MSc GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT GLOSSARY

Global Human Resource Management Glossary

We’ve defined some of the basic terminology you’ll need to know to bring you up to speed.

Performance Appraisal – Also known as a “performance review”, an appraisal is a review of an employee’s job performance, and is usually given on a regular basis. It’s a good time to assess an employee’s skills, growth and achievements, as well as identify development and learning needs..

Performance management – involves the management of employees’ performance for the benefit of the business and the employee. It includes formal assessment or performance appraisal as well as managing poor performance through the disciplinary process.

Employee lifecycle – The employee lifecycle is an HR term that refers to an employee’s journey within a company. It’s generally broken into a number of stages starting with recruitment and ending with an employee’s exit, and is a crucial aspect of HR in ensuring employees enjoy a long and successful career within an organisation.

Globalisation – Simply put, globalisation refers to businesses operating internationally. Generally, it involves companies buying and selling goods and services across the world, and is broken into three aspects: imports, exports and business locations.

International – The term is often used interchangeably with Global or Globalisation and refers in the context of HR to businesses operating beyond their home country.

HR – HR is an abbreviation for “human resources”, which is the body within a business responsible for everything worker-related. This can include handling employee recruitment, payroll, training, benefits and enforcing employment policies.

HRM – HRM (the abbreviation for “human resource management”) is the formal term for the strategic approach of managing all things worker-related within a company.

Learning and development – Within an HR context, learning and development techniques are aimed at improving employee performance and increasing their skills. Typically, learning and development will be delivered through what’s referred to as interventions, which can include training exercises that will align an employee’s goals to that of their organisation, and enable them to use their newfound skills to further that goal.

Performance reward – Performance rewards are distributed to employees with based on their individual and sometimes team performance, and are designed to motivate employees to excel within their roles.

Redundancy – An employee is made redundant when an employer decides that job is no longer needed. For instance, this can occur when a business changes what they do, decides to do what they do in a different way, changes location or closes down altogether.

Sustainability – In a business context, sustainability refers to a company’s viability on a long-term basis. To ensure a company’s sustainability requires the coordination of social, financial and environmental demands.

Talent management – Talent management refers to the strategic process of seeking out, managing and developing the talent of their employees for an organisation, as well as an organisation’s commitment to developing and retaining those talented employees.

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