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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 15,000, so Rs 1,250 a month) goes to EPS, funding a monthly pension from age 58 for members with at least 10 years of service.

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 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.

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.

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 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 must be issued by 15 June following the financial year.

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 salary computation that generates employees' Form 16.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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-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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 192 of the Income Tax Act requires 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. It is the legal basis for monthly salary TDS.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 192. It is based on the employee's projected annual income and spread evenly across the year at the average rate of tax.

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 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.

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.