instruction | Includes overheads, slides, and video.
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| Audit approach | Type of assessment of HRM effectiveness that involves review of customer satisfaction or key indicators (e.g., turnover rate, average days to fill a position) related to an HRM functional area (e.g., recruiting, training).
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| Balanced scorecard | A means of performance measurement that gives managers a chance to look at their company from the perspectives of internal and external customers, employees, and shareholders.
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| Basic skills | Reading, writing, and communication skills needed to understand the content of a training program.
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| Behavior based program | A program focusing on changing the organizational policies and individual behaviors that inhibit employees' personal growth and productivity.
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| Benchmarking | Comparing an organization's practices against those of the competition.
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| Benchmarks© | An instrument designed to measure the factors that are important to managerial success.
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| Bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) | A job qualification based on race, sex, religion, and so on that an employer asserts is a necessary qualification for the job.
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| Career management system | A system to retain and motivate employees by identifying and meeting their development needs (also called development planning system).
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| Career support | Coaching, protection, sponsorship, and providing challenging assignments, exposure, and visibility.
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| Cash balance plan | Retirement plan in which the employer sets up an individual account for each employee and contributes a percentage of the employee's salary; the account earns interest at a predetermined rate.
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| Centralization | Degree to which decision-making authority resides at the top of the organizational chart.
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| Checkoff provision | A union contract provision that requires an employer to deduct union dues from employees' paychecks.
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| Client server architecture | Computer design that provides a method to consolidate data and applications into a single host system (the client).
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| 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.
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| Closed shop | A union security provision requiring a person to be a union member before being hired. Illegal under NLRA.
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| Coach | A peer or manager who works with an employee to motivate her, help her develop skills, and provide reinforcement and feedback.
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| Cognitive ability | Includes three dimensions: verbal comprehension, quantitative ability, and reasoning ability.
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| Cognitive ability tests | Tests that include three dimensions: verbal comprehension, quantitative ability, and reasoning ability.
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| Communities of practice | Groups of employees who work together, learn from each other, and develop a common understanding of how to get work accomplished.
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| Compa ratio | An index of the correspondence between actual and intended pay.
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| Compensable factors | The characteristics of jobs that an organization values and chooses to pay for.
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| Competitiveness | A company's ability to maintain and gain market share in its industry.
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| Concentration strategy | A strategy focusing on increasing market share, reducing costs, or creating and maintaining a market niche for products and services.
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| 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.
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| Consequences | The incentives that employees receive for performing well.
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| 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 a layoff.
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| Content validation | A test validation strategy performed by demonstrating that the items, questions, or problems posed by a test are a representative sample of the kinds of situations or problems that occur on the job.
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| Continuous learning | A learning system that requires employees to understand the entire work process and expects them to acquire new skills, apply them on the job, and share what they have learned with other employees.
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| Coordination training | Training a team in how to share information and decision-making responsibilities to maximize team performance.
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| Corporate campaigns | Union activities designed to exert public, financial, or political pressure on employers during the union-organizing process.
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| Cost benefit analysis | The process of determining the economic benefits of a training program using accounting methods.
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| 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.
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| Cross cultural preparation | The process of educating employees (and their families) who are given an assignment in a foreign country.
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| Cross training | Training in which team members understand and practice each other's skills so that members are prepared to step in and take another member's place should he or she temporarily or permanently leave the team.
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| Cultural immersion | A behavior-based diversity program that sends employees into communities where they interact with persons from different cultures, races, and nationalities.
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| 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.
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| Delayering | Reducing the number of job levels within an organization.
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| Departmentalization | Degree to which work units are grouped based on functional similarity or similarity of workflow.
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| Development | The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that improve an employee's ability to meet changes in job requirements and in client and customer demands.
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| Direct applicants | People who apply for a job vacancy without prompting from the organization.
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| Disparate impact | A theory of discrimination based on facially neutral employment practices that disproportionately exclude a protected group from employment opportunities.
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| Disparate treatment | A theory of discrimination based on different treatment given to individuals because of their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability status.
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| Distributive bargaining | The part of the labor- management negotiation process that focuses on dividing a fixed economic "pie."
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| Diversity training | Training designed to change employee attitudes about diversity and/or develop skills needed to work with a diverse workforce.
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| Downsizing | The planned elimination of large numbers of personnel, designed to enhance organizational effectiveness.
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| Downward move | A job change involving a reduction in an employee's level of responsibility and authority.
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| Due process policies | Policies by which a company formally lays out the steps an employee can take to appeal a termination decision.
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| Duty of fair representation | The National Labor Relations Act requirement that all bargaining unit members have equal access to and representation by the union.
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| Efficiency wage theory | A theory stating that wage influences worker productivity.
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| e-learning | Instruction and delivery of training by computers through the Internet or company intranet.
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| Electronic business (e-business) | Any business that a company conducts electronically.
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| Electronic human resource management (e-HRM) | The processing and transmission of digitized information used in HRM.
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| Electronic performance support systems (EPSS) | Computer applications that can provide (as requested) skills training, information access, and expert advice.
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| Employee assistance programs (EAPs) | Employer programs that attempt to ameliorate problems encountered by workers who are drug dependent, alcoholic, or psychologically troubled.
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| 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).
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| Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) | An employee ownership plan that provides employers certain tax and financial advantages when stock is granted to employees.
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| Employment at will doctrine | The doctrine that, in the absence of a specific contract, either an employer or employee could sever the employment relationship at any time.
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| Employment at will policies | Policies which state that either an employer or employee can terminate the employment relationship at any time, regardless of cause.
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| Empowering | Giving employees the responsibility and authority to make decisions.
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| Encounter phase | The phase that occurs when an employee begins a new job.
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| Equal employment opportunity (EEO) | The government's attempt to ensure that all individuals have an equal opportunity for employment, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin.
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| Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) | The government commission established to ensure that all individuals have an equal opportunity for employment, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin.
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| Ergonomics | The interface between individuals' physiological characteristics and the physical work environment.
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| Exempt | Employees who are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Exempt employees are not eligible for overtime pay.
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| Expatriate | Employee sent by his or her company to manage operations in a different country.
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| Expectancy theory | The theory that says motivation is a function of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy.
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| Expert systems | Computer systems incorporating the decision rules of people recognized as experts in a certain area.
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| External analysis | Examining the organization's operating environment to identify strategic opportunities and threats.
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| External growth strategy | An emphasis on acquiring vendors and suppliers or buying businesses that allow a company to expand into new markets.
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| External labor market | Persons outside the firm who are actively seeking employment.
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| Externship | When a company allows an employee to take a full-time operational role at another company.
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| Fact finder | A person who reports on the reasons for a labor-management dispute, the views and arguments of both sides, and a nonbinding recommendation for settling the dispute.
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| Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) | The 1938 law that established the minimum wage and overtime pay.
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| Family and Medical Leave Act | 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.
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| Feedback | Information that employees receive while they are performing concerning how well they are meeting objectives.
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| 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.
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| Formal education programs | Employee development programs, including short courses offered by consultants or universities, executive MBA programs, and university programs.
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| Four fifths rule | A rule that states that an employment test has disparate impact if the hiring rate for a minority group is less than four-fifths, or 80 percent, of the hiring rate for the majority group.
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| Frame of reference | A standard point that serves as a comparison for other points and thus provides meaning.
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| Gainsharing | A form of group compensation based on group or plant performance (rather than organizationwide profits) that does not become part of the employee's base salary.
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| General duty clause | The provision of the Occupational Health and Safety Act that states an employer has an overall obligation to furnish employees with a place of employment free from recognized hazards.
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| Generalizability | The degree to which the validity of a selection method established in one context extends to other contexts.
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| 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).
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| Goals | What an organization hopes to achieve in the medium- to long-term future.
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| 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.
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| Group building methods | Training methods 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 coworkers.
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| Group mentoring program | A program pairing a successful senior employee with a group of four to six less experienced protégés.
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| Groupware | Software application that enables multiple users to track, share, and organize information and to work on the same database or document simultaneously.
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| Hands on methods | Training methods that require the trainee to be actively involved in learning.
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| Health maintenance organization (HMO) | A health care plan that provides benefits on a prepaid basis for employees who are required to use only HMO medical service providers.
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| 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.
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| High performance work systems | Work systems that maximize the fit between employees and technology.
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| High potential employees | Employees the company believes are capable of being successful in high-level management positions.
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| Host country | The country in which the parent-country organization seeks to locate or has already located a facility.
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| Host country nationals (HCNs) | Employees born and raised in a host, not parent, country.
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| Human resource information system (HRIS) | A system used to acquire, store, manipulate, analyze, retrieve, and distribute information related to human resources.
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| Human resource management (HRM) | The policies, practices, and systems that influence employees' behavior, attitudes, and performances.
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| Human resource recruitment | The practice or activity carried on by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees.
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| Imaging | A process for scanning documents, storing them electronically, and retrieving them.
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| In basket | A simulation of the administrative tasks of a manager's job.
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| Individualism collectivism | One of Hofstede's cultural dimensions; describes the strength of the relation between an individual and other individuals in a society.
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| Input | Instructions that tell the employee what, how, and when to perform; also the support they are given to help them perform.
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| Integrative bargaining | The part of the labor-management negotiation process that seeks solutions beneficial to both sides.
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| Intellectual capital | Creativity, productivity, and service provided by employees.
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| Interactional justice | A concept of justice referring to the interpersonal nature of how the outcomes were implemented.
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| Internal analysis | The process of examining an organization's strengths and weaknesses.
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| Internal growth strategy | A focus on new market and product development, innovation, and joint ventures.
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| Internal labor force | Labor force of current employees.
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| Interview | Employees are questioned about their work and personal experiences, skills, and career plans.
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| Intraorganizational bargaining | The part of the labor- management negotiation process that focuses on the conflicting objectives of factions within labor and management.
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| Involuntary turnover | Turnover initiated by the organization (often among people who would prefer to stay).
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| ISO 9000:2000 | A series of quality assurance standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization in Switzerland and adopted worldwide.
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| Job analysis | The process of getting detailed information about jobs.
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| Job description | A list of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities that a job entails.
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| Job design | The process of defining the way work will be performed and the tasks that will be required in a given job.
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| Job enlargement | Adding challenges or new responsibilities to an employee's current job.
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| Job enrichment | Ways to add complexity and meaningfulness to a person's work.
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| Job evaluation | An administrative procedure used to measure internal job worth.
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| Job experience | The relationships, problems, demands, tasks, and other features that employees face in their jobs.
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| Job hazard analysis technique | A breakdown of each job into basic elements, each of which is rated for its potential for harm or injury.
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| Job involvement | The degree to which people identify themselves with their jobs.
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| Job redesign | The process of changing the tasks or the way work is performed in an existing job.
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| Job rotation | The process of systematically moving a single individual from one job to another over the course of time. The job assignments may be in various functional areas of the company or movement may be between jobs in a single functional area or department.
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| Job satisfaction | A pleasurable feeling that results from the perception that one's job fulfills or allows for the fulfillment of one's important job values.
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| Job specification | A list of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that an individual must have to perform a job.
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| Job structure | The relative pay of jobs in an organization.
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| Key jobs | Benchmark jobs, used in pay surveys, that have relatively stable content and are common to many organizations.
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| Knowledge workers | Employees who own the intellectual means of producing a product or service.
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| Leaderless group discussion | Process in which a team of five to seven employees solve an assigned problem together within a certain time period.
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| Leading indicator | An objective measure that accurately predicts future labor demand.
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| Learner control | Ability of trainees to actively learn through self-pacing, exercises, links to other materials, and conversations with other trainees and experts.
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| Learning organization | An organization whose employees are continuously attempting to learn new things and apply what they have learned to improve product or service quality.
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| Long term short term orientation | One of Hofstede's cultural dimensions; describes how a culture balances immediate benefits with future rewards.
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| Maintenance of membership | Union rules requiring members to remain members for a certain period of time (e.g., the length of the union contract).
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| 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.
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| Managing diversity | The process of creating an environment that allows all employees to contribute to organizational goals and experience personal growth.
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| Marginal employee | An employee performing at a barely acceptable level because of lack of ability and/or motivation to perform well, not poor work conditions.
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| Marginal tax rate | The percentage of an additional dollar of earnings that goes to taxes.
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| Masculinity femininity dimension | One of Hofstede's cultural dimensions; describes the division of roles between the sexes within a society.
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| Mediation | A procedure for resolving collective bargaining impasses by which a mediator with no formal authority acts as a facilitator and go-between in the negotiations.
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| Mentor | An experienced, productive senior employee who helps develop a less experienced employee.
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| Merit increase grid | A grid that combines an employee's performance rating with his or her position in a pay range to determine the size and frequency of his or her pay increases.
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| Minimum wage | The lowest amount that employers are legally allowed to pay; the 1990 amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act permits a subminimum wage to workers under the age of 20 for a period of up to 90 days.
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| Motivation to learn | The desire of the trainee to learn the content of a training program.
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| 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 lifestyle.
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| Needs assessment | The process used to determine if training is necessary.
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| Negative affectivity | A dispositional dimension that reflects pervasive individual differences in satisfaction with any and all aspects of life.
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| Network | A combination of desktop computers, computer terminals, and mainframes or minicomputers that share access to databases and a method to transmit information throughout the system.
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| New technologies | Current applications of knowledge, procedures, and equipment that have not been previously used. Usually involves replacing human labor with equipment, information processing, or some combination of the two.
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| Nonkey jobs | Jobs that are unique to organizations and that cannot be directly valued or compared through the use of market surveys.
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| Objective | The purpose and expected outcome of training activities.
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| Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) | The 1970 law that authorizes the federal government to establish and enforce occupational safety and health standards for all places of employment engaging in interstate commerce.
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| Offshoring | A special case of outsourcing where the jobs that move actually leave one country and go to another.
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| Opportunity to perform | The trainee is provided with or actively seeks experience using newly learned knowledge skills, or behavior.
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| Organizational analysis | A process for determining the business appropriateness of training.
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| Organizational commitment | The degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and is willing to put forth effort on its behalf.
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| Organizational socialization | The process by which new employees are transformed into effective members of a company.
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| Outcome fairness | The judgment that people make with respect to the outcomes received relative to the outcomes received by other people with whom they identity.
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| Outplacement counseling | Counseling to help displaced employees manage the transition from one job to another.
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| Output | A job's performance standards.
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| Outsourcing | An organization's use of an outside organization for a broad set of services.
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| Overlearning | The continuation of practice even after trainees have been able to perform the objective several times.
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| Parent country | The country in which a company's corporate headquarters is located.
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| Parent country nationals (PCNs) | Employees who were born and live in a parent country.
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| Pay grades | Jobs of similar worth or content grouped together for pay administration purposes.
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| Pay level | The average pay, including wages, salaries, and bonuses, of jobs in an organization.
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| Pay policy line | A mathematical expression that describes the relationship between a job's pay and its job evaluation points.
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| Pay structure | The relative pay of different jobs (job structure) and how much they are paid (pay level).
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| Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) | 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.
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| Performance appraisal | The process through which an organization gets information on how well an employee is doing his or her job.
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| Performance feedback | The process of providing employees information regarding their performance effectiveness.
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| Performance management | The means through which managers ensure that employees' activities and outputs are congruent with the organization's goals.
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| Performance planning and evaluation (PPE) system | 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.
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| Person analysis | A process for determining whether employees need training, who needs training, and whether employees are ready for training.
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| Person characteristics | An employee's knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes.
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| Power distance | One of Hofstede's cultural dimensions; concerns how a culture deals with hierarchical power relationships— particularly the unequal distribution of power.
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| Practice | Having the employee demonstrate what he or she has learned in training.
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| Predictive validation | A criterion-related validity study that seeks to establish an empirical relationship between applicants' test scores and their eventual performance on the job.
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| 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.
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| Presentation methods | Training methods in which trainees are passive recipients of information.
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| Principal | In agency theory, a person (e.g., the owner) who seeks to direct another person's behavior.
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| Procedural justice | A concept of justice focusing on the methods used to determine the outcomes received.
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| Profit sharing | A compensation plan in which payments are based on a measure of organization performance (profits) and do not become part of the employees' base salary.
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| Progression of withdrawal | Theory that dissatisfied individuals enact a set of behaviors to avoid the work situation.
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| Promotions | Advances into positions with greater challenge, more responsibility, and more authority than the employee's previous job.
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| Protean career | A career that is frequently changing due to both changes in the person's interests, abilities, and values and changes in the work environment.
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| Psychological contract | The expectations that employers and employees have about each other.
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| Psychological success | The feeling of pride and accomplishment that comes from achieving life goals.
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| Psychosocial support | Serving as a friend and role model, providing positive regard and acceptance, and creating an outlet for a protégé to talk about anxieties and fears.
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| Quantitative ability | Concerns the speed and accuracy with which one can solve arithmetic problems of all kinds.
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| Range spread | The distance between the minimum and maximum amounts in a pay grade.
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| Rate ranges | Different employees in the same job may have different pay rates.
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| Readability | The difficulty level of written materials.
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| Realistic job preview | Provides accurate information about the attractive and unattractive aspects of a job, working conditions, company, and location to ensure that potential employees develop appropriate expectations.
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| Reasonable accommodation | Making facilities readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.
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| Reasoning ability | Refers to a person's capacity to invent solutions to many diverse problems.
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| Recruitment | The process of seeking applicants for potential employment.
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| Reengineering | Review and redesign of work processes to make them more efficient and improve the quality of the end product or service.
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| Referrals | People who are prompted to apply for a job by someone within the organization.
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| Relational database | A database structure that stores information in separate files that can be linked by common elements.
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| Reliability | The consistency of a performance measure; the degree to which a performance measure is free from random error.
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| Repatriation | The preparation of expatriates for return to the parent company and country from a foreign assignment.
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| Repurposing | Directly translating instructor-led training online.
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| Request for proposal (RFP) | A document that outlines for potential vendors and consultants the type of service the company is seeking, references needed, number of employees who should be trained, project funding, the follow-up process, expected completion date, and the date when proposals must be received by the company.
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| Results | Measurements used to determine a training program's payoff for a company.
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| Right to work laws | State laws that make union shops, maintenance of membership, and agency shops illegal.
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| Role | What an organization expects from an employee in terms of what to do and how to do it.
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| Role ambiguity | Uncertainty about what an organization expects from an employee in terms of what to do and how to do it.
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| 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.
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| Role behaviors | Behaviors that are required of an individual in his or her role as a job holder in a social work environment.
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| Role conflict | Recognition of incompatible or contradictory demands by the person occupying the role.
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| Role overload | A state in which too many expectations or demands are placed on a person.
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| Role play | A participant taking the part or role of a manager or other employee.
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| Sabbatical | A leave of absence from the company to renew or develop skills.
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| Safety awareness programs | Employer programs that attempt to instill symbolic and substantive changes in the organization's emphasis on safety.
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| Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 | A congressional act passed in response to illegal and unethical behavior by managers and executives. The Act sets stricter rules for business especially accounting practices including requiring more open and consistent disclosure of financial data, CEO's assurance that the data is completely accurate, and provisions that affect the employee-employer relationship (e.g., development of a code of conduct for senior financial officers).
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| School to work | Programs including basic skills training and joint training ventures with universities, community colleges, and high schools.
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| Selection | The process by which an organization attempts to identify applicants with the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that will help it achieve its goals.
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| Self directed learning | A program in which employees take responsibility for all aspects of learning.
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| Self efficacy | The employees' belief that they can successfully learn the content of a training program.
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| Self service | Giving employees online access to human resources information.
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| Settling in phase | Phase of socialization that occurs when employees are comfortable with job demands and social relationships.
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| Simulation | A training method that represents a real-life situation, allowing trainees to see the outcomes of their decisions in an artificial environment.
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| Situational interview | An interview procedure where applicants are confronted with specific issues, questions, or problems that are likely to arise on the job.
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| Six Sigma process | System of measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling processes once they meet quality standards.
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| Skill based pay | Pay based on the skills employees acquire and are capable of using.
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| 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.
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| Stakeholders | The various interest groups who have relationships with, and consequently, whose interests are tied to the organization (e.g., employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders, community).
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| 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.
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| Stock options | An employee ownership plan that gives employees the opportunity to buy the company's stock at a previously fixed price.
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| Strategic choice | The organization's strategy; the ways an organization will attempt to fulfill its mission and achieve its long-term goals.
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| Strategic congruence | The extent to which the performance management system elicits job performance that is consistent with the organization's strategy, goals, and culture.
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| Strategic human resource management (SHRM) | A pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals.
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| 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.
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| Strategy implementation | The process of devising structures and allocating resources to enact the strategy a company has chosen.
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| 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.
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| Support network | Trainees who meet to discuss their progress in using learned capabilities on the job.
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| Sustainability | The ability of a company to survive in a dynamic competitive environment. Based on an approach to organizational decision making that considers the long term impact of strategies on stakeholders (e.g., employees, shareholders, suppliers, community).
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| Taft Hartley Act | The 1947 act that outlawed unfair union labor practices.
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| Task analysis | The process of identifying the tasks, knowledge, skills, and behaviors that need to be emphasized in training.
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| Team leader training | Training of the team manager or facilitator.
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| Technic of operations review (TOR) | Method of determining safety problems via an analysis of past accidents.
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| Third country | A country other than a host or parent country.
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| Third country nationals (TCNs) | Employees born in a country other than a parent or host country.
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| 360 degree appraisal (feedback systems) | 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.
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| Total quality management (TQM) | A cooperative form of doing business that relies on the talents and capabilities of both labor and management to continually improve quality and productivity.
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| Training | A planned effort to facilitate the learning of job-related knowledge, skills, and behavior by employees.
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| Training administration | Coordinating activities before, during, and after a training program.
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| Training design process | A systematic approach for developing training programs.
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| Training outcomes | A way to evaluate the effectiveness of a training program based on cognitive, skill-based, affective, and results outcomes.
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| Transaction processing | Computations and calculations used to review and document HRM decisions and practices.
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| Transfer | The movement of an employee to a different job assignment in a different area of the company.
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| Transfer of training | The use of knowledge, skills, and behaviors learned in training on the job.
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| Transitional matrix | Matrix showing the proportion or number of employees in different job categories at different times.
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| Transnational process | The extent to which a company's planning and decision-making processes include representatives and ideas from a variety of cultures.
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| Transnational representation | Reflects the multinational composition of a company's managers.
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| Transnational scope | A company's ability to make HRM decisions from an international perspective.
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| Uncertainty avoidance | One of Hofstede's cultural dimensions; describes how cultures seek to deal with an unpredictable future.
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| Union shop | A union security provision that requires a person to join the union within a certain amount of time after being hired.
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| Upward feedback | A performance appraisal process for managers that includes subordinates' evaluations.
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| Utility | The degree to which the information provided by selection methods enhances the effectiveness of selecting personnel in real organizations.
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| Utilization analysis | A comparison of the race, sex, and ethnic composition of an employer's workforce with that of the available labor supply.
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| Validity | The extent to which a performance measure assesses all the relevant—and only the relevant—aspects of job performance.
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| Verbal comprehension | Refers to a person's capacity to understand and use written and spoken language.
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| 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.
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| Voicing | A formal opportunity to complain about one's work situation.
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| Voluntary turnover | Turnover initiated by employees (often whom the company would prefer to keep).
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| Whistle blowing | Making grievances public by going to the media or government.
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| 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.
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