| Word | Description |
| Baby boomers | The term used to describe those individuals born between 1945 and 1970. |
| Baby busters | The term used to describe those individuals born between 1961 and 1972. |
| Back Pay | Compensation for past wage and benefit losses caused by a contractor's discriminatory employment practices or procedures. Lost wages include, e.g., overtime, incentive pay, raises, bonuses economic loss includes compensatory damages. See also "fringe benefits." |
| Back-loaded | A term used to describe a labor contract that provides for higher wage increases during the later part of a multiyear agreement. |
| Back-to-work movement | A term used to describe workers who return to their jobs prior to the union having declared an end to the strike. |
| Background check/investigation | Background Investigations and Reference Checks are the principal means by which employers actively check into the backgrounds of potential hires. Background investigations and reference checks fall within the HR Discipline of Staffing Management. Each can involve both verifying information provided by applicants, and ascertaining pertinent information not provided by applicants themselves. A background investigation generally involves screening out persons who are not qualified due to criminal convictions, poor driving records, poor credit history, or misrepresentations on résumés or application forms about education or prior work history. Reference checks generally involve contacting applicants’ former employers, supervisors, co-workers, educators, and athletic coaches for information about the knowledge, skills, abilities (KSA’s), and character of applicants. |
| Balanced scorecard | A popular strategic management concept developed in the early 1990s by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton. The balanced scorecard is a management and measurement system that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. The goal of the balanced scorecard is to tie business performance to organizational strategy by measuring results in four areas: financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth. |
| Baldridge National Quality Award | The Baldrige Award is given by the President of the United States to businesses—manufacturing and service, small and large—and to education and health care organizations that apply and are judged to be outstanding in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and results. |
| Bankruptcy | A federal law consisting of different chapters (i.e. chapter 7, chapter 11 or chapter 13) that allows individuals and businesses that are experiencing extreme financial duress and are unable to meet their financial obligations to eliminate or restructure their debts |
| Bar rules | Procedural barriers, established by law to promote labor stability by providing continuity for the bargaining agent and bargaining unit. |
| Bargaining | The formal or informal process of offer and counteroffer whereby parties to the bargaining process try to reach agreement on the terms of exchange. |
| Bargaining agent | An individual or union who has been certified through a secret ballot election process to serve as the sole representative of all employees in a particular bargaining unit or group. |
| Bargaining order | Extreme remedy in the case of an unfair labor practice case against an employee, which compels the employer to recognize and bargain with a union without an election or in the case where a union has lost an election. |
| Bargaining Rights | The legally recognized right of a labor union to represent employees in negotiations with employers. |
| Bargaining Unit | A group of individuals who are recognized by both the employer and an organized labor union to negotiate matters involving employment issues. |
| Barrier analysis | The process of reviewing an organization’s policies and procedures to identify and eliminate impediments in recruitment, selection, transfer, or promotion of protected class individuals throughout the organization. |
| Behavior modification | A conscious attempt to change or eliminate an individual’s undesirable behavior by specifying expected behavior and reinforcing and rewarding desired behavior. |
| Behavioral risk management | The process of analyzing and identifying workplace behavioral issues and implementing programs, policies or services most suitable for correcting or eliminating various employee behavioral problems. |
| Behavioral-based interview | An interview technique that focuses on a candidate’s past experiences, behaviors, knowledge, skills and abilities by asking the candidate to provide specific examples of when he or she has demonstrated certain behaviors or skills as a means of predicting future behavior and performance. |
| Behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS) | An appraisal that requires raters to list important dimensions of a particular job and collect information regarding the critical behaviors that distinguish between successful and unsuccessful performance. These critical behaviors are then categorized and appointed a numerical value used as the basis for rating performance. |
| Bell-shaped curve | The curve representing the normal distribution of a rating or test score. |
| Benchmarking | The systematic process of comparing an organization’s products, services and practices against those of competitor organizations or other industry leaders to determine what it is they do that allows them to achieve high levels of performance. |
| Benchmarks | The standards used as a basis for comparison or measurement. |
| Bereavement leave | An employer policy that provides a specific number of paid days off following the death of an employee’s spouse, parent, child, grandparent or in-law so that the employee may attend funeral proceedings, etc. |
| Best practices | Defined in a variety of ways, but typically refers to the practices of an organization that enables them to achieve superior organizational performance results. |
| Bidding | The practice of posting all job openings internally so that current employees may be allowed the opportunity to apply for vacant positions prior to the employer seeking qualified candidates through other external recruitment measures. |
| Bill of Rights | The stipulation under the Landrum-Griffin Act that provides union members with the explicit right to meet with other union members to discuss or express views on union business as well as safeguarding their rights to a fair trial and representation in matters regarding company disciplinary proceedings. |
| Binding arbitration | The law requires that collective bargaining agreements contain a negotiated grievance procedure that terminates in binding arbitration of unresolved grievances. |
| Bisexual | An individual physically, romantically, emotionally and/or spiritually attracted to men and women. Bisexuals need not have had equal sexual experience with both men and women, nor any sexual experience at all, to identify as bisexual. |
| Black | A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. |
| Blacklist | Refers to a list consisting of the names of employees who are considered problematic which is circulated among other employers. Employees whose names appear on such a list are often denied employment or fired from existing jobs. Blacklisting has been long ago deemed an unfair labor practice under the NLRA. |
| Blended workforce | A workforce is comprised of permanent full-time, part-time, temporary employees and independent contractors. |
| Blind ad | A job advertisement placed in a newspaper, trade journal/publication, magazine or Internet job board that contains no identifying information about the employer placing the ad. |
| Blocking | An National Labor Relations Board decision not to continue with an election in a bargaining unit when there are unresolved unfair labor practice charges. |
| Blood-Borne Pathogens Standard | An OSHA standard that sets forth requirements for employers with workers exposed to blood or other potentially infectious materials. In order to reduce or eliminate the hazards of occupational exposure, an employer must implement an exposure control plan for the worksite with details on employee protection measures. The plan must also describe how an employer will use a combination of engineering and work practice controls, ensure the use of personal protective clothing and equipment, provide training, medical surveillance, hepatitis B vaccinations, and signs and labels, among other provisions. Engineering controls are the primary means of eliminating or minimizing employee exposure and include the use of safer medical devices, such as needleless devices, shielded needle devices and plastic capillary tubes. |
| Blue collar workers | Hourly paid workers employed in occupations that require physical or manual labor. |
| Blue flu | The practice of a large group of uniformed law enforcement employees calling in sick on the same day(s) as an attempt to gain certain concessions from their employer without reverting to a formal labor strike. |
| Blue-collar worker | Hourly paid workers employed in occupations that require physical or manual labor. |
| Bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) | A very narrowly interpreted exception to EEO laws that allows employers to base employment decisions for a particular job on such factors as sex, religion or national origin, if they are able to demonstrate that such factors are an essential qualification for performing a particular job. |
| Bona-Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) | A defense allowing an employer to limit a particular job to members of one sex, religion, or national origin group. The courts have held that the statutory BFOQ provision in Title VII is a very narrow exception to the general prohibition against discrimination on the basis of those characteristics. In enforcing the Executive Order, OFCCP follows Title VII principles regarding the BFOQ exception. An employer claiming that sex is a BFOQ for a job must show that all or substantially all members of the excluded sex are incapable of performing the duties of the job and that failure to allow the exclusion would undermine the "essence" (i.e., the central purpose or mission) of the employer's business. Race cannot ever be a BFOQ for any job. |
| Bonus plan | An incentive pay plan which awards employees compensation, in addition to their base salary, for achieving individual or group performance and productivity goals. |
| Boulwareism | Named after the former Vice President of General Electric, Boulwareism is a term used to describe a bargaining strategy whereby an employer attempts to persuade employees that an offer or counter-offer is in their best interest and is not meant to be negotiated. |
| Boundaryless organization | Defined as an organization that removes roadblocks to maximize the flow of information throughout the organization. |
| Boycott | Used by employees and their union to gain certain concessions from an employer, a boycott is an organized refusal by employees and their labor union to deal with the employer. |
| Branding | The process of identifying and differentiating an organization’s products, processes or services from another organization by giving it a name, phrase or other mark. |
| Breach of contract | Occurring when an individual who is a party to a contract or agreement does not uphold or violates the terms of the contract. |
| Break-even analysis | A measure used to determine the approximate sales volume required to cover the costs associated with producing a particular product or service. |
| Broadbanding | A pay structure that consolidates a large number of narrower pay grades into fewer broad bands with wider salary ranges. |
| Buddy system | A form of employee orientation whereby a newly hired employee is assigned to another employee (typically within the same department) who shows the new employee the ropes, introduces him or her to coworkers, gives personal assistance and answers questions on an as-needed basis. |
| Budget | A numerical summary of an organization’s available resources and how those resources are to be allocated based on anticipated future expenditures for various items, such as equipment, training and development programs, benefits, implementing new processes or services, etc. |
| Bumping | The practice of allowing more senior level employees whose positions have been slotted for elimination or downsizing the option of accepting an alternative position within the organization, for which they may be qualified to perform and which is currently occupied by another employee with less seniority. |
| Burden of proof | The burden placed on an employer, as a result of a claim of discriminatory treatment, to provide a verifiable, legitimate and nondiscriminatory reason for any employment action taken which may have resulted in adverse treatment of a member(s) of a protected group. |
| Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) | The principal fact-finding agency for the federal government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics. The BLS is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes and disseminates essential statistical data to the American public, the U.S. Congress, other federal agencies, state and local governments, business and labor. BLS also serves as a statistical resource to the Department of Labor. |
| Burnout | Physical or emotional exhaustion, lack of motivation or decreased morale resulting from an individual being exposed to excessive or prolonged stress and frustration caused by personal problems, work pressures, financial difficulties, etc. |
| Bus code | A “bargaining unit status” code which is part of the six-digit number known to labor relations specialists as the LAIRS or OLMR number. |
| Business Agent | An officer of a local union whose job is to handle grievances, enforce contracts and perform other union related tasks. |
| Business continuity planning | Broadly defined as a management process that seeks to identify potential threats and impacts to the organization and provide a strategic and operational framework for ensuring the organization is able to withstand any disruption, interruption or loss to normal business functions or operation. |
| Business literacy | The knowledge and understanding of the financial, accounting, marketing and operational functions of an organization. |
| Business Necessity | An defense available when the employer has a criterion for selection that is facially neutral but which excludes members of one sex, race, national origin or religious group at a substantially higher rate than members of other groups (thus creating adverse impact). The employer must prove that its requirement having the adverse impact is job-related and consistent with business necessity. See Manual Section 7E08. |
| Business plan | A document that provides relevant information about a company by outlining items such as the company’s business description, market or industry, management, competitors, future prospects and growth potential, etc. |
| Bypass | Dealing directly with employees rather than with the exclusive representative regarding negotiable conditions of employment of bargaining unit employees. |