UF MAN3025: Exam 3 Terms (Spring 2026)

Human Resource Management (HRM)

The process of planning for, attracting, developing, and retaining an effective workforce. It is made up of various HR practices, such as employee recruitment and selection, employee relations, compensation and benefits, onboarding, and performance management. Additionally, these practices drive strategic implementation when they foster internal and external fits.

Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM)

The process of designing and implementing systems of policies and practices that align an organization’s human capital with its strategic objectives, mission, and vision. It generates competitive advantages through people and, by extension, views people as valuable strategic assets. It also drives organizational performance and enhances a firm’s competitive edge by finding the right people, managing talent, and maintaining an effective workplace.

Internal Fit

A fit that exists when all the organization’s HR policies and practices reinforce one another. It happens when different HR practices work together as a unified system.

External Fit

A fit that exists when the organization’s whole HR system aligns with its culture and structure in a way that supports firm-level strategies. It happens when the firm uses a set of HR practices that work with its culture and structure to drive the performance goals the firm wants to achieve.

Human Capital

The economic or productive potential of employee knowledge, experience, and actions. It stems from all the employee competencies that are (or could be) valuable to the organization.

Social Capital

The economic or productive potential of strong, trusting, and cooperative relationships. It stems from the reciprocity, knowledge, and capabilities that are embedded in informal connections and personal relationships.

Talent Management

An approach to strategic HRM that matches high-potential employees with an organization’s most strategically valuable positions. While the leaders who use this approach focus on generating financial returns and competitive viability, they also expect the employees they select to make an impact through their attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions.

High-Performance Work System (HPWS)

An approach to strategic HRM that uses bundles of internally consistent HR practices to improve employee ability, motivation, and opportunities across an organization. It impacts organizational performance by enhancing the individual performances of all employees and focusing on the collective levels of human and social capital, work design, workflow, training, and compensation. Research further suggests that the bundled HR practices have stronger impacts on firm-level outcomes than individual HR practices.

High-Performance Work Practices (HPWPs)

Contemporary practices that build employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities, improve their motivation, and afford them opportunities to make work decisions and take responsibility for work outcomes. They improve an organization’s performance by reducing turnover and increasing employee satisfaction. These practices include ability-enhancing practices (for what you can do), motivation-enhancing practices (for how you feel about things), and opportunity-enhancing practices (for how you can advance).

Strategic Human Resource Planning

The process of developing a systematic, comprehensive strategy for understanding current employee needs and predicting future employee needs. It understands current needs through job analyses and job descriptions. It predicts future needs through forecasts based on strategic goals and their impacts on staffing (and internal and external staffing sources).

Recruiting

The process of locating and attracting qualified applicants for job openings. It focuses on finding people who have skills, abilities, and characteristics that suit an organization’s needs. The three approaches for this process are internal, external, and hybrid.

Internal Recruiting

A recruiting process that makes people already employed by an organization aware of other job openings. The techniques that companies use to identify potential applicants within their existing talent pools include internal job postings, informal nominations, and employee profiles.

Internal Job Posting

A formal announcement about open positions circulating within an organization. It is one of the three techniques companies use to do internal recruiting.

Informal Nomination

A recommendation by a manager who had direct experience observing and working with specific employees. It is one of the three techniques companies use to do internal recruiting.

Employee Profile

A database that houses information on individual employee competencies and qualifications. It is one of the three techniques companies use to do internal recruiting.

Talent Marketplaces

Digital platforms that use AI to match existing employees with job openings, training opportunities, and mentoring relationships. This increasingly popular approach to internal recruiting helps companies boost retention and close skill gaps.

External Recruiting

A recruiting process that attracts job applicants from outside an organization. Popular external recruitment sources for this approach include social media, online job postings, and school partnerships. Increased competition for qualified workers has also caused companies to implement new activities related to this recruiting process.

Employee Referral

An act that taps into existing employees’ social networks to fill open positions with outside applicants. It is popular among recruiters because referred employees are faster and less expensive to hire, tend to stay with the organization longer, and are more likely to possess the necessary skills than other hires. This act works because current employees are good judges of potential fit, and referrers care about their reputations.

Boomerang

A former employee who returns to an organization. These employees typically pull away because of difficult life events or attractive opportunities to advance their skills and careers. However, they also already understand the organization’s culture and require minimal onboarding. Hiring them is also cheaper and less time-consuming.

Person-Job Fit (P-J Fit)

A fit that explores the extent to which a worker’s competencies and needs match a specific job. Research suggests that higher levels of this fit are associated with better job performance and increased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and retention.

Selection

The HRM process of screening job applicants and choosing the best candidate for a position. It exercises prediction by asking how well each candidate will perform, how they will fit into the organization, and how long they will stay in the organization. Three tools that are used in this process are background information, interviews, and employment tests.

Legal Defensibility

The extent to which a selection device measures job-related criteria in a way that is free from bias. Ultimately, the selection process should be used to measure job-related performance factors and not discriminate based on non-job-relevant factors. This strategy must establish the reliability and validity of a selection technique to be effective.

Reliability

A component of legal defensibility that represents the degree to which a test produces consistent scores. When a test is consistent, an individual’s score will remain the same over time.

Validity

A component of legal defensibility that represents the degree to which a test measures what it purports to measure (i.e., nothing more and nothing less).

Reference

An individual who is asked to provide an assessment of their former employees. Employers are wary of giving these people to others since they might reveal criteria that could lead to hiring discrimination. Additionally, former employees may sue the company for revealing too much personal information.

Unstructured Interview

An interview that gathers information about job candidates without the use of fixed questions or a systematic scoring procedure. This interview resembles an ordinary conversation and promotes a relaxed atmosphere and the freedom to explore certain topics in more depth. However, its drawbacks include low reliability, low validity, and high susceptibility to legal challenges.

Structured Interview

An interview that asks each applicant the same questions and compares their responses to a standardized set of answers. This interview is far superior to an unstructured interview in its ability to predict applicants’ future job performances. It also has two types, which are situational interviews and behavioral-description interviews.

Situational Interview

A structured interview that lets raters ask applicants how they would behave in hypothetical situations. The goal of this interview is to find out if an applicant can effectively handle various situations that may arise from a job.

Behavioral-Description Interview

A structured interview that lets raters explore applicants’ job-related past behaviors. In short, this structured interview explores what applicants have done in the past.

Employment Test

A standardized device that organizations use to measure specific skills, abilities, traits, and other tendencies. The six tests include ability tests, performance tests, personality tests, integrity tests, drug and alcohol tests, and criminal and financial background checks.

Ability Test

An employment test that measures job candidates’ physical abilities, strength and stamina, mechanical abilities, mental abilities, and clerical abilities. Organizations can only use this test for abilities directly related to job performance.

Performance Test (Skill Test)

An employment test that measures performance using job tasks or tryouts. Some companies also use assessment centers with this test to let management candidates participate in several exercises while evaluators assess them.

Assessment Center

A selection device in which management candidates participate in a series of interactive exercises over several days while evaluators assess them. Common activities include role plays, oral presentations, and in-basket exercises. Performance tests that used this device were more effective than ability tests.

Personality Test

An employment test that measures stable traits, such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, locus of control, emotional stability, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.

Integrity Test

An employment test that measures the attitudes and experiences related to a person’s honesty, dependability, trustworthiness, reliability, and pro-social behavior. It often asks whether the applicant has ever engaged in illegal behavior. While these tests are easy to administer, test takers can also easily submit false responses.

Drug and Alcohol Test

An employment test that lets companies test job applicants for drug and alcohol use. While some employers are covered by federal drug and alcohol testing laws, many fall under state jurisdictions that force them to research the specific laws that apply to them before creating and implementing certain testing policies.

Criminal and Financial Background Check

An employment test that lets companies use records and view negative marks as indicators of low trustworthiness or poor character. A candidate with a history of legal or financial troubles is less likely to receive a job offer. There is also evidence that this test impacts applicants from certain racial minority groups.

Compensation

A payment that consists of three components, which are wages or salaries, incentives, and benefits.

Base Pay

The basic wage or salary paid to employees for doing their jobs. The basic compensation levels for certain jobs are determined by prevailing pay levels in a particular industry or location, what competitors are paying, whether jobs are unionized, potential job hazards, and individual workers’ experiences and levels in the organization.

Incentive

Compensation that attracts or retains top performers. It can take the form of bonuses, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), profit-sharing plans, commissions, stock options, and hybrid work (which has become very popular in recent years). Organizations use this compensation to align workers with firm-level strategies.

Benefit (Fringe Benefit)

An additional nonmonetary form of compensation designed to enrich the lives of employees in an organization. Examples include health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, disability protection, retirement plans, holidays, accumulated sick and vacation days, recreation options, country or health club memberships, family leave, discounts on company merchandise, counseling, credit unions, legal advice, and education reimbursement.

For top executives, there may be “golden parachutes” and generous severance pay for those who might be let go during a company takeover.

Orientation

The HRM process that helps newcomers fit smoothly into a job or an organization. It is designed to give employees the information they need to succeed. Its key points consist of showing job routines (the “ropes”), beginning the socialization process (organizational mission and operations), and outlining the organization’s work rules (legal environment) and employee benefits (compensation).

Onboarding (Employee Socialization)

The programs that help employees integrate and transition into new jobs. They also familiarize new employees with corporate policies, procedures, cultures, and policies and clarify work-role expectations and responsibilities. Effective programs are connected to important work outcomes, such as job satisfaction, employee engagement, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, role clarity, and various aspects of individual and firm performance. The best practices for these programs are to involve a team, clarify expectations, put the pieces together, and give it time.

On-the-Job Learning and Development

A type of learning and development that consists of coaching, training positions, job rotations, and planned work activities.

Off-the-Job Learning and Development

A type of learning and development that consists of classroom programs, workbooks, videos, games, and simulations.

Microlearning

A type of learning and development that segments learning into bite-sized content. It also lets students master one piece of learning before advancing to anything else.

Performance Management

A set of processes and managerial behaviors that involve defining, monitoring, measuring, evaluating, and providing consequences for performance expectations. Its four steps are to define performance, monitor and evaluate performance, review performance, and provide consequences. This process is ongoing and encourages interactions between managers and employees.

Performance Appraisal (Performance Review)

A management process that assesses employees’ performance and provides them with feedback. It is dictated by dates on a calendar and can sometimes consist of tense conversations that leave both parties unsatisfied. Additionally, newer approaches to this process emerged around the idea that feedback should be frequent and future oriented. Moreover, while this process is often done by managers, it can also be done by peers and subordinates, customers and clients, and employees themselves. Its two types are objective and subjective.

Objective Appraisal (Results Appraisal)

A performance appraisal that is based on facts and numbers. The reasons for having this performance appraisal are that they measure desired results and are harder to legally challenge.

Subjective Appraisal

A performance appraisal that is based on a manager’s perceptions of an employee’s traits or behaviors. It has two types, which are trait appraisals and behavioral appraisals.

Trait Appraisal

A subjective appraisal that rates subjective attributes, such as “attitude,” “initiative,” and “leadership.” It evaluates personal characteristics rather than observable actions. Although this evaluation is easy to create and use, its validity is questionable because the evaluator’s bias can affect the ratings.

Behavioral Appraisal

A subjective appraisal that measures specific, observable aspects of performance. An example of this subjective appraisal is the behaviorally anchored rating scale.

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS)

A behavioral appraisal that rates employee gradations in performance according to scales of specific behaviors.

360-Degree Feedback Appraisal (360-Degree Assessment)

A performance appraisal in which employees are appraised by their managerial superiors, peers, subordinates, and clients (sometimes). This performance appraisal is a popular tool for leadership development. The best practices for getting it right are to keep it developmental, focus on choosing evaluators who provide unique and strategically valuable information, and reduce bias.

Forced Ranking Performance Review System

A performance review system where all employees in a business unit are ranked against one another. Their grades are then distributed along a bell curve, which means that the top performers get bonuses and promotions, and the worst performers are given warnings (or are dismissed entirely).

Promotion

The process of moving an employee to a higher-level position and recognizing their superior performance. The three primary concerns with this process are fairness (i.e., the process must be deserved), discrimination (i.e., the process should not discriminate based on gender, national origin, age, disability, or membership in protected classes), and others’ resentments (i.e., managers must counsel the people left behind).

Transfer

The process of moving an employee to a different job with similar responsibilities. Managers use this process to let their employees solve organizational problems (by deploying their skills at other locations), broaden their experiences (by assigning them to different positions), retain their interest and motivation (by presenting them with new challenges), and solve employee problems, such as personal conflicts with co-workers or supervisors.

Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs)

Formal policies of progressive discipline that outline employee performance problems, routes to and timelines for improvement, and consequences for not meeting plan objectives. If an employee fails to meet the goals set by these policies, they may be demoted. Verbal and written warnings are also used as part of these policies.

Exit Interview

A formal conversation between an organization’s representative and a departing employee to find out why they are leaving and to learn about potential problems in the organization. This conversation is more likely when the employee voluntarily leaves the organization because they might have insight into how the company could improve its workforce retention efforts or correct existing issues.

Non-Disparagement Agreement

A contract between two parties that prohibits one party from criticizing the other. It is often used in severance agreements to prevent former employees from criticizing their former employers. Employees who were laid off are obliged to sign this agreement in return for severance pay.

Employment at Will

The governing principle in the great majority of states that means that anyone can be dismissed at any time for any reason at all (or for no reason). Exceptions to this principle are whistleblowers and people with employment contracts.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

A U.S. commission that enforces procedures that allow employees to vote to have a union for collective bargaining. It was created after the Wagner Act was passed in 1935.

Collective Bargaining

The negotiations between management and employees about disputes on compensation, benefits, working conditions, and job security.

Social Security Act

A 1935 act that established the U.S. retirement system.

Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

A 1938 act that established minimum living standards for workers engaged in interstate commerce. It also banned child labor and included a provision of a federal minimum wage and a maximum workweek before overtime must be paid. However, salaried executive, administrative, and professional employees are exempt from its overtime rules.

Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)

The 1970 act that established minimum health and safety standards for working men and women. It requires organizations to provide employees with nonhazardous working conditions. This act protects employees and promotes health and safety.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

A U.S. panel that enforces antidiscrimination and other employment-related laws. It was established to help Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reduce discrimination in employment based on racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry and gender stereotypes.

Workplace Discrimination

Discrimination that occurs when employment decisions about people are made for reasons not relevant to the job, such as race, sex, religion, or age. Although the law prohibits discrimination in all aspects of employment, it does not require employers to extend preferential treatment because of these factors. Additionally, employment decisions must be made based on job-related criteria. Its two types are adverse impact and disparate treatment.

Adverse Impact

A type of workplace discrimination that occurs when an organization uses an employment practice or procedure that results in unfavorable outcomes for a protected class over another group. An example would be basing a person’s starting salary on what they earned at a previous job because it can discriminate against applicants who have historically been paid less money than others. Unlike disparate treatment, this type of workplace discrimination is typically unintentional.

Disparate Treatment

A type of workplace discrimination that occurs when employees from protected groups are intentionally treated differently. An example would be deciding to give all international assignments to people without disabilities because of the assumption that they will not need any special travel accommodations. Unlike adverse impact, this type of workplace discrimination is intentional.

Affirmative Action

A process that focuses on achieving equality of opportunity within an organization. It aims to make up for past discrimination in employment by actively finding, hiring, and developing the talents of people from historically underrepresented groups. Steps include active recruitment, elimination of problematic questions in interviews, and establishment of hiring goals.

Sexual Harassment

Unwanted sexual attention that creates an adverse work environment. This includes obscene gestures, sex-stereotyped jokes, sexually oriented posters and graffiti, suggestive remakes, unwanted dating pressure, physical nonsexual contact, unwanted touching, sexual propositions, threatening punishment unless sexual favors are given, obscene phone calls, and similar sexual verbal or physical actions. Its two types are quid pro quo harassment and hostile environment.

Quid Pro Quo Harassment

A type of sexual harassment in which the recipient of unwanted sexual attention is implicitly or explicitly told that they must accept the harassment or jeopardize their opportunities to obtain job benefits or be hired for other jobs. It is also a tangible economic injury.

Hostile Environment

A type of sexual harassment in which the person being sexually harassed does not risk economic harm but perceives that they are experiencing an offensive or intimidating work environment.

Bullying

The repeated mistreatment of one or more persons by one or more perpetrators. It consists of abusive physical, psychological, verbal, or nonverbal behaviors that are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating. Research also shows that between 30% to 55% of workers around the world have experienced this mistreatment directly or as a witness. It also influences mental health, physical health, and work-related outcomes.

Labor Union

An organization of employees that was formed to protect and advance their members’ interests by bargaining with management over job-related issues. When workers decide to form this organization, they must get other workers to sign an authorization card, which can designate a certain organization to be the workers’ bargaining agent. The four basic kinds of workplaces are closed shop, union shop, agency shop, and open shop.

Union Security Clause

The part of the labor-management agreement that states that employees who receive union benefits must join the union or pay dues for it.

Right-to-Work Laws

Laws that prohibit employees from being required to join a union as a condition of employment.

Two-Tier Wage Contract

A contract in which new employees are paid less or receive fewer benefits than veteran employees. This contract can be attractive to employers because they can hire new workers at reduced wages and benefit veteran union members at the same time. However, detractors argue that it pits workers against each other and places targets on older workers for disciplinary action and firing.

Cost-of-Living Adjustment Clause (COLA)

A clause in a union contract that ties future wage increases to increases in the cost of living. An alternative is the wage reopener clause, which allows wage rates to be renegotiated at certain stated times during the contract’s life. Additionally, this clause is tied to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Giveback

A negotiation tactic in which the union agrees to give up previous wage or benefit gains to receive something else. Usually, the union seeks job security (i.e., a no-layoff policy).

Grievance

A complaint by an employee that management has violated the terms of the labor-management agreement. These complaints are often initially handled by an official who represents the interests of unionized employees daily. However, if this official is unsuccessful, the complaint may be carried to the union’s chief shop steward or committee. If the complaint is unsuccessful overall, the two sides may try to resolve their differences through mediation or arbitration.

Mediation

The process in which a neutral third party listens to both sides in a dispute, makes suggestions, and encourages them to agree on a solution. This third party may consist of lawyers, retired judges, or specialists in various fields, such as conflict resolution or labor matters.

Arbitration

The process in which a neutral third party listens to both sides in a dispute and makes a binding decision that the parties agree upon. Many corporations, new tech start-ups, and some for-profit colleges embrace this process as a business tool that forbids consumers, employees, and students from resolving their complaints through class-action suits.

Privacy Act

A 1975 act that gives employees the legal right to examine letters of reference concerning them. This act protects employees and maintains labor relations.

Immigration Reform and Control Act

An 1986 act that requires employees to verify their eligibility for employment for their new hires (including U.S. citizens). This act protects employees and maintains labor relations.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act

A 2003 act that prohibits employees from demoting or firing employees who raise accusations of fraud against a federal agency. This act protects employees and maintains labor relations.

Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERIS)

A 1974 act that sets rules for managing pension plans and provides federal insurance to cover bankrupt plans. This act protects employees and focuses on compensation and benefits.

Family Medical and Leave Act

A 1993 act that requires employers to provide twelve weeks of unpaid leave for medical and family reasons, such as childbirth, adoption, or other family emergencies. This act protects employees and focuses on compensation and benefits.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA)

A 1996 act that allows employees to switch health insurance plans when changing jobs and receive new coverage regardless of preexisting health conditions. It also prohibits group plans from removing ill employees. This act protects employees and focuses on compensation and benefits.

Fair Minimum Wage Act

A 2007 act that increased the federal minimum wage to $7.25 per hour. This act protects employees and focuses on compensation and benefits.

Consolidation Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA)

An 1985 act that requires employees to extend their health insurance benefits after terminating an employee. This act protects employees and focuses on compensation and benefits.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

A 2010 act that requires employers with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance. This act protects employees and focuses on compensation and benefits.

Equal Pay Act

A 1963 act that requires equal pay for men and women performing equal work. This act protects employees and promotes equal employment opportunities.

Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)

A 1967 act that prohibits discrimination against employees over 40 years old and restricts mandatory retirements. This act protects employees and promotes equal employment opportunities.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

A 1990 act that prohibits discrimination against qualified employees with physical or mental disabilities or chronic illnesses. It also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for these employees. This act protects employees and promotes equal employment opportunities.

Reactive Change

A type of change that responds to unanticipated problems or opportunities. It often occurs in response to government mandates or incentives that impact the demand for various goods.

Proactive Change

A type of change that makes carefully thought-out changes in anticipation of possible or expected problems or opportunities. It is also known as a planned change.

Technology

Any machine or process that lets an organization gain a competitive advantage in changing materials used to produce a finished product. This force, alongside demographic characteristics, shareholder, customer, and broader stakeholder concerns, and social and political pressures, makes up an organization’s outside forces for change.

Demassification

The process of segmenting customer groups into smaller, more specialized groups that respond to narrowly targeted commercial messages. These messages can be shaped and personalized by AI technology, which allows bots to engage in conversations with individually targeted consumers or smaller segments of consumers.