Key terms 2 and exercises:
Exercise 1
Read the corporate HR policy statement and fill the gaps with terms from the list.
List:diversity; equal opportunities; human resources; promotion; benchmark; absence; empowerment; disabilities; attendance; family-friendly
Our management of our (1) ………………………… is based on three principles. The first is (2) ………………………: we aim to move decision-making to the people who have most opportunity to provide customer satisfaction. The next is (3) ……………………………….: women receive the same pay as men for the same work throughout the organization and have the same chances of (4) ………………………… . The third is (5) ……………………: we believe that organizational strength comes from different views and ideas uniting in a common purpose and we are always trying to increase the number of people we recruit from ethnic minorities. Our policy of employing a certain percentage of people with (6) ……………………. has helped to improve the status of handicapped people within our local community. Our (7) ………………………… policies allow parents to spend more time with their children at times of the day when it is most important to them. And it works. (8) ………………………… is high. (9) …………………………… is low. Our aim is to be a (10) ………………………….. for the whole industry, viewed by our competitors as a reference for best practice as an employer.
Exercise 2
Match the HR terms (1 – 10) with their definitions (a – j).
1 headcount
2absent
3 turnover
4 glass ceiling
5 natural wastage
6 notice
7 pre-retirement
8 stakeholder
9 motivate
10 discriminate
aThe period of time that you work between saying you are going to leave your job and leaving it
b When a company reduces the size of a workforce without making anyone redundant
c The period near the end of your working life
d Make people enthusiastic about their work
e The number of employees
f Treat someone unfairly because of their sex, race or religion
g Someone who has an interest in the success of a company
h The percentage of the workforce that needs to be replaced every year
i Off work
j A barrier stopping people of certain groups (e.g. women) from getting promotion to the top jobs
Exercise 3
Choose the best terms (A, B, C or D) to complete each sentence.
1 Many non-essential services such as maintenance security and the company canteen have been contracted out as part of our ______policy.
A externalB part-timeC temporary D outsourcing
2 Following a report on the company’s structure, we decided to ______,which involved removing several junior and middle-management grades.
A decreaseB delayerC demoteD deploy
3 After five years in the centre of Paris, our organization ______to a Greenfield site near Grenoble.
A remainedB re-establishedC returnedD relocated
4 Due to government pressure, many French firms offer ______serviceswhen laying off employees.
A firingB rehabilitatingC outplacementD relocation
5 We are not paying enough attention to the changing ______profile of our workforce. We’re getting old! We need to recruit some younger blood, and soon!
A demographicB democraticC demagogicD demotic
6 If the company continues to engage in a politics of social ______and moves even more jobs to cheap labour locations abroad, we’re all going to lose our jobs eventually.
A securityB partneringC dumpingD welfare
7 When companies run into financial difficulties, one solution is to ______in order to cut the workforce and subsequent labour costs.
A decreaseB reduceC downsizeD miniaturise
8 Due to its customer commitment policy, management decided to ______time off, holidays and working hours.
A relocateB introduceC staggerD shift
9 Companies in my country are requiredby law to have a minimum, fixed percentage of ______jobs for disabled persons.
A shelteredB hiddenC protectedD opportunity
10 Negotiations ended when management and the unions agreed to ______workers to the York site, in order to avoid redundancies.
A regenerateB redeployC returnD repatriate
Exercise 4
Which HR policy statement (1 – 10) does each of the words or phrases in the list refer to?
List:business partnering; retention; overstaffing; termination; sexual orientation; ageism; alignment; outsourcing; human capital; business process re-engineering
1 We can expect the number of employees leaving the company to increase due to a rise in the number of people retiring or resigning: ______
2Consultants came to the conclusion that there were too many people doing too little work in our department: ______
3 Dramatic improvements in quality, productivity, service and cost were made by completely redesigning the team mix: ______
4 Our new HR director has established a new credibility for us at board level by using stronger financial arguments for our policies: ______
5 Our HR policies are now much more in line with the overall strategic objectives of the company: ______
6 We decided to compare the cost of keeping our maintenance staff in the company with the cost of giving the function to an external provider: ______
7 We do not tolerate discrimination against homosexuals: ______
8 Too many people are leaving. We need to find out why and then we need to bring this figure down: ______
9 We need better measures of the value that our people add to the organization: ______
10 Before the introduction of our equality management policy, the company treated many of our older people quite badly and certainly recruited very few people over the age of 50: ____
Exercise 5
Create word clusters (groups of words in the same family) from memory or by looking at the list of key terms in this chapter.
Move someone w/in the organization / Change the structure of the organization / Improve equality in the workplace / Develop HR and business strategy