A 1:1 is a recurring, dedicated private conversation between a manager and direct report, typically weekly or biweekly, covering progress, blockers and development. A genuinely good one is largely employee-led rather than a manager status checklist.

360-degree feedback gathers confidential input on an employee's performance from multiple perspectives, manager, peers, direct reports and often self, rather than from the manager alone. It's most commonly used for development conversations and leadership assessment rather than the formal rating itself.

Under the Code on Wages, allowances excluded from the legal definition of wages cannot exceed 50% of total pay, meaning basic salary plus DA must together make up at least half of CTC. This raises the PF and gratuity contribution base for salary structures previously built around a low basic.

The 9-box grid plots employees on a 3x3 matrix, performance on one axis, potential on the other, producing nine categories used to guide development and succession decisions. There's no single standardized naming scheme for each box, only the shared two-axis structure.

Absconding is an employee's unauthorized, unexplained and prolonged absence with no resignation or notice, treated as more serious than an ordinary exit. It commonly affects final settlement, relieving letters, and shows up in future background verification checks.

Absenteeism rate measures the percentage of scheduled workdays lost to unplanned absence, excluding approved leave, holidays and maternity or paternity leave. It measures attendance reliability specifically, not total leave usage.

An adopting mother gets 12 weeks of leave under the Maternity Benefit Act. The original 2017 law only covered children under three months old at adoption, but the Supreme Court struck down that age limit in March 2026, so the 12-week entitlement now applies regardless of the child's age.

The Annual Information Statement (AIS) lists the income and transactions that employers, banks, funds and others have reported against your PAN. The Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) condenses it by category and pre-fills the return. Wrong entries are disputed through AIS feedback or a corrected TDS return.

An appointment letter is the formal, legally binding employment contract issued at or around joining, superseding the earlier offer letter. It covers designation, CTC break-up, probation terms, notice period and duties, and is increasingly framed as a statutory requirement under the newer labour codes.

The Apprentices Act, 1961 requires qualifying employers to engage apprentices at a prescribed ratio and pay a stipend that steps up through training. It remains a standalone law, unaffected by the four labour codes' consolidation.

The appropriate government is the Centre or the State, whichever a labour Code assigns to your establishment. It decides whose rules apply, who appoints inspectors and conciliation officers, and where registrations are filed. Railways, mines, ports, telecom, banks and central PSUs go to the Centre; most other units to the State.

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that manages hiring from job requisition to offer. It stores candidates and applications in one place, moves them through pipeline stages, and records interview feedback, scorecards and hiring metrics.

An attendance management system records clock-in and clock-out times and feeds that into payroll, using methods ranging from biometric scans to GPS-based mobile capture depending on the workforce.

Attendance regularisation is the process of correcting a missed or incorrect attendance record after the fact, typically a forgotten punch, so the day is marked correctly instead of appearing as an unexplained absence, with the correction affecting any pay calculation tied to attendance.

Attrition rate measures the percentage of employees who leave and aren't replaced, against average headcount, capturing actual workforce shrinkage. In practice it's often used interchangeably with turnover, even though the technical distinction, replaced versus unreplaced, is real.

Average tenure is the average length of service across current employees, calculated by summing each person's tenure and dividing by headcount. A short average can mean high attrition or simply a young, fast-growing company, the two need to be read together.

Background verification, or BGV, independently confirms a candidate's education, employment history, identity, address and criminal record, usually run after an offer and before or shortly after joining. A basic check often clears within a week; a comprehensive one can take two to three weeks.

Basic salary is the fixed core of a pay structure, before allowances. It is the figure that PF, gratuity, HRA exemption and statutory bonus are all calculated from, and is usually set at 40% to 50% of CTC.

Bell curve rating forces performance ratings into a fixed distribution, commonly 20% top, 70% average, 10% low, regardless of how a team actually performed that cycle. Microsoft, Infosys, Accenture and GE have all publicly dropped it in favor of more flexible approaches.

Bench cost is the fully-loaded cost of staff on payroll but not currently billed to a project, a cost with no offsetting revenue. It's a well-established, closely tracked concept in Indian IT services, where billable utilization drives revenue directly.

Benefits cost is the portion of employment cost beyond gross salary, employer PF, gratuity, ESI and statutory bonus, commonly adding 20 to 35% on top of direct cash salary. In India this is already included within CTC by definition, not an addition on top of it.

Bereavement leave, time off following the death of a family member, is purely a company-policy benefit in India with no central statutory mandate. Typical policies grant 3 to 5 days, usually limited to immediate family, with the exact scope set by each employer.

Best-of-breed combines the strongest specialist tool per function; a suite runs everything on one vendor's platform. The real trade-off is feature depth and flexibility against integration risk and implementation cost.

Biometric attendance identifies employees by fingerprint, face or iris instead of a card or sign-in sheet. It attracts some of the highest data-privacy compliance obligations of any HR data category in India, requiring explicit, informed consent.

Boolean search uses AND, OR and NOT, plus quotation marks and parentheses, to build precise candidate search strings on LinkedIn, job boards or an ATS, instead of relying on a single loose keyword. It's most used on Naukri and LinkedIn Recruiter given the volume of profiles to filter.

A workplace buddy system pairs a new hire with an experienced peer who provides informal guidance during the first weeks or months, distinct from their manager or a formal mentor. The role is deliberately informal, not responsible for training or evaluation.

Campus recruitment hires students directly from colleges through a structured process run with the placement cell, pre-placement talks, tests, interviews, and offer distribution. Companies are often grouped into Day 1, Day 2 and beyond based on offer competitiveness.

A candidate pipeline is the actively managed group of pre-vetted candidates being moved toward a specific, current role, ready or nearly ready for the formal process. It's fed by the broader, more passive talent pool a company builds over time.

Candidate sourcing is the proactive work of finding and reaching out to potential hires, active and passive, before they apply. Indian recruiters lean on Naukri, LinkedIn, referrals, campus hiring and agencies, usually running several channels at once rather than relying on just one.

A fixed car allowance is taxable salary. A company car, or running costs paid for a car also used privately, is a perquisite valued by flat monthly amounts under Rule 15 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026: Rs 5,000 up to 1.6 litres or EV, Rs 7,000 above, and Rs 3,000 extra with a chauffeur.

Casual leave covers short, unplanned absences and is set by state Shops and Establishments Acts plus company policy rather than one central law. Entitlement commonly runs 7 to 12 days a year, usually capped at 2-3 consecutive days, and typically doesn't carry forward or get encashed.

It is an old-regime-only exemption for up to two children. Through FY 2025-26 the limit was Rs 100 a month per child (hostel Rs 300). The Income-tax Rules, 2026 reportedly raise these to Rs 3,000 and Rs 9,000 from FY 2026-27. The new regime allows no exemption.

Cloud HR software is hosted by the vendor on a subscription basis; on-premise runs on a company's own servers under a one-time license. Comparing a cloud subscription directly against an on-premise license alone is misleading without adding hardware and maintenance costs.

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 required registration once a company crosses a contract-workmen threshold, originally 20, now raised to 50 under the OSH Code that absorbed it, though some states had already set their own higher figure.

A code of conduct is a short written statement of the behaviour an employer expects and the consequences of breaking it. No general Indian law makes every employer adopt one, but POSH policy and listed-company rules do. It is enforceable when communicated, clear and acknowledged, and it must not conflict with standing orders.

The Code on Social Security, 2020 consolidates nine laws including EPF, ESI, gratuity and maternity benefit. It also introduces the first statutory social security extension to gig and platform workers, funded by aggregator contributions.

The Code on Wages, 2019 consolidates four earlier laws, including the Payment of Wages, Minimum Wages, Bonus and Equal Remuneration Acts, into one statute. Its most consequential change for HR is the 50% cap on excluded allowances, which raises the base PF and gratuity get calculated on.

Comp-off, or compensatory off, is time off granted for working an unscheduled day, usually a holiday or weekly off. For most private-sector employees it's a company-policy benefit rather than a legal entitlement, with typical validity of 30 to 90 days before it lapses.

Compa-ratio compares an employee's actual pay to the midpoint of their pay range, calculated as (actual salary / range midpoint) x 100. A ratio below 80% suggests underpayment relative to the range; above 120% suggests the pay sits well above what the range was designed for.

A competency framework defines the skills, behaviors and knowledge a role needs to succeed, used consistently across hiring, appraisals, learning and succession planning rather than as a one-off appraisal document.

A conciliation officer is a government-appointed mediator who steps in when an industrial dispute or strike notice arises. The officer tries to broker a settlement within 45 days; if none is reached, the parties can apply to the Industrial Tribunal within 90 days of the failure report.

A confirmation letter is issued at the end of a successful probation period, converting an employee's status to permanent. It typically triggers full benefits eligibility and a longer notice period than applied during probation.

Continuous feedback is an ongoing practice of frequent, informal performance conversations, supplementing or replacing feedback confined to one annual review. Most companies now run a hybrid, continuous feedback throughout the year alongside a periodic formal summary review.

Comparing a contractor's rate against an employee's fully-loaded cost misses real costs on both sides, employer PF and gratuity on the employee side, no unpaid downtime absorbed on the contractor side. Which is actually cheaper depends heavily on how many hours of work you genuinely need.

A flat monthly conveyance allowance is taxable salary in both tax regimes; the old Rs 1,600 exemption ended with FY 2017-18. Exemption survives only for reimbursement of travel actually spent on official duties and for a transport allowance to specially-abled employees.

Core hours are the fixed block of time every team member is expected to be available for, inside an otherwise flexible schedule. Meetings and collaborative work are typically scheduled within core hours specifically, since it's the one guaranteed overlap window for the whole team.

Core HR is the foundation layer of an HRMS: the employee master, the organisation structure and the joining, transfer, promotion and exit transactions that update them. Payroll, leave and performance all read from it, so errors here spread everywhere.

Cost of turnover totals the full financial impact of an employee leaving and being replaced, separation, vacancy, recruiting, onboarding and productivity loss combined, considerably broader than cost per hire alone. The commonly quoted 0.5x to 2x salary range isn't clearly traceable to one primary source.

Cost per hire totals internal and external recruiting costs divided by hires made, using the SHRM-ANSI standardized formula. No reliable India-wide average exists, so it's best tracked over time within your own hiring rather than compared to an external benchmark.

A counter-offer is a current employer's attempt to retain a resigning employee, usually with more pay or a promotion, made after resignation or a competing offer surfaces. Recruiters commonly advise against accepting one, since the underlying reasons someone wanted to leave rarely get fixed by a raise alone.

CTC, or Cost to Company, is the total annual amount an employer spends to employ someone. It includes gross salary, the employer's PF and gratuity contributions, insurance premiums and any variable pay or benefits. Because much of it is not paid to you as cash, take-home salary is always lower than CTC divided by 12.

Data migration extracts employee and payroll data from an old system and loads it, cleaned and validated, into a new HRMS during implementation. Leave balances and mid-year payroll figures are the most common places migrations go wrong.

Dearness Allowance (DA) is an inflation-linked payment added to salary, common in government and public-sector pay and revised as the consumer price index changes. Where it applies, it is combined with basic salary to calculate PF and gratuity.

Disciplinary action is the graded response to misconduct, from warnings to suspension and dismissal. In India a punishment holds up only if the charge was clear, the inquiry fair and the penalty proportionate. Where standing orders apply, the IR Code sets subsistence allowance at 50% of wages for 90 days, then 75%.

Diversity hiring refers to recruiting practices building representation across groups, tracked through metrics rather than legal quotas in most private-sector Indian contexts. India has no private-sector caste-quota law; SEBI's board-diversity and BRSR disclosure rules are the real, current obligations for listed companies.

A domestic enquiry is an employer's internal hearing into alleged misconduct, held before punishment. It needs a specific charge sheet, a fair chance to reply, an unbiased inquiry officer and reasoned findings. Skipping it, or rushing it, can make a dismissal fail before a tribunal.

Dotted-line reporting is a secondary reporting relationship where an employee takes direction from a second manager on certain work, while the solid-line manager keeps formal authority. In an HRMS, decide which manager approves leave and who owns the appraisal rating.

The DPDP Act governs employee data, but its core substantive duties aren't fully binding yet, they're scheduled for May 2027. 2026 is best treated as a preparation year for consent and data-mapping processes, not a compliance deadline already passed.

Earned leave, or privilege leave, accrues with actual service rather than being granted upfront. Under the Factories Act framework, now the OSH Code, adult workers earn roughly 1 day for every 20 days worked, about 15 days a year, with the qualifying period recently lowered from 240 to 180 days worked.

An ECR (Electronic Challan-cum-Return) is the monthly return an employer uploads on the EPFO portal listing each member's wages and PF, EPS and EDLI dues. Uploading it generates the challan the employer pays. The full contribution must reach the EPFO by the 15th of the following month.

EDLI (Employees' Deposit Linked Insurance) is a free life-insurance cover that comes with EPF membership. If a member dies in service, the nominee receives a lump sum, currently up to Rs 7 lakh, on top of the EPF and EPS balances. The employer pays 0.5% of wages towards it; the employee pays nothing.

An employee assistance programme is a confidential, employer-paid service where staff and often their families get short-term counselling and legal or financial advice from an outside provider. HR sees only anonymised usage totals, never names or session notes, which is what makes people willing to use it.

Employee data retention is the schedule for how long each employee record is kept before deletion. Wage and attendance registers must be preserved five years after the last entry under the Wages Rules, 2026, while the DPDP Act expects erasure once the purpose is served, unless a law requires keeping it.

Employee engagement measures emotional commitment and discretionary effort beyond the baseline of just doing the job, distinct from satisfaction, which measures contentment with pay and conditions. Companies measure it through surveys, eNPS and pulse checks.

An employee engagement platform runs pulse surveys, eNPS tracking and recognition programs in one system, built for continuous listening. The real difference from a plain survey tool is that a platform connects the data to follow-through action.

Employee experience covers every touchpoint from the job ad to the exit interview and alumni stage: hiring, onboarding, daily HR processes, growth and separation. Engagement is how people feel as a result; EX is the journey the company can actually redesign.

Employee grievance redressal is the process of receiving, investigating and answering work-related complaints. Under Section 4 of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, establishments with 20 or more workers must have an equal employer-worker Grievance Redressal Committee, kept separate from POSH complaints.

An employee handbook is one document covering working rules, leave, benefits, conduct and complaint routes. Indian law does not require it as such, but parts of it, like standing orders and a POSH policy, are mandatory in some form. It sits beside, not in place of, the appointment letter.

Employee lifecycle management treats everything from application to final settlement as one connected sequence. In HR software it means each stage's tasks, approvals and documents carry forward from a single employee record instead of being re-keyed at every hand-off.

Employee lifetime value, or ELTV, estimates the total net value an employee generates over their tenure, value produced minus cost of employment. Unlike most metrics here, no single standardized formula exists across the industry for calculating it.

Employee master data is the single, authoritative record of core employee facts that every other HR module references rather than keeping its own copy. When it drifts out of sync across systems, payroll errors and duplicate records follow.

Offboarding is the process that takes an employee from accepted resignation or termination to a fully closed record: handover, asset and access return, clearance, final settlement and exit letters. One owner, normally HR, should run the whole chain, with IT, admin and finance doing assigned tasks.

Onboarding is the structured process of integrating a new hire, training, culture, compliance and relationship-building, typically running from day one through the first several months. A common 30-60-90 day framework is a widely used planning convention, not a fixed rule.

An employee referral program rewards staff for recommending successful hires, typically with a bonus split between joining and a later retention milestone, commonly 90 to 180 days. The split discourages referring candidates likely to leave quickly.

Employee turnover measures the percentage of employees who leave during a period, counting every separation regardless of whether the role gets backfilled. It's always equal to or larger than attrition rate for the same period.

Employee utilization rate measures the percentage of available hours spent on billable or productive work versus idle or administrative time. Typical targets run 65 to 85% depending on industry, with management roles expected to run lower by design.

An employee wellness programme is a planned set of employer-funded activities and benefits for staff health, such as check-ups, fitness, counselling, flexible time and financial guidance. Good ones start from your own absence and survey data and measure uptake honestly instead of quoting ROI claims.

The Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 makes an employer liable, on a no-fault basis, to compensate a worker for injury or death arising from their job. Now subsumed into the Code on Social Security, it typically applies where ESI coverage doesn't.

Employer branding is the deliberate management of an organization's reputation as a place to work, shaping how candidates and employees perceive it. Strong branding is consistently linked to lower cost per hire and higher offer acceptance, though exact multipliers vary too much to cite precisely.

India's RPwD Act, 2016 reserves 4% of government vacancies for persons with benchmark disability, but sets no private-sector quota. Private employers must still notify and register an equal opportunity policy, keep records, avoid discrimination and plan reasonable accommodation. ESI coverage runs to a higher wage ceiling for employees with disabilities.

eNPS, Employee Net Promoter Score, asks how likely employees are to recommend their workplace on a 0-10 scale, calculated as percent Promoters minus percent Detractors. Scores range from -100 to +100, with higher generally read as stronger sentiment.

The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) is a compulsory retirement savings scheme in India. You contribute 12% of basic salary plus DA each month and your employer contributes a matching 12%, part of which funds your pension. The balance earns interest set annually by the government and is administered by the EPFO.

The Employees' Provident Funds Act, 1952 makes PF registration mandatory for establishments with 20 or more employees. Now subsumed into the Code on Social Security, though EPFO's day-to-day administration of the scheme continues largely unchanged.

EPF compliance historically ran on Forms 11, 5, 10, 12A, 3A and 6A. Only Form 11 remains genuinely active today; the rest have been superseded by EPFO's online monthly ECR filing system.

The EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) is the government body that administers India's EPF, EPS and EDLI schemes for private-sector workers. It holds and invests contributions, sets the annual EPF interest rate, runs the member and employer portals, and settles withdrawals, transfers and pension claims.

The Employees' Pension Scheme (EPS) is the pension part of provident fund. From the employer's 12% PF contribution, 8.33% of wages (capped at 8.33% of Rs 25,000, about Rs 2,083 a month) goes to EPS, funding a monthly pension from age 58 for members with at least 10 years of service.

The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 mandated equal pay for men and women doing similar work. Repealed in 2025 and absorbed into the Code on Wages, which broadens the standard to bar discrimination on gender rather than the narrower term sex.

Employees' State Insurance (ESI) is a contributory health and cash-benefit scheme for employees earning gross wages up to Rs 21,000 a month. The employee contributes 0.75% and the employer 3.25% of wages. It provides medical care and sickness, maternity and injury benefits through the ESIC.

The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 covers establishments with 10 or more employees, up to a wage ceiling that's stood at Rs 21,000 since 2017. Now absorbed into the Code on Social Security, with the ESI Scheme itself continuing under ESIC.

The ESI challan is paid by the 15th of the following month on the ESIC portal. The half-yearly return of contributions (11 November and 12 May under the regulations) is listed by some advisers and said to be dropped by others, so check your employer login.

The Pehchan card is the ESI identity card carrying the insured person's 10-digit IP number and family details. The employer registers the employee online, a temporary ID or e-card can be used immediately, and the permanent card follows by post.

An establishment with 10 or more persons registers online with ESIC, uploads its documents, and receives a 17-digit employer code for life. It then registers each covered employee. The commonly cited window is 15 days from applicability, so verify it on the portal.

ESI covers employees whose wages are Rs 21,000 a month or less, or Rs 25,000 for persons with disability. It did not rise with the September 2026 PF hike. An employee covered at the start of a contribution period stays covered until it ends.

The ESIC (Employees' State Insurance Corporation) is the statutory body that runs the ESI scheme. It collects contributions, operates ESI hospitals and dispensaries, pays the cash benefits, and manages the portal employers use to register and file returns.

Employee Self-Service (ESS) is the part of an HRMS that lets employees handle routine HR tasks themselves through a portal or app: viewing payslips, applying for leave, submitting tax declarations and updating personal details, with HR only configuring and approving.

An ex-gratia payment is a discretionary goodwill payment with no legal obligation behind it, unlike statutory bonus. Employers commonly use it for employees above the bonus eligibility wage ceiling, or as a voluntary top-up beyond the 20% statutory bonus maximum, and it's fully taxable as salary income.

An exit interview is a structured chat or survey with a departing employee to learn why they are leaving and what could have kept them. Run by someone outside their reporting line and analysed by reason, team and tenure, it exposes turnover patterns that individual conversations hide.

An experience or service certificate records the roles a person held and their dates of employment. The relieving letter proves the exit was completed. Employers often merge both, but BGV, visa and loan checks mainly look for designation and tenure on the certificate.

The Factories Act, 1948 regulated working conditions specifically in manufacturing premises. Now consolidated into the OSH Code, though it remains the practical compliance reference in states still completing their transition to the new Code's rules.

A factory licence is the state permission to run a manufacturing unit. Under the OSH Code a unit is a factory from 20 workers with power or 40 without, up from 10 and 20, and the licence sits alongside a separate establishment registration and a possible common licence.

Family pension under the Employees' Pension Scheme is the monthly pension paid to a member's spouse, children or nominee after the member's death. The widow or widower gets it for life with a Rs 1,000 minimum, children until 25, and claims go through Form 10D.

Fixed pay is the guaranteed part of a salary package, mainly basic salary plus fixed allowances, as distinct from performance-linked variable pay. In a typical Indian offer it runs roughly 50% to 85% of CTC, with the split shifting more toward variable pay at senior levels.

Flexi-time lets employees choose their own start and end times within a set window, rather than a fixed daily schedule. It's commonly paired with core hours, a block everyone must be available for, so teams can still coordinate despite staggered individual schedules.

Cash food allowance is taxable salary. Meals provided at the office, or through non-transferable meal vouchers usable only at eating outlets, are not taxed up to Rs 200 per meal from FY 2026-27 under Rule 15 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, up from Rs 50. Reports say it now covers the new regime too.

Forced ranking, or stack ranking, requires managers to rank employees against each other rather than an absolute standard, most associated with Jack Welch's GE vitality curve. It's the ranking process; bell curve is the resulting distribution shape it typically gets mapped onto.

Form 10E is the online form used to claim Section 89(1) relief when arrears or advance salary is taxed at a higher rate in the year of receipt. File it on the income tax portal before the return. For amounts received from April 2026, Form 39 under Section 157 is reported to replace it.

Form 12BB is the declaration a salaried employee gives their employer to claim tax exemptions and deductions, such as HRA, LTA, home-loan interest and Section 80C, during the year so that monthly TDS is calculated correctly.

Form 16 is the annual TDS certificate an employer issues to a salaried employee. Part A summarises tax deducted and deposited against the employee's PAN; Part B gives the detailed salary and tax computation. It is issued by 15 June after the financial year, and Form 130 replaces it from tax year 2026-27.

Form 24Q is the quarterly TDS return an employer files for salary payments. It reports each employee's salary and tax deducted, and its fourth-quarter annexure carries the full-year computation behind employees' Form 16. Form 138 replaces it from tax year 2026-27.

Form 26AS is the tax credit statement on your PAN, showing TDS and TCS deducted, taxes you paid and refunds. Reconcile it with Form 16 before filing. For FY 2025-26 it still applies; from tax year 2026-27 the statement is renumbered Form 168 under the new Act.

India's four labour codes took central effect 21 November 2025, with state-level rules still rolling out through 2026. Roughly 10 states had published final rules as of late September 2026, with a Labour Secretary-stated target of full coverage by 31 October 2026.

FTE, Full-Time Equivalent, converts total hours worked across full-time and part-time staff into an equivalent number of full-time positions, standardizing workforce size for budgeting. It's calculated as scheduled hours divided by standard full-time hours.

Full and final settlement (F&F) is the closing account when an employee leaves. It pays out pending salary, leave encashment, gratuity and earned bonus, and recovers any notice shortfall, advances and unreturned assets, with the net balance paid after tax.

Garden leave is a paid notice period in which the employee stays on the payroll but does not work or attend, typically to keep a departing senior person away from clients and confidential information. No Indian statute defines it; the contract governs, and Section 27 limits restrictions beyond employment.

Geo-fencing attendance uses a GPS boundary around a worksite, letting an employee clock in only when their device is physically inside that zone. Especially useful for field sales, delivery and construction workforces.

Gig staffing engages workers for discrete, task-based assignments with no ongoing relationship, typically through a digital platform, with workers classified as independent contractors. It's looser and more transactional than structured contract staffing, which is formally scoped and operationally embedded.

Gratuity is a lump-sum payment an employer makes to an employee for long service. Under the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, it becomes a legal right after five years of continuous service in any establishment with 10 or more employees, and is calculated from your last drawn basic plus DA and your years of service.

Form F is how an employee nominates who receives their gratuity in the event of death, filed within 30 days of completing one year of service. Without it, gratuity defaults to legal heirs under a slower succession process.

Gross salary is total monthly or annual pay before deductions, but after removing the employer-side costs that sit in CTC. It is the sum of basic, HRA, allowances and reimbursements. Deducting PF, professional tax and TDS from it gives net take-home salary.

Group insurance benefits are covers an employer buys under a single master policy: group mediclaim for hospital bills, group personal accident for accidental death or disability, and group term life for death. They usually cost the employee nothing and end when employment ends.

Half-day leave deducts half a day, rather than a full day, from an employee's leave balance for a shorter absence. Companies typically split the working day at a fixed midpoint and treat time on either side as a first-half or second-half absence.

HCM (Human Capital Management) is the broadest HR software category, covering the full hire-to-retire journey plus talent acquisition, learning, succession, compensation planning and workforce analytics, on top of the core HR, payroll and time management an HRMS handles.

Headcount is a simple count of employees on payroll at a point in time, with every person counting as exactly one regardless of hours worked. It differs from FTE, which normalizes for actual hours to reflect real work capacity.

The Health and Education Cess is a 4% charge added to income tax plus surcharge, after any Section 87A rebate, to fund government health and education spending. It applies to everyone with a tax liability, in both tax regimes.

A high-potential employee, or HiPo, is identified as capable of significantly greater responsibility in the future, distinct from simply being a strong performer in their current role. Identification often runs through 9-box grid placement.

An HR analytics dashboard visualizes headcount, attrition, cost and hiring metrics in real time instead of a manually built report. Good practice keeps it to five to eight metrics tied to current priorities, not everything at once.

An HR audit is a structured review of whether your HR practices, records and statutory filings match the law and your own policies. It samples payroll, registers, contracts and committees, ranks the findings by risk, and assigns owners and dates to fix them.

An HR business partner is an HR professional embedded in a business unit who advises its head on hiring, team structure, performance, retention and employee relations. The role grew out of Dave Ulrich's work and relies on shared services and specialists to take over the administration.

HR case management is software for sensitive, multi-step employee matters such as grievances, disciplinary action and investigations. Each matter becomes a restricted case file with an owner, timeline and audit trail, unlike a helpdesk ticket that is closed with a reply.

An HR chatbot answers routine employee questions, leave balance, payslip retrieval, policy FAQs, in plain language. It consistently falls short on harassment complaints and other sensitive issues that need human judgment, and should escalate those rather than attempt to resolve them.

HR compliance software tracks statutory deadlines, calculations and filings across PF, ESI and professional tax. Professional tax is the item a generic, non-India-built platform is most likely to get wrong, since it varies meaningfully by state.

HR data integration is the automatic exchange of employee and payroll data between an HRMS and other systems such as attendance devices, the ATS, accounting software and banks. It removes double entry, but only works if one system owns each field and failures are monitored.

An HR generalist handles most day-to-day HR work for a team, site or small company, spanning hiring support, onboarding, attendance and leave, payroll inputs, compliance and employee queries. It is a breadth role, often the entire HR function in smaller Indian firms.

An HR helpdesk is a ticketing system for employee queries, converting each one into a trackable ticket with an owner and status. Unlike a chatbot, it's built for questions and exceptions that genuinely need a human to resolve.

HR ROI measures the financial return an HR initiative generates relative to its cost, expressed as a percentage. The formula is straightforward; the real difficulty is honestly estimating the benefit side rather than the cost side.

HR shared services is a central team that handles repeatable HR work such as payroll inputs, letters, records and queries for several business units or entities. Work flows through self-service, a helpdesk, specialists and centres of expertise, governed by service levels and one system of record.

HR-to-employee ratio measures HR staff per 100 total employees, a proxy for how well-resourced the HR function is. Smaller companies typically carry a proportionally higher ratio, since they can't split one generalist across specialized functions the way larger ones can.

House Rent Allowance (HRA) is a salary component intended to cover rented accommodation. It is usually 40% to 50% of basic salary, and part of it can be exempt from tax under Section 10(13A) if the employee actually pays rent, in the old tax regime.

HRA exemption is the part of House Rent Allowance that is tax-free under Section 10(13A) when an employee pays rent. It is the least of actual HRA, rent paid minus 10% of salary, and 50% of salary in a metro (40% elsewhere). It applies only in the old tax regime.

An HRIS (Human Resource Information System) is the system of record for employee data and core HR processes: the employee master, org structure, and lifecycle workflows like hiring, transfers and exits. An HRMS adds operational modules like payroll and attendance on top.

An HRMS (Human Resource Management System) is software that runs core HR, payroll, leave, attendance, onboarding and performance from one shared employee database. In the Indian market the term is used interchangeably with 'HR software' for the whole suite.

HRMS implementation is the structured process of configuring, migrating data into, testing and rolling out a new system. Vendor-quoted timelines slip often, and the actual bottleneck is usually data migration, not the software configuration itself.

An individual development plan is a one-page agreement between employee and manager on which skills to build over the next 6 to 18 months, through which actions, with what support and review date. It is forward-looking growth planning, not a remedy for poor performance.

An induction program is typically a one-time, formal orientation activity run near a new employee's first day, covering culture, introductions and administrative briefing. It's the opening component of the broader onboarding process, not a synonym for the whole thing.

The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 consolidates the Trade Unions Act, the Standing Orders Act and the Industrial Disputes Act. Its key change: the threshold for needing government permission before layoff or retrenchment rose from 100 workers to 300.

An inter-state migrant worker is someone recruited, or who came on his own, to work in a State other than his own, earning up to Rs 18,000 a month. The OSH Code replaced the 1979 Act, applies from ten such workers, and keeps an annual journey allowance but drops the one-time displacement allowance.

An Internal Committee investigates sexual harassment complaints under the POSH Act, requiring at least four members including a mandatory external member. It must complete its inquiry within 90 days, with the employer acting on findings within 60 more.

Internal mobility rate measures the percentage of the workforce that moves into a new role internally rather than through external hiring. Companies with strong internal mobility see meaningfully longer employee tenure, a genuinely well-documented retention link.

Reimbursement of phone or internet bills for work use is not taxed as a perquisite, while a flat monthly allowance paid without bills is taxable salary. Rule 15 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 excludes telephone and mobile expenses from perquisite value; home broadband is not named.

Interview scheduling is the logistics step of hiring: finding slots that suit both the candidate and the interviewers, booking links or rooms, and sending reminders. Calendar clashes add days to every round, so it is a common hidden cause of slow hiring.

An interview scorecard is a standard form where each interviewer rates a candidate on fixed, job-relevant competencies using an anchored scale, and records the evidence for each score. It makes candidates comparable and limits the weight of first impressions, though it cannot remove bias entirely.

Interview-to-offer ratio compares the number of unique candidates who receive an offer with the number interviewed, shown either as a percentage or as interviews per offer. A low figure points to weak screening or uncalibrated interviewers; it is not the same as offer acceptance.

A job description outlines what a role involves, duties and responsibilities. A job specification outlines who can do it, the required qualifications and skills. Indian postings routinely merge both into one document, with the specification appearing as a requirements section rather than a separate file.

A job family is a group of roles involving similar work and skills, such as Engineering, Finance or Sales. Roles line up by level inside each family, which gives people visible career paths and lets HR benchmark pay and write competencies once per family.

A job grade is the level a role holds in the company's job hierarchy, decided by job evaluation of the work itself and not the person doing it. Each grade carries a pay range, so it drives salary positioning, increments and often benefit eligibility.

A job requisition is the formal internal request a hiring manager submits to open or fill a position, before any sourcing or posting begins. It typically needs sign-off from HR, the department head and Finance before a recruiter can start actively working the role.

A joining report is a short signed document in which a new employee confirms the date they reported for duty. HR uses that date to start attendance, salary and statutory records. It is common practice in Indian companies, not a legally prescribed form for private employers.

A KRA, Key Result Area, is a broad area of responsibility a role owns. A KPI, Key Performance Indicator, is the specific metric measuring performance within it. KRAs are set first, defining scope; KPIs are built on top to measure success within that scope.

A labour commissioner heads a government labour department: the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) for central-sphere establishments, and a State Labour Commissioner for state ones. The office oversees enforcement, conciliation and union matters, and which one you deal with depends on your appropriate government.

A labour inspector checks that establishments follow labour law. Under the Labour Codes the post is renamed Inspector-cum-Facilitator, with a duty to advise employers, a web-based random inspection scheme, and in most cases a written notice and time to comply before any prosecution starts.

The Labour Welfare Fund (LWF) is a small statutory contribution collected in some states to fund worker welfare schemes. Both employee and employer contribute token amounts, usually deducted twice a year, and the applicability, rate and frequency depend on the state.

Lateral hiring brings in experienced professionals at a similar or adjacent level to fill a specific gap, contributing within weeks rather than the months campus hires typically need. It commonly carries a real pay premium over the candidate's prior compensation.

Learning and development is the HR function that plans and delivers the skills employees need for today's job and the next one. Training is one part of it, alongside mentoring, on-the-job assignments, e-learning and the systems used to track completion and results.

A Learning Management System delivers, tracks and reports on employee training in one platform. It's commonly used to document compliance training completion, POSH awareness sessions being a typical example, generating the audit trail an employer needs.

Leave accrual is how a leave balance builds up over the year rather than being credited all at once. Most companies accrue monthly on a pro-rata basis, commonly 1.5 days of earned leave per month, so a mid-year joiner starts with a smaller, growing balance.

Leave balance is how much paid leave an employee currently has left, tracked separately by leave type since earned, casual and sick leave usually follow different accrual and carry-forward rules. Balances go wrong at scale when accrual, carry-forward caps and manual corrections aren't reconciled carefully.

Leave carry-forward determines what happens to unused leave at year end. Earned leave can generally be carried forward up to a statutory cap, commonly 30 days, with leave beyond that now meant to be encashed under the newer OSH Code framework rather than simply forfeited.

Leave encashment is taxed differently depending on when it happens. Encashed during service, it's fully taxable salary. Encashed at retirement or resignation, Section 10(10AA) exempts the least of four amounts, capped at a Rs 25,00,000 lifetime limit under CBDT Notification No. 31/2023, up from the earlier Rs 3 lakh.

A leave management system automates accrual, approval workflows and balance tracking for every leave type, replacing manual spreadsheet tracking. Balances update in real time as requests are approved, with a permanent audit trail.

A leave policy is the written document defining every leave type an employer offers, how each accrues, whether it carries forward, the application process, and how documentation and disputes are handled. Without one, leave decisions end up inconsistent across managers.

Loss of Pay (LOP), or Leave Without Pay, is a salary deduction for days an employee was absent without an available paid-leave balance. The per-day cut is monthly salary divided by a divisor (calendar days, 30, or 26), multiplied by the unpaid days.

Leave Travel Allowance (LTA) is a salary component that reimburses domestic travel fare during leave. Its value is the tax exemption under Section 10(5), available for two journeys in a four-year block, and only in the old tax regime.

LTA exemption is the tax break on Leave Travel Allowance under Section 10(5). It covers domestic travel fare for the employee and family, for two journeys in a government-notified block of four calendar years, and applies only in the old tax regime.

Manager Self-Service, or MSS, lets managers directly view their team's data and take HR actions, approving leave, viewing reports, without routing everything through HR. It pairs with Employee Self-Service: employees request through ESS, managers approve through MSS.

Marginal relief stops a small rise in income from triggering a disproportionate tax increase once a surcharge threshold like Rs 50 lakh or Rs 1 crore is crossed. It caps the extra tax and surcharge owed at exactly the amount of income that pushed you over the threshold, not more.

Marriage leave gives an employee time off around their own wedding and, like bereavement leave, exists only where a company chooses to offer it. Typical policies grant 3 to 7 days, usually as a once-per-employment benefit requiring advance planning rather than short notice.

The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 extended paid maternity leave from 12 to 26 weeks, added a mandatory creche requirement for 50+ employee establishments, and introduced a work-from-home enabling provision after leave ends.

Maternity leave in India gives eligible women 26 weeks of paid leave for the first two children and 12 weeks for a third child onward, under the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, unchanged since. It applies at establishments with 10 or more employees, subject to a minimum service requirement.

A fixed medical allowance is taxed as ordinary salary with no exemption. The old Rs 15,000 tax-free reimbursement ended after FY 2017-18. Tax-free medical benefits now exist only as specific employer-paid treatment or group insurance covered by the perquisite rules, not as a cash allowance.

A mid-year review is a documented halfway check-in where manager and employee review progress against goals, fix what is slipping and reset goals the business has changed. It carries no final rating, so nobody should meet a surprise score at the year-end appraisal.

Minimum wages are the lowest legal pay rates for a job, notified by each state (and the centre for some sectors) by industry, skill level and zone under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. They include a dearness-allowance component revised for inflation, usually twice a year.

A mobile HR app gives employees and managers phone access to core self-service functions, applying for leave, approving requests, viewing payslips, instead of requiring a desktop browser session.

Model Standing Orders are the Central Government's template of employment rules under the Industrial Relations Code. Employers with 300 or more workers can adopt the 2026 model, notified on 8 May 2026 for mining, manufacturing and services, and it is deemed certified rather than drafted and certified from scratch.

Multi-country payroll runs pay for employees across several countries, each with its own tax authority, currency and labour law. Complexity multiplies, not just adds, with every new country, which is why smaller headcounts are often outsourced to local specialists.

A muster roll is the statutory attendance register Indian employers must maintain, now updated under the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026: an Employee Register, Wage Register and Attendance-cum-Muster Roll, which can be kept electronically, with records retained for 5 years, up from the earlier 3-year requirement.

Net salary, or take-home salary, is the amount that reaches an employee's bank account after all deductions: their own PF, professional tax, TDS, ESI if applicable, and any recoveries. It is gross salary minus these deductions.

A No Objection Certificate says the employer does not object to something the employee wants to do, such as a visa or study plan. A no dues certificate is the exit clearance record showing assets returned and recoveries settled. Neither has a statutory format.

Notice pay recovery is the amount an employer deducts when an employee resigns without serving the full contractual notice period. It is usually calculated on basic, gross or CTC for the unserved days and netted off in the full and final settlement.

A notice period is the time an employee must keep working after resigning before employment ends, set by the appointment letter and commonly running 30 to 90 days by seniority in India. A buyout lets an employee exit early by paying for the unserved days.

An off-cycle payroll is a pay run outside the regular monthly cycle, used for final settlements, missed or wrong payments, one-time payouts and arrears. TDS must be recomputed on the employee's full-year salary, and PF arrears go into an arrear ECR for the months they relate to.

Offer acceptance rate is the percentage of extended offers candidates formally accept, calculated as offers accepted divided by offers extended. Benchmarks vary considerably by source and sector, so it's most useful tracked over time within your own hiring rather than against an external number.

An offer decline, or offer drop, is when a candidate who received a formal offer chooses not to accept it. It's the direct inverse of offer acceptance rate for the same candidate pool, the two should be read together, not separately.

An offer letter is the initial, conditional job offer issued after selection but before joining, typically contingent on background verification clearing. In India it's provisional; the appointment letter issued at joining is the actual, binding employment contract that supersedes it.

Offer-to-join ratio is the percentage of candidates who accepted your offer and then actually joined on the agreed date. It captures drop-outs during the notice period, which offer acceptance rate misses, and is especially important where notice periods run to two or three months.

OKR, Objectives and Key Results, pairs one ambitious, qualitative Objective with three to five measurable Key Results defining what achieving it looks like. Popularized by Andy Grove at Intel and later John Doerr at Google, it's typically set quarterly and meant to stretch performance.

OKR software supports the Objectives and Key Results framework, objective cascading, regular check-ins, progress dashboards, typically on a quarterly cadence. Unlike broader performance management software, OKRs are meant to stay separate from compensation decisions.

India has two ways to tax individual income. The old regime keeps deductions and exemptions but charges higher slab rates; the new regime has lower rates but removes almost all deductions and is the default. A salaried person can choose whichever gives lower tax each year.

Onboarding software automates a new hire's paperwork, provisioning and induction tasks, replacing ad hoc coordination across HR, IT and the hiring manager. It's typically a specialized, time-bound tool inside or alongside a full HRMS, not a replacement for the system of record.

Organisational culture is the set of shared habits and unwritten rules that shape how decisions are made, what is rewarded and how people treat each other. It shows in daily behaviour, promotions and handling of mistakes more than in a values statement.

Organisational structure is how a company divides work and sets reporting lines: functional, divisional, matrix or flat. In an HRMS it becomes the reporting hierarchy that routes leave and expense approvals, org charts, access rights and headcount reports.

The OSH Code, 2020 consolidates 13 laws, the Factories Act being the most relevant to most employers. It sets the daily overtime threshold at 8 hours, down from 9, with a 48-hour weekly cap and 12-hour spread-over limit.

Statutory overtime pay in India is twice the ordinary wage rate, unchanged through the recent shift from the Factories Act to the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, though the daily threshold that triggers it has moved from 9 hours to 8 hours under the new Code.

A panel interview puts multiple interviewers, commonly two to five, in the room with one candidate at once, assessing technical skill, management fit and culture fit in a single sitting. It's a different format from a group interview, which involves multiple candidates together.

There is no central law mandating paternity leave for private-sector employees in India, and the 2025-26 Labour Codes didn't add one. Only central government employees get a guaranteed 15 days under the CCS Leave Rules. Private-sector paternity leave is entirely company policy, commonly 5 to 15 days.

A pay band is a salary range assigned to a role or level, broad enough to cover employees at different experience points without a unique number for each person. Pay grade and pay scale are narrower, related concepts describing sub-ranges and the specific increments within them.

Pay equity means paying employees equally for comparable work regardless of gender or other characteristics, audited through statistical comparison controlling for legitimate factors like tenure and performance. The Code on Wages broadens India's equal-pay standard, rolling out in phases since November 2025.

The Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 makes an annual bonus a legal right for employees earning up to Rs 21,000 a month in establishments with 20 or more employees. It sets a minimum bonus of 8.33% and a maximum of 20% of wages, payable within eight months of the year end.

The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 makes gratuity a legal right after five years of continuous service in any establishment with 10 or more employees. It fixes the 15-days-per-year formula, the Rs 20 lakh ceiling, nomination on Form F, and the narrow grounds for forfeiture.

The Payment of Wages Act, 1936 required timely wage payment without unauthorized deductions, capped at a wage ceiling last set at Rs 24,000 a month. The Code on Wages removed that ceiling entirely, extending the protection to every employee regardless of salary.

A payroll API is a set of documented endpoints that lets another system send data into payroll software or pull data out, instead of exporting and uploading spreadsheets. Capabilities vary widely by vendor, so test the specific actions you need before committing.

The payroll cut-off date is the last day attendance and leave changes are captured before a pay run locks in, commonly the 20th to 25th of the month, with actual salary disbursement following on the 1st or 7th of the next month.

A payroll cycle is the repeating schedule for capturing inputs, calculating, approving and paying salaries, usually monthly. The Code on Wages limits the wage period to a month and requires monthly wages before the seventh day of the next month, and exit wages within two working days.

Payroll outsourcing means a third-party provider runs your salary calculation, payslips and statutory returns while you stay the legal employer. The work moves to the vendor, but liability for PF, ESI and TDS does not, so contract terms, data safeguards and exit rights matter.

Payroll reconciliation is the month-end check that payroll output agrees with its sources and destinations: the HR headcount, last month's figures, PF, ESI and TDS challans, the bank file and the ledger. Any unexplained gap is an error to fix before money moves.

Payroll software calculates employee pay, computes statutory deductions like PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS, generates payslips and Form 16, and files the returns. It turns a month of attendance and changes into one accurate, compliant pay run with an audit trail.

Under the Employees' Pension Scheme, monthly pension equals pensionable salary times pensionable service divided by 70. Pensionable salary is the average wage on which EPS was paid in the last 60 months, and service is years of contribution, with six months or more rounded up.

A PEO is a US-style provider that co-employs your staff, handling payroll, benefits and compliance under its own registration. India has no legal PEO category, so the term usually means payroll outsourcing, an Employer of Record, or contract staffing, each with different liability.

People analytics applies statistical and predictive analysis to workforce data, going beyond the descriptive numbers a standard HR dashboard shows. The meaningful line is reporting what already happened versus analysis that forecasts what's likely to happen next.

PEPM, Per-Employee-Per-Month, is the most common HR software pricing model, a fixed rate multiplied by headcount. Treat a quoted rate as a floor, not the total cost, since add-ons and implementation fees are often billed separately.

A performance appraisal formally evaluates an employee's work against pre-set expectations, typically annually or half-yearly in India, resulting in a documented rating that feeds increment and promotion decisions. Self-evaluation is a near-universal step before the manager's rating is finalized.

Performance calibration is a structured meeting, managers and HR together, held before ratings are finalized, comparing and adjusting proposed ratings against shared criteria across teams. It counters individual manager bias, though critics note it can introduce its own groupthink risks.

Performance management software digitizes the appraisal cycle, goal-setting, feedback, evaluations, replacing a manual, spreadsheet-based process with structured workflows, automated reminders and an audit trail spreadsheets can't provide.

Perquisite valuation turns a non-cash benefit such as a company car, free housing, a cheap loan or ESOPs into a rupee figure added to salary. The Income Tax Rules prescribe each formula, so the taxable value is a rule-based number, not what the employer actually spent.

Perquisites, or perks, are non-cash benefits an employer provides on top of salary, such as a company car, rent-free housing, an interest-free loan or ESOPs. Each is valued by a prescribed method, added to taxable salary, and taxed. Some perks, such as employer PF within limits, are exempt.

PF administrative charges are what the employer pays EPFO to run the scheme: 0.5% of PF wages with a Rs 500 monthly minimum, plus EDLI at 0.5%. They are never deducted from the employee and do not enter the member's account.

Form 31 was the paper form for a PF advance for illness, marriage, education or housing. Eligible members now claim online with an Aadhaar-linked UAN, and advances up to Rs 5 lakh can be settled automatically, within about 72 hours.

Both employee and employer pay 12% of PF wages. The employee's 12% goes to EPF; the employer's is split 8.33% to pension (EPS) and 3.67% to EPF. At the Rs 25,000 ceiling that is Rs 3,000, Rs 2,083 and Rs 917 a month.

Form 2 is the nomination declaration naming who receives your provident fund, EPS pension benefits and EDLI cover. The working route today is e-nomination on the EPFO member portal, signed with an Aadhaar OTP; the paper form is a fallback.

The PF passbook shows each month's employee contribution, employer EPF share (3.67%), EPS pension share, interest and transfers or withdrawals per member ID. Entries appear only after the employer's ECR is processed, so a lag of a month or two is normal.

Form 13 is the PF transfer claim. You raise it online on the UAN portal after a job change, confirm with an Aadhaar OTP, and the old balance and pension service move to your new member ID. Destination-office approval was dropped in 2025.

The EPF wage ceiling is the monthly wage limit for mandatory provident fund membership and default contributions. It rose from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 on 17 September 2026. PF is 12% of wages as defined in the Social Security Code, so allowance-heavy salary structures need re-testing against the 50% rule.

A Performance Improvement Plan, or PIP, is a formal, documented plan for an underperforming employee, specifying gaps, targets and a fixed timeframe, commonly 30, 60 or 90 days. Indian courts generally expect documented due process before a performance-based termination.

The POSH Act requires every employer with 10 or more employees to constitute an Internal Committee and address workplace sexual harassment through a formal process, including mandatory annual reporting even with zero complaints.

The POSH annual report is the yearly statement the Internal or Local Committee prepares under Section 21 and gives to the employer and District Officer. It carries complaint counts, pending cases, awareness programmes and action taken. Companies must also disclose POSH complaint numbers in the Board's Report from July 2025.

A Local Committee is the government-constituted body that hears sexual harassment complaints under the POSH Act when a workplace has fewer than ten workers or the complaint is against the employer. Set up by the District Officer, it has five members and works through block-level Nodal Officers.

Position management treats each seat in the organisation as its own record that can be budgeted, approved, vacant or filled, separate from the employee holding it. It lets a company control headcount before hiring, but adds admin that small teams rarely need.

Pre-boarding covers everything between offer acceptance and a new hire's first day, paperwork, equipment access, early engagement, aimed at keeping them committed through what's often a longer notice-period gap in India than in markets with short, two-week notice.

A pre-employment assessment is a standardized test administered before hiring, aptitude, skills, personality or situational judgment, used to supplement the resume and interview rather than replace them. Indian campus hiring relies heavily on standardized aptitude and coding tests as an early filter.

Principal employer liability means a company that engages contract labour must pay the workers' wages if the contractor does not, then recover the amount from the contractor. The OSH Code also puts welfare facilities and licence checks on the principal employer, for establishments with 50 or more contract workers.

Pro-rata salary is what a mid-month joiner, leaver, or someone on loss of pay actually gets paid, calculated using one of several divisor conventions, a fixed 30-day month, the actual calendar days, or working days only, that don't all produce the same result for a partial month.

A probation period is an initial trial phase, commonly three to six months in India, before an employer confirms a new hire as permanent. Statutory benefits like EPF and gratuity accrual apply from day one regardless of probation status.

Professional tax is a small tax on salaried income levied by some state governments, not the centre. The employer deducts it from salary each month and pays it to the state. It is capped at Rs 2,500 per person per year, and the slabs and applicability vary by state.

Professional tax is a state-level tax on employment income, capped constitutionally at Rs 2,500 a year, with several states not levying it at all. Slabs and due dates vary meaningfully by state, so there's no single national table.

A pulse survey is a short, frequent employee survey, typically a handful of questions, tracking sentiment on specific themes in near-real-time, unlike the long, comprehensive annual engagement survey run once or twice a year.

Quality of hire measures how much value a new employee actually delivers, typically assessed through a mix of performance and retention over time. It's widely considered the hardest recruiting metric to measure, since no single standardized formula exists.

A performance rating scale is the standardized scale, usually numeric and descriptive combined, used to score performance during appraisals. A common 5-point format pairs a number with a label like meets expectations or exceeds expectations for clarity.

Reasonable accommodation means necessary and appropriate changes to a job or workplace so a person with a disability can work on equal terms, short of a disproportionate or undue burden. The RPwD Act, 2016 defines it, treats its denial as discrimination, and requires it expressly from government establishments.

A recruitment funnel maps candidates from application through to hire, showing how the pool narrows at each stage. Conversion rates vary hugely by role and volume, so tracking your own funnel's shape over time matters more than chasing an external benchmark.

Recruitment software is the broader category spanning sourcing, candidate relationship management and offer management, of which an ATS is one component. The key difference: an ATS is present-focused on one open role, recruitment software is future-focused on building a pipeline.

A reference check gathers subjective feedback from a candidate's former managers or colleagues on performance and fit, distinct from the objective, documented facts a background verification confirms. Indian employers often bundle both into one overall pre-joining verification process.

A register of overtime records extra hours worked and the overtime wages paid, at not less than twice the normal rate. Under the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026 there is no stand-alone book: hours appear in the attendance register-cum-muster roll (Form IX) and pay in the combined Form IV.

Employers record each employee's wages, deductions and net pay for every wage period. Under the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026 this lives in Form IV, a combined register that also holds overtime, advances and fines. It can be electronic and must be kept five years after the last entry.

It records every fine, damage or loss deduction and advance recovery made from an employee's wages. Under the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026 all of it goes in Form IV. Total deductions in a wage period are capped at 50% of wages, and fines at 3%.

A relieving letter is issued at the end of the notice period to confirm the employee has been formally released from duties on a stated last working day. Background verification agencies and new employers ask for it as proof of a clean exit. For most private staff, entitlement comes from the contract.

A restricted holiday lets employees pick a limited number of festival days, commonly 2, from a pre-approved company list, rather than closing the office for every regional festival. Rooted in state Shops and Establishments Acts, it gives flexibility for India's varied regional and religious calendars.

Resume parsing is software that reads a CV and pulls out structured fields such as name, employers, dates, education and skills, so an applicant tracking system can store and search them. It extracts data; shortlisting decisions are a separate step called resume screening.

Resume screening filters applications against a role's minimum requirements, done manually by a recruiter or automatically by an ATS using keyword and criteria filters. High-volume Indian hiring leans heavily on ATS filtering first, with a recruiter reviewing the resulting shortlist manually.

Retention rate measures the percentage of employees who remain over a period, calculated as ending headcount minus new hires, divided by starting headcount. It's only a loose approximation of 100% minus attrition rate, not an exact inverse.

Under the Industrial Relations Code, a worker with a year of service retrenched for non-disciplinary reasons gets 15 days' average pay per completed year, counting a part year above six months. Notice is one month, establishments with 300 or more workers need prior permission, and a reskilling contribution is payable on top.

Revenue per employee divides total revenue by headcount, a productivity measure that's genuinely useful only compared within the same industry. Labor-intensive services firms structurally post far lower figures than capital-intensive software companies, without that meaning less efficiency.

Rewards and recognition, or R&R, are programs acknowledging employee contributions outside the standard pay cycle, spanning monetary spot bonuses and non-monetary formats like peer recognition and social shout-outs.

Role-Based Access Control assigns HR system permissions based on a user's role, employee, manager, payroll admin, rather than configuring access person by person. It matters most for sensitive fields like salary and bank details.

Recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO, hands part or all of the hiring function to an external provider that embeds into the internal team, distinct from a one-off staffing agency placement. It tends to make sense at sustained, meaningful hiring volume.

SaaS HR software is cloud-hosted and paid through a recurring subscription, typically priced per-employee-per-month, rather than a one-time license running on a company's own infrastructure. It's now the dominant commercial model for HR software.

A sabbatical is an extended break, typically 1 to 3 months and sometimes longer, usually unpaid or partially paid, with no statutory basis in India. Companies that offer it commonly require 2 to 5 years of tenure and reserve it for permanent, full-time employees.

A salary advance is pay given before it is earned and recovered through payroll deductions. The Code on Wages permits recovery of advances but caps total deductions in a wage period at 50% of wages, with any excess carried forward. Interest-free loans above Rs 2,00,000 become a taxable perquisite.

Salary arrears are pay owed for an earlier period but received later, most often from a backdated increment or a delayed pay revision. They are taxed in the year of receipt, but Section 89(1) relief, claimed via Form 10E, can reduce the extra tax.

Salary breakup is how a single CTC figure splits into basic salary, HRA, allowances, employer statutory contributions and deductions. Two offers with the same CTC can have very different breakups, which changes both take-home pay and tax exemptions like HRA.

A salary hold withholds an employee's calculated pay from a payroll run. A short technical hold for missing bank details is routine. Holding earned wages to pressure an exiting or accused employee conflicts with the Code on Wages, which fixes pay dates and allows only listed deductions.

A salary increment is a raise to fixed pay, usually delivered once a year tied to the April-March financial year. Average increments across Indian companies were projected around 9.1% for 2026, though the actual figure for any individual varies by performance, role and sector.

A sandwich leave policy counts an intervening holiday or weekly off as leave when an employee takes leave on both sides of it. There's no central law governing this; it's a company-policy construct, legal if clearly disclosed, though frequently criticized by employees as unfair.

Section 10(14) exempts certain allowances from salary tax: those paid for job expenses, exempt only up to what is actually spent, and a set of personal allowances like children's education, exempt up to a fixed monthly limit under Rule 2BB. Most are available only in the old regime.

Section 192 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 required an employer to deduct income tax at source from salary at the time of payment, based on the employee's estimated income for the year at the average rate of tax. From 1 April 2026 the same duty sits in Section 392 of the Income-tax Act, 2025.

Section 80C is an income tax deduction of up to Rs 1.5 lakh a year for specified investments and payments, including EPF, PPF, ELSS, life insurance premiums, home-loan principal and children's tuition fees. It is available only in the old tax regime.

Section 80CCD(1B) is an additional Rs 50,000 tax deduction for your own NPS contribution, on top of the Rs 1.5 lakh Section 80C limit, giving up to Rs 2 lakh combined. It's available only in the old tax regime, unlike the employer's NPS contribution under 80CCD(2), which applies in both regimes.

Section 80D is an income tax deduction for health insurance premiums paid for self, family and parents. Limits are Rs 25,000 for those below 60 and Rs 50,000 for senior citizens, with a separate additional limit for parents. It applies only in the old tax regime.

The Section 87A rebate is a tax concession for resident individuals whose total income is within a set threshold. It reduces the tax liability, often to nil, up to that threshold. The income limit and the rebate cap differ between the old and new tax regimes.

A self-appraisal is an employee's own written assessment of their performance, submitted before the manager finalizes their rating. Manager ratings often correlate closely with the self-rating submitted, so it materially anchors the final conversation rather than being purely symbolic.

Shift allowance compensates employees for night or rotational shift work. Companies typically structure it as a percentage of basic salary, commonly 10-25%, or a flat per-shift amount, often Rs 100 to Rs 500. It's set by company policy and is fully taxable as salary income.

A shift roster schedules employees across shifts and days, and has to respect statutory limits like weekly hour caps, mandatory rest periods, and the weekly off requirement, not just fill coverage gaps, or it creates compliance risk that often goes unnoticed until it's tested.

The Shops and Establishments Act is a state law, not central, each state runs its own version, regulating working hours and leave for shops and offices the Factories Act doesn't cover. It's the law that actually governs most office-based employers day to day.

Sick leave covers illness-related absence and, like casual leave, is governed by state law and company policy rather than a single national rule. Entitlement commonly runs 7 to 12 days a year, varying by state, with a medical certificate often required beyond about 3 consecutive days.

Single Sign-On lets an employee log into HR software using one existing company credential rather than a separate password. The security payoff that matters most for HR specifically is instant, complete offboarding when someone leaves.

SMART is a five-criteria framework for writing concrete, actionable goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Each criterion forces a vague ambition into something that can actually be tracked and evaluated against a deadline.

Source of hire is the channel through which an eventually-hired candidate first learned about the opportunity, distinct from where they physically applied. Crediting only the application channel risks misallocating recruiting budget toward high-volume but lower-converting sources.

Sourcing channel ROI measures the return a specific recruiting channel generates relative to what was spent on it, most practically tracked as cost per hire and conversion rate by channel. It's how you find out whether referrals are actually cheaper than a job portal.

Span of control is the number of direct reports a manager oversees, a structural measure of management load. Typical ranges vary considerably by function, narrower for complex knowledge work, wider for standardized, repetitive roles.

Special allowance is the fully taxable balancing component of a salary structure: whatever is left of gross pay after basic, HRA and specific allowances are fixed. It carries no tax concession, and a large one can be pulled into PF wages under case law.

The standard deduction is a flat amount subtracted from salary or pension income before tax, with no proof or investment required. It applies in both tax regimes, though the amount differs, and is applied automatically by the employer and pre-filled in the tax return.

Standing orders are certified, legally binding employment rules that establishments above a worker threshold, now 300 under the Industrial Relations Code, must define and display, distinct from an internal, uncertified employee handbook.

Statutory bonus is an annual payment employees earning up to Rs 21,000 a month are legally entitled to under the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965. It is between 8.33% and 20% of wages, calculated on a wage ceiling of Rs 7,000 or the minimum wage if higher.

They are the records an Indian establishment keeps to prove labour-law compliance. Under the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026 the core set is the employee register (Form I), the combined wages and deductions register (Form IV) and the attendance register-cum-muster roll (Form IX), kept five years.

A stipend is a fixed payment to an intern or trainee, distinct from salary. It's tax-exempt only if genuinely for education; most corporate stipends are taxed as salary or other income instead, and PF, ESI and gratuity generally don't apply unless the role is structured as real employment.

A structured interview asks every candidate the same predetermined questions in the same order, scored against a standardized scale, unlike an unstructured, free-flowing conversation. Research consistently finds structured interviews considerably more predictive of actual job performance and less exposed to interviewer bias.

Succession planning systematically identifies critical roles, evaluates internal candidates, and prepares them to step in when a vacancy occurs, protecting continuity in leadership and other key positions through ongoing, not one-time, development.

A superannuation fund is a tax-approved retirement fund that an employer pays into so the employee gets a pension or lump sum on retirement. It is optional, separate from PF and NPS, and it is subject to a combined Rs 7.5 lakh employer-contribution tax cap.

Surcharge is an additional levy charged on income tax itself, not on income, once total income exceeds Rs 50 lakh. Rates rise in slabs from 10% to 37% (capped at 25% in the new regime), and marginal relief limits the increase near each threshold.

Talent acquisition is the long-term, strategic side of hiring, employer branding, workforce planning, building pipelines ahead of need, distinct from recruitment, the tactical work of filling a specific vacancy right now. Recruitment sits inside the broader talent acquisition function rather than standing apart from it.

A talent pool is a broader, more static repository of potential candidates, past applicants, sourced profiles, referrals, kept for possible future use without active, role-specific outreach. When a matching role opens, a recruiter draws from it to build an active candidate pipeline.

A tax declaration tells payroll your regime and expected exemptions at the start of the year; proof of investment is the paperwork you submit near year-end to confirm them. Unproven claims are dropped and TDS is recomputed, so the shortfall lands in your last few salaries.

Taxable salary is the amount of your pay that is actually taxed: gross salary plus taxable perquisites, minus exempt allowances, the standard deduction and professional tax. It is different from CTC and take-home pay, and it is the figure payroll uses to work out your monthly TDS.

TDS on salary is the income tax an employer deducts from pay every month and deposits with the government on the employee's behalf, under Section 392 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Section 192 of the old Act). It is based on projected annual income and spread evenly across the year at the average rate of tax.

Time and attendance software automates tracking of clock-ins, clock-outs and overtime, then feeds that data into payroll and leave systems. How well it integrates with payroll varies a lot between vendors, and that gap is often where errors creep in.

Time to fill is the number of days from approving a job requisition to the chosen candidate accepting the offer. It measures the employer's full cycle for a vacancy, unlike time to hire, which starts only when the eventual hire enters the pipeline.

Time to hire measures days from when a candidate enters the pipeline to when they accept the offer, a candidate-clock metric. It's frequently confused with time to fill, which measures the employer's internal cycle from requisition approval to a filled seat.

TOIL, Time Off In Lieu, gives an employee paid time off instead of overtime pay for extra hours worked. It's broader than comp-off, which typically covers a full missed day off, since TOIL can apply to just a few extra hours on an otherwise normal day.

Training cost per employee averages L&D spend across the people trained, direct costs like content and licensing, sometimes indirect costs like employee time away from work. Whether time cost is included changes the resulting figure substantially, so consistency matters more than a fixed formula.

Training needs analysis is a structured way to find which skill gaps exist, who has them and whether training is the right fix. It works at organisation, task and person level and ends in a ranked training calendar and budget.

Training ROI applies the same return-on-cost formula specifically to learning and development spend, typically anchored to the Kirkpatrick model. Isolating a training program's actual causal contribution to a business result is the genuinely hard part of the calculation.

A Universal Account Number (UAN) is a permanent 12-digit ID issued by the EPFO that links all of an employee's EPF accounts across different jobs. It stays the same for life and is used to check the passbook, complete KYC, and transfer or withdraw provident fund online.

Vacancy rate is the percentage of budgeted positions currently unfilled, calculated as unfilled roles divided by total budgeted positions. Persistently above roughly 10% commonly signals recruiting-capacity strain, non-competitive pay, or attrition outpacing hiring.

Variable pay is the part of a package that is not guaranteed, paid out based on individual and company performance against a target amount. It is usually paid annually or quarterly, separately from monthly salary, and is fully taxable when paid.

Voluntary attrition is employee-initiated, resignation, retirement, relocation. Involuntary is employer-initiated, termination, layoffs, restructuring. Splitting the two matters, since a blended number can't tell you whether people are leaving on their own or being let go.

The Voluntary Provident Fund (VPF) is an option for an employee to contribute more than the mandatory 12% of basic salary to EPF. The extra amount earns the same EPFO-declared interest rate and sits in the same account. The employer is not required to match anything above 12%.

A weekly off is the statutory one-day rest requirement under Indian labour law, commonly defaulting to Sunday but explicitly substitutable with another day, which is how seven-day operations like retail and BPO stay compliant by rostering staff onto staggered rest days instead.

A work-from-home or hybrid policy defines where employees work from and on what schedule: eligibility, in-office day requirements, equipment and expense reimbursement, and increasingly, after-hours communication expectations, an area Indian law is actively catching up to.

Workforce cost totals every cost of employing a team, statutory contributions, benefits and overhead, well beyond the gross salary bill alone. Since Indian CTC already includes PF, gratuity and bonus, true workforce cost is closer to CTC times headcount plus non-CTC overheads.

Workforce Management software adds scheduling and demand forecasting on top of basic attendance tracking, predicting staffing needs and optimizing shift coverage. Common in contact centers, retail, healthcare and BPO operations.

Payroll calculates a per-day salary rate using either a fixed 26-day divisor or the actual calendar days in that month, and the choice genuinely changes the result for anyone with a partial month from loss of pay, joining, or leaving mid-cycle.

A yield ratio measures the percentage of candidates advancing from one specific funnel stage to the very next one, pinpointing exactly where a funnel is leaking candidates. Chaining every stage's yield ratio together gives the overall funnel conversion rate.