HR English words List of essential English terms for Human Resources

It should be apparent to anyone that a business and its employees need to check in with each other regularly so that both sides know where they stand. Some outfits prefer constant feedback and others will go with quarterly, half-yearly or annual reviews. When the balance of communication is right the contents of a review shouldn’t be a surprise to the reviewer or the reviewed.

A job description provides the applicants with the idea of their general tasks and responsibilities in the job they’re applying for. Job board refers to websites that are used to advertise the job openings within the company. HR analytics refers to the process of analyzing the HR functions at your company. This refers to the independent and self-employed people who provide services to any organization. Domain skill refers to skills in a specialized profession or discipline. An assessment center is a selection process where individuals are assessed using a wide range of selection practices and exercises.

The difference between the skills required for a job and the skills actually possessed by the employees or employee seekers. It refers to the interview where the candidates are asked hypothetical questions that are focused on the future. A training designed to help employees in an organization accept and respond to attitudes and behaviors that may unintentionally cause offense to others. A break during which employees are not expected to report to work or perform any of their normal duties, while still being employed by the company. A method of contacting a job applicant’s previous employees, schools, etc. to get more information about them.

English Vocabulary for HR: Most Popular Phrases Used in HR Nowadays

What we have here is a list of the most popular HR keywords and terminology explained. In response to this we’ve made our own shortlist of HR terms worth understanding. Some of them began life as jargon, others are simple terms that were replaced by more complex jargon and are overdue a revival. A formal document used by department managers to request the hiring of new employees. Job posting refers to advertising the open job position in your company to potential candidates. A human resource information system is also known as HRIS is an HR software that integrates the HR processes into information technology.

There’s an argument to be made for talking about distributed work but it works better as a way of describing teams than categorizing work. In addition some fully distributed teams have no office headquarters in the first place. The reality for the majority of companies is that they have some of their people working remotely and some working from the office. How to manage this blend is only going to grow in importance of for HR professionals.

It equips them with the tools needed to navigate the complexities of workforce management efficiently. Simultaneously, employees navigating the nuances of workplace policies find themselves at a distinct advantage when armed with a clear understanding of HR language. This knowledge empowers them to actively participate in discussions related to their benefits, understand the implications of policy changes, and make informed decisions about their professional trajectory. In essence, a workforce that comprehends HR jargon is better positioned to engage in meaningful dialogue, contributing to a culture of transparency and collaboration within the organization. In the complex landscape of Human Resources (HR), understanding the language and concepts is not merely a professional advantage but a strategic necessity for both employers and employees. HR serves as the backbone of organizational management, encompassing diverse functions ranging from the strategic management of workforces to the navigation of intricate regulations.

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Work-life balance can be defined as the balance between one’s personal life and professional life. An interview where a panel of experienced tech recruiters tests the interviewee’s technical and coding knowledge and skills. Wellness programs are programs adapted by HR to improve employee health and promote healthy working behaviour in the workplace. Team building refers to the process of using different management techniques and activities to create strong bonds amongst the team members.

But which skills and competencies are most critical, and what do they entail? In this article, we’ve curated an overview of the most sought-after skills in HR (in no particular order), the impact of these skills, and how to develop them. Compensation includes equity and any other financial instrument that might be offered to an employee. The percentage of candidates passing from one stage of the hiring process to another.

These issues can be operational, for example, creating a reintegration plan for an employee or helping a senior manager with the formulation of an email to the department. More tactical issues are the organization of and advising in restructuring efforts. Strategic advice involves the alignment of HR practices to align more with the business.

While you do not need to be an IT or data expert, being aware of and skilled in the use of the array of tools and systems available will help you work more effectively and efficiently. This is particularly relevant in organizations with international or remote/hybrid teams. HR professionals with employee experience expertise are able to use human-centric design thinking to put the employee at the center of the workplace design process.

• We’ve been arguing for a while now that language matters in recruitment (and HR in general).
• A balanced scorecard is a performance management tool, used to improve the internal functioning of a business.
• Turnover rate refers to the percentage of employees that leave a company in a given period of time.

Additionally, Human Resources skills training should be a continuous part of your career development. Communicating with stakeholders, the CEO, managers, and employees, at different levels of authority and influence, https://chat.openai.com/ requires different language and tone. This is why the ability to connect well with all kinds of people and leave a professional and positive impression is an essential skill for HR professionals.

HR values it for promoting mental health, but some may view it as a corporate attempt to meddle in personal habits. Arising from the Agile methodology in software development, it adapts principles for HR purposes. HR values it for adaptability, but skeptics might dismiss hr language it as a lack of structure. Originating in the pursuit of workplace equality, diversity, and inclusion have become central to modern HR strategies. While HR sees it as essential for fostering innovation, some skeptics may view it as political correctness gone awry.

Click here to learn the differences between talent management vs. talent acquisition, people operations vs. HR management and what exactly a people team does. This is the process of identifying long-range needs and cultivating a supply of internal talent to meet those future needs. It assists in finding, assessing and developing the individuals necessary to the strategy of the organization. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, assess and manage one’s own emotions, as well as others’ emotions.

One of the key HR skills is being a credible and trustworthy advisor to different stakeholders. You need to be able to effectively advise employees, line managers, and senior managers on personnel issues. In such a role, proactivity can help you in spotting potential problems before they happen or escalate. Proactive and strategic HRM helps to plan and align the core HR tasks in a way that offers the most value to the business. That’s why the OrangeHRM HR Dictionary is the place for you to learn more about new HR terminology that you come across, or simply browse for more knowledge.

Wrongful termination refers to an employee getting fired for any illegal reasons or without any just cause. A leadership style in which a leader adapts their style of leading to suit the current work environment and requirements of a team. A full-time paid internship for individuals who have been out of the workforce for a while. An interview where the candidate is asked several pre-recorded questions and the response by them gets recorded. Offshoring refers to the process of setting up the operations of a business in a different country to minimize costs.

Are You Ready To Transform Your HR Career?

This is an agreement between an employer and employee in which the employee may not disclose branded, patented or confidential information. Many companies have protected information that, if leaked, could be devastating for the brand or welfare of the organization—a confidentiality agreement serves as legal protection from this. Gained prominence as organizations focused on creating healthier cultures. While HR addresses it for employee well-being, some outsiders may view it as a subjective term prone to misuse.

An HR employee who works with the senior leaders of the company and develops an HR strategy that supports the aims of the organization. A lump sum is provided to an employee when they leave the organization for the services provided by them during the period of employment by their employer. This refers to the marketing of a company to attract job seekers and employees. The employee referral program is a method used by companies to hire people from the networks of their existing employees.

This can involve the use of complex predictive analytics on HR data, or the much simpler use of data, for example, by an Excel analysis. Coaching skills enhance the ability to develop employees, guiding them toward reaching their full potential and aligning their skills with the company’s objectives. Communication is the most frequently mentioned skill in HR job postings. Communicating effectively is essential in Human Resource Management because the HR professional is the link between the business and the employee, representing both parties. We’re not on a campaign against perks but benefits wins because it’s a better way to think about everything not covered by compensation.

They need to stay up-to-date with changes in labor legislation and research new HR trends that will keep the organization running smoothly. The glossary is your go-to resource to help sharpen your acumen in this field. From commonly used HR words to more obscure Human Resources terms, the HR glossary covers it all. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, our library is a handy tool to have in your arsenal.

This includes skills such as communication, admin, HR strategy, coaching, being data-driven, and having a command of technology. Previous work experience or educational background in Human Resource Management or Industrial and Organizational Psychology are very helpful in an HR professional role. It helps in understanding recruitment, selection, absence procedures, data reporting, and more. The complex duties of Human Resources have gradually led to creating more distinct HR roles and departments. In some cases, the name “HR” has even been removed from the job title and replaced with “talent management”, “talent acquisition” and “people operations”. This is the result of a shift from the administrative role that HR departments used to have to a more holistic, strategic approach.

Job description v. Job specification

As people analytics grows in importance, demand for HR reporting skills is increasing too. These skills include the ability to create, read, and interpret HR reports using data from different HRIS. Even if you are not (yet) at a level where HR strategy creation is among your responsibilities, you still need to be able to understand the strategic intent and translate that into an execution plan.

While HR views it as a serious issue affecting productivity, some outside the field may dismiss it as a trendy excuse for taking a break. As companies grew, so did the need for a specialized language to discuss the ever-changing dynamics of the workplace. The roots of HR jargon go back to when businesses began to recognize the importance of managing their most valuable asset—people. These terms represent very real concerns for employers around the world. You can learn a language faster and maximize your study time by following research-backed techniques. We’ll explore seven of the scientifically proven best ways to learn a language.

A team of people from different operational areas comes together to implement process improvements or to solve problems. A bonus wage and other direct or indirect benefits are provided by a company to its employees. Human Resources also implement important company policies and regulations, for example, they ensure compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and GDPR regulations.

It enables employees to effortlessly update their benefits coverage in the event of significant life changes such as marriage, birth, adoption, or divorce. This ensures that employees have the appropriate coverage during pivotal moments in their lives. Premium payment and reconciliation involve a monthly review of premium invoices against a company’s payroll deductions.

We “onboard” new people at Workable (part of the process involves sending them a copy of Donald Norman’s brilliant book, ‘Things That Make Us Smart’) so it would be odd not to include it here. It’s one of those ‘why use two words when you can Chat PG make one’ examples but sometimes they just work. One of the classic mistakes made in recruiting is to stop trying as soon as an offer has been accepted. An assessment test is used to evaluate the skills and abilities of job candidates.

• Some outfits prefer constant feedback and others will go with quarterly, half-yearly or annual reviews.
• Another communication skill that is becoming more critical for HR teams is storytelling.
• In fact it’s always been difficult to hire the right team and keep them motivated.

To establish yourself as a trustworthy advisor, you need to continuously communicate and interact in a way that builds trust and strengthens your reputation as a credible practitioner. The process of searching and selecting the best candidate for a job opening. Psychometric tests are used to assess and understand the personality traits and attributes of a candidate. Probation refers to a time period under which the employees are exempted from certain contracts.

HR professionals must learn to leverage the power of data analytics to make better, evidence-based decisions. Large organizations usually have standard providers like SAP (with SuccessFactors) or Oracle. Knowledge of an HRIS is a prerequisite for most senior HR jobs and one of the top technical skills HR professionals need today.

The process where an organization ensures that its employees are developed to fill each key role within the company. A model under which a candidate is analyzed on the basis of their knowledge, skills, and abilities and then recruited for successful job performance. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. An interview scorecard is something that employers use during the hiring process. An interview scorecard helps in standardizing the recruitment process by evaluating candidates on certain standards. A balanced scorecard is a performance management tool, used to improve the internal functioning of a business.

Turnover rate refers to the percentage of employees that leave a company in a given period of time. Technical interviews are conducted for job positions that require technical skills. Talent acquisition is a process of sourcing applicants, meeting qualified candidates, and identifying the right applicants for the organization’s hiring needs. An interview with potential employees to identify specific skills, wherein a set of questions are asked in a specific order. This refers to the activities and training used to improve the skills, abilities, and confidence of leaders in an organization. This refers to the management of employees of an organization so that they could contribute significantly to the overall productivity of the organization.

Human Capital Management involves the strategic process of hiring the right people, effectively managing workforces, and optimizing overall productivity. It encompasses various HR functions, such as talent acquisition, employee development, and performance management. HCM aims to align human resource strategies with business objectives, ensuring that the workforce contributes to organizational success. Skills in analytics are also increasingly sought after, enabling HR professionals to make data-driven decisions that improve recruitment, retention, and overall organizational performance. English teachers are often not equipped to go into depth in the terminology required in specific trade sectors.

Although the form of administration is changing as technology and HR automation are harnessed, administrative tasks remain a major part of the HR role. You are a source of information for employees, and being able to efficiently handle their questions and complaints is key to success in most HR jobs. What used to be known as telecommuting has also appeared as distributed work and teams.

The cultural influence model: when accented natural language spoken by virtual characters matters AI & SOCIETY

Results from Experiment 1 indicate that when processing British English prosodic cues to information status, contrary to our original hypothesis, native Canadian English speakers resemble non-native speakers confronted with the same stimuli (Chen & Lai, 2011) rather than native British English speakers (Chen et al., 2007). In both experiments, our Canadian participants treated falling https://chat.openai.com/ accents as a cue to newness and unaccented realizations as a cue to givenness. However, rising accents, which are a clear cue to givenness for native British English speakers, were not a clear cue towards either information status in Experiment 1. In line with this, Canadian listeners showed no effect of information status on the ratings of Canadian-spoken stimuli in Experiment 2.

“We’ve seen performance drops in question-answering for Singapore English, for example, of up to 19 percent,” says Ziems. Many of these variants are also considered “low resource,” meaning there’s a paucity of natural, real-world examples of people using these languages. 3 illustrates the difference in looks to the competitor between all pairs of conditions (one pair per panel). Gray shading marks 99% confidence intervals and dotted vertical lines indicate the time points that are significantly different between the conditions (i.e., where the confidence intervals do not overlap with the line indicating a difference of zero). Natural language processing reveals huge differences in how Texas history textbooks treat men, women, and people of… However, less well-publicized are the talented minds working to solve these issues of bias, like Caleb Ziems, a third-year PhD student mentored by Diyi Yang, assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford and an affiliate of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI).

Hypothesis and predictions

Native-speaker listeners constantly predict upcoming units of speech as part of language processing, using various cues. However, this process is impeded in second-language listeners, as well as when the speaker Chat PG has an unfamiliar accent. Native listeners use prosodic cues to information status to disambiguate between two possible referents, a new and a previously mentioned one, before they have heard the complete word.

• Native listeners use prosodic cues to information status to disambiguate between two possible referents, a new and a previously mentioned one, before they have heard the complete word.
• As Ziems relates, “Many of these patterns were observed by field linguists operating in an oral context with native speakers, and then transcribed.” With this empirical data and the subsequent language rules, Ziems could build a framework for language transformation.
• In both experiments, our Canadian participants treated falling accents as a cue to newness and unaccented realizations as a cue to givenness.
• Additionally, accentuation of the target word was manipulated in the second instruction, so that the target word carried a falling accent, a rising accent, or was unaccented (see Fig. 1 and Online Supplementary Materials; the first instruction always had the same intonational contour).
• Stanford HAI’s mission is to advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition.

In Experiment 1, 42 native speakers of Canadian English followed instructions spoken in British English to move objects on a screen while their eye movements were tracked. By contrast, the Canadian participants, similarly to second-language speakers, were not able to make full use of prosodic cues in the way native British listeners do. Here, we investigate the extent to which Canadian listeners’ reactions to British English prosodic cues to information status resemble those of British native and Dutch second-language speakers of English. A second experiment more explicitly addresses the issue of shared versus different representations for different dialects by testing if the same prosodic cues are rated as equally contextually appropriate when produced by a Canadian speaker. Additionally, accentuation of the target word was manipulated in the second instruction, so that the target word carried a falling accent, a rising accent, or was unaccented (see Fig. 1 and Online Supplementary Materials; the first instruction always had the same intonational contour). Information status (given/new) and accentuation (falling/rising/unaccented) of the target word in the second instruction were crossed, yielding six experimental conditions.

Experiment 2: Rating study

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. By contrast, the Canadian participants, similarly to second-language speakers, were not able to make full use of prosodic cues in the way native British listeners do.In Experiment 2, 19 native speakers of Canadian English rated the British English instructions used in Experiment 1, as well as the same instructions spoken by a Canadian imitating the British English prosody. Whether we call a tomato “tomahto” or “tomayto” has come to represent an unimportant or minor difference – “it’s all the same to me,” as the saying goes. However, what importance such socio-linguistic differences actually have for language processing, and how to integrate their potential effects in psycholinguistic models, is far from clear. On the one hand, recent research shows that regional accents different from the listeners’, such as Indian English for Canadian listeners, impede word processing (e.g., Floccia, Butler, Goslin, & Ellis, 2009; Hawthorne, Järvikivi, & Tucker, 2018).

• Advances in artificial intelligence and computer graphics digital technologies have contributed to a relative increase in realism in virtual characters.
• And, by looking at the language of the past, language analysis promises to reveal who we once were.
• As a measure of interference, we analyzed the proportion of looks to the competitor as a time series between 200 ms and 700 ms after the onset of the target word as our dependent variable (Fig. 2).
• Natural language processing reveals huge differences in how Texas history textbooks treat men, women, and people of…
• They tested spoken-word recognition of stimuli in either the participants’ native dialect or in one of two unfamiliar non-native dialects, one of which was phonetically more similar to the native accent than the other.
• Thus, they suggest that different dialects share the same mental representations, i.e. that “tomahto” or “tomayto” are underlyingly the same.

In Experiment 2, 19 native speakers of Canadian English rated the British English instructions used in Experiment 1, as well as the same instructions spoken by a Canadian imitating the British English prosody. While information status had no effect for the Canadian imitations, the original stimuli received higher ratings when prosodic realization and information status of the referent matched than for mismatches, suggesting a native-like competence in these offline ratings. Advances in artificial intelligence and computer graphics digital technologies have contributed to a relative increase in realism in virtual characters. Preserving virtual characters’ communicative realism, in particular, joined the ranks of the improvements in natural language technology, and animation algorithms. We model the effects of an English-speaking digital character with different accents on human interactants (i.e., users). Our cultural influence model proposes that paralinguistic realism, in the form of accented speech, is effective in promoting culturally congruent cognition only when it is self-relevant to users.

As Ziems relates, “Many of these patterns were observed by field linguists operating in an oral context with native speakers, and then transcribed.” With this empirical data and the subsequent language rules, Ziems could build a framework for language transformation. Looking at parts of speech and grammatical rules for these dialects enabled Ziems to take a SAE sentence like “She doesn’t have a camera” and break it down into its discrete parts. “We might identify that there’s a negation in there — ‘not’ — and that the verb ‘do’ is connected to that negation.” By analyzing parts of speech in this way, as opposed to just vocabulary, Ziems believes he and the research team have built a robust and comprehensive framework to achieve dialect invariance — constant performance over dialect shifts. At this point, bias in AI and natural language processing (NLP) is such a well-documented and frequent issue in the news that when researchers and journalists point out yet another example of prejudice in language models, readers can hardly be surprised.

Linguist and computer scientist Dan Jurafsky explores how AI is expanding from capturing individual words and sentences to modeling the social nature of language. Nineteen native speakers of Canadian English participated in the study (13 female, mean age 19.11 years). All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. Stanford HAI’s mission is to advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition. Stanford HAI’s mission is to advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition.

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These findings suggest that Canadian English does not use the same prosodic marking of information status as British English. Canadian speakers, while of course native speakers of English, are in that sense non-native speakers of the British variety. Yet, these and other studies on the processing of accented speech typically concentrate on the divergent pronunciation of individual segments or the transfer of syllable structure, and ignore higher levels of language processing, including speech prosody (see overview in Cristia et al., 2012). In the current study, we aimed to find out whether regional accent can impede language processing at the discourse level by investigating Canadian English listeners’ use of prosodic cues to identify new versus previously mentioned referents when processing British-accented English. Whereas previous research has largely concentrated on the pronunciation of individual segments in foreign-accented speech, we show that regional accent impedes higher levels of language processing, making native listeners’ processing resemble that of second-language listeners.

These findings underline the importance of expanding psycholinguistic models of second language/dialect processing and representation to include both prosody and regional variation. As a measure of interference, we analyzed the proportion of looks to the competitor as a time series between 200 ms and 700 ms after the onset of the target word as our dependent variable (Fig. 2). We used generalized additive mixed-effects modelling (GAMM) in R (Porretta, Kyröläinen, van Rij, & Järvikivi, 2018; R Core Team, 2018; Wood, 2016) to model the time series data (727 trials total) (see Online Supplementary Materials for details on preprocessing and analysis). Current language technologies, which are typically trained on Standard American English (SAE), are fraught with performance issues when handling other English variants.

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For example, a Chinese or Middle Eastern English accent may be perceived as foreign to individuals who do not share the same ethnic cultural background with members of those cultures. However, for individuals who are familiar and affiliate with those cultures (i.e., in-group members who are bicultural), accent not only serves as a motif of shared social identity, it also primes them to adopt culturally appropriate interpretive frames that influence their decision making. Jurafsky says that his field, known as natural language processing (NLP), is now in the midst of a shift from simply trying to understanding the literal meaning of words to digging into the human emotions and the social meanings behind those words. And, by looking at the language of the past, language analysis promises to reveal who we once were. Meanwhile, in fields such as medicine, NLP is being used to help doctors diagnose mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, and to measure how those patients respond to treatment. Scholars of natural language processing are exploring the human emotions and social meanings behind the words we use.

On the other hand, several studies treat regional accents as a type of phonetic variation similar to speaker variation within a regional accent. For example, Le, Best, Tyler, and Kroos (2007) used regional variants to ask how much phonetic detail is represented in the mental lexicon, comparing psycholinguistic models assuming abstract phonological representations of words (Cohort model − Marslen-Wilson, 1987; TRACE − McClelland & Elman, 1986) against models assuming storage of phonetic details (episodic theory − Goldinger, 1998; exemplar theory − Johnson, 1997). They tested spoken-word recognition of stimuli in either the participants’ native dialect or in one of two unfamiliar non-native dialects, one of which was phonetically more similar to the native accent than the other. Based on their finding of higher accuracy and earlier recognition in the phonetically similar unfamiliar dialect, Le et al. argued that mental representations must contain both abstract representations and fine phonetic detail. Crucially, this and other studies assume that dialect differences are a kind of phonetic variant that listeners map to their existing representations or add to their existing set of exemplars (Best, Tyler, Gooding, Orlando, & Quann, 2009; Kraljic, Brennan, & Samuel, 2008, b; Nycz, 2013). Thus, they suggest that different dialects share the same mental representations, i.e. that “tomahto” or “tomayto” are underlyingly the same.

Addressing Equity in Natural Language Processing of English Dialects

The research of Ziems and his colleagues led to the development of Multi-VALUE, a suite of resources that aim to address equity challenges in NLP, specifically around the observed performance drops for different English dialects. The result could mean AI tools from voice assistants to translation and transcription services that are more fair and accurate for a wider range of speakers. We regional accents present challenges for natural language processing. used the visual and auditory stimuli from Chen et al. (2007) and Chen and Lai (2011), who adopted the design and items from Dahan et al. (2002). The target items were made up of 18 cohort target-competitor pairs that had similar frequencies and shared an initial phoneme string of various lengths (e.g., candle vs. candy, sheep vs. shield; see Online Supplementary Materials for details).