Glossary of HR terms

May 2014
Some people are better writers than others, but
their skills are typically acquired over a long period
of time with much practice and hard work.


Succession planning refers to an effort by organizations to select and develop future leaders who are
prepared to replace current leaders. As such, a literature search will typically include articles that refer
to analogous terms, such as the following:
Replacement planningto plan who will replace which key leaders in the firm


Interpersonal skills are the life skills we use every day to communicate and interact with
other people, both individually and in groups. People who have worked on developing
strong interpersonal skills are usually more successful in both their professional and
personal lives.

A List of Interpersonal Skills Includes:
Verbal Communication - What we say and how we say it.
Non-Verbal Communication - What we communicate without words, body language is an
example.
Listening Skills - How we interpret both the verbal and non-verbal messages sent by others.
Negotiation - Working with others to find a mutually agreeable outcome.
Problem Solving - Working with others to identify, define and solve problems.
Decision Making Exploring and analysing options to make sound decisions.
Assertiveness Communicating our values, ideas, beliefs, opinions, needs and wants freely.

The set of abilities enabling a person to interact positively and work effectively with others.


Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow (19081970), one of the founders of humanistic psychology, developed a
theory of self-actualization, but is best known in business circles for his hierarchy of human
needs, a systems-oriented classification of human factors influencing employee motivation.
The best way to recall Maslow's hierarchy is to arrange it within William James' three levels
of human needs (material, social, and spiritual). The hierarchy looks like this:
I. Material Needs
1. Physical needs: food, clothing, and shelter
2. Safety needs: freedom from physical danger
II. Social Needs
3. The need to belong to a group, to be accepted
4. The need for esteem, to achieve and be recognized by the group
III. Spiritual Needs
5. The need to know, to understand (cognitive exploration)
6. The need for aesthetic experience (symmetry, order, beauty)
7. The need for self-actualization (realizing one's potential)
8. The need for spiritual experience (religious transcendence)
Higher needs, Maslow states, can't be addressed until lower needs are satisfied; and a need,
once satisfied, is no longer a motivator. Maslow's 1943 article and his subsequent book (1954)
exert a powerful influence on training and development, particularly with respect to
motivation studies in the 1950s and the rise of organizational development (and theories of
organizational needs) in the 1960s.

Competencies
A man may be competent in one branch of knowledge without being competent in all.
Aristotle, 350 B.C.
He has the competence to deal with the whole universe.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1600
There are currently over 500 books in print featuring the word "competency" in their title.
There are books on competency-based training, competency-based pay, competency-based
training delivery, competency-based recruitment, competency-driven performance
improvement, competency-based instruction, competency-based athletic training, and
competency-based social work. In each case practitioners promise to help achieve strategic
objectives through competencies, which are billed as a break-through concept in performance
criteria. Competencies are definitely popular; the only problem is that almost everyone has a
different notion of what a competency is.
Definition: Traits of High Performers
Competency-modeling is, quite simply, an attempt to describe work and jobs in a broader,
more comprehensive way.
Ron Zemke, 1999
Competencies are descriptions of desired performance traits in employees. The goal of
competencies is to build a common set of standards (criteria) to improve the selection,
development, and evaluation of employees. Described variously as competency maps,
models, or profiles, these character traits act as criteria for performance measurement in
annual reviews and promotions. As predictors of personal and organizational success,
competencies can be extremely useful to human resource departments in the interviewing and
hiring process, as well as in the areas of developing, appraising, promoting, and ultimately
compensating employees. They are also extremely useful for self-assessment.
One example of a performance trait is independent judgment. A definition of this competency
would be: "uses discretion in interpreting company procedures to make decisions in
ambiguous situations." Other examples of performance traits are initiative, self-discipline,
leadership, systems thinking, problem solving, customer focus, strategic thinking, teamwork,
and empathy.
The Hierarchy of Performance Descriptors: Goals,
Competencies, and Skills
As concise descriptions of a desired performance standard, competencies are more specific
than goals and less specific than skills. A competency of "communicating," for instance,
might include "listening" as one of its several skills. Thus competencies represent groups or
clusters of skills, as in the following example where "leadership" is the goal:
Goal: Leadership
o Competency: Interpersonal Communication
Skill: Listening
Performance Objective (behavioral description): "When
listening, employee periodically confirms her understanding of
what the speaker is saying."
Note that this is a loosely formulated performance objective, which is often used in these
cases. A rigorously framed performance objective would stipulate the frequency and the
conditions under which this would occur. (See Objectives: Knowledge, Skills, and Attitude.)
Origin of Competencies: Performance Objectives
The competency concept may be the most exciting and potentially promising idea to hit the
training field since behavioral objectives.
Management Theory, People-Centered
Douglas McGregor and Humanistic Management
(Theory Y)
The humanistic or human relations theory of management, which started to emerge in the
1920s and 1930s and came into full flower during the 1960s, focuses on small group
improvements within an organization in a "bottom up" approach to organizational
improvement. The term "humanistic" in this context refers to a heightened emphasis on the
employee's quality of work life and job satisfaction, through such strategies as participative
management. In place of a "command and control" structure, human relations management
theory fosters self-directed teams and grass roots efforts. The major themes of the
movementchange management, team building, enhanced communications, conflict
resolution interventions, and increased individual responsibilitieshave a familiar ring to
them because they have passed into the language by now, and lie at the heart of modern
organization development, the discipline that inherited the best and the brightest of these ideas
in the 1960s and 1970s. (See Organizational Development.)
The field of players in the humanistic movement include Kurt Lewin, father of organizational
development, Elton Mayo, the 1950s psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, and
Douglas McGregor from the early 1960s. It was McGregor who came up with the slogan for
the humanist group, namely "Theory Y." Theory Y, with its kinder gentler humanism, was the
successor to the preceding generation's "Theory X," which, spearheaded by Frederick Taylor,
had preached a scientific management to an industrial age. (See Hawthorne Effect;
Management Theory, Process-Centered; and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.)
The best of all possible management worlds would combine the best of Taylor with the best
of the human relations group and its successor, organizational development. The fusion of
these two management theories would carry much power in terms of performance
improvement. Marvin Weisbord, in fact, in his Productive Workplaces, charts just how
complementaryif not directly overlappingthe two movements are (see Fastpaths 1987,
Weisbord).