| Word | Description |
| Icebreaker | A beginning exercise, game or simulation used as a means to reduce tension and create a more relaxed atmosphere during training programs. |
| Identity theft | Regulated by federal and state statutes, identity theft occurs when a person fraudulently obtains and uses another person's personal information, such as name, Social Security number, credit card number, etc., without that person’s authorization, consent or knowledge. |
| Illegal immigrant/alien | An individual who is not a U.S. citizen and who has entered the United States without proper documentation and without complying with legally required U.S. immigration and naturalization procedures. |
| Illegal strike | A strike that is called in violation of the law, such as a strike that ignores "cooling off" restrictions, or a strike that disregards a "no strike" agreement signed by the union or imposed by a court of law. |
| Illegal subject of bargaining | Proposal that is illegal, such as for wage rates that are below the minimum wage law or for overtime provisions contrary to the Fair Labor Standards Act, or for a closed shop, etc.. |
| Image consulting | The practice of counseling and advising individuals regarding items such as personal appearance, dress, manner of speaking or style. |
| Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) | Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the largest investigative branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The agency was created after 9/11, by combining the law enforcement arms of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the former U.S. Customs Service, to more effectively enforce our immigration and customs laws and to protect the United States against terrorist attacks. ICE does this by targeting illegal immigrants: the people, money and materials that support terrorism and other criminal activities. ICE is a key component of the DHS “layered defense” approach to protecting the nation. |
| Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 | The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) prohibits the employment of individuals who are not legally authorized to work in the United States or in an employment classification that they are not authorized to fill. The IRCA requires employers to certify (using the I-9 form) within three days of employment the identity and eligibility to work of all employees hired. IRCA also prohibits discrimination in employment-related matters on the basis of national origin or citizenship. |
| Impact and implementation bargaining | A statutory right of the union under 5 U.S.C. 7106(b)(2) to negotiate on the procedures use to implement management decisions made under 5 U.S.C. 7106(a). |
| Impact bargaining | Refers to labor-management negotiations over the particular effects of an employers decisions. |
| Impact ratio | Selection rate, for an employment opportunity, for a group of people in a protected class, divided by the selection rate for the group with the highest selection rate. For an adverse employment situation, the impact ratio is the rate of the group with the lowest rate divided by the rate of the group in question. Impact ratios are compared to the 80 percent rule to determine adverse impact. |
| Impact Ratio Analysis | The Impact Ratio Analysis (IRA) is a comparison of the selection rates of different groups from an identified candidate pool. If the selection rate for one group is less than 80% of that for another, the IRA is considered adverse. |
| Impairment | A physical or mental condition resulting from injury or illness, which diminishes an individual’s faculties such as ability to hear, see, walk, talk, etc. |
| Impartial umpire | A term applied to a permanent arbitrator who has been mutually chosen by management and the union to serve for the life of the contract. |
| Impasse | Deadlock in good faith negotiations. Where one party engages in bad faith bargaining, a true impasse cannot be reached. |
| Impatriate | Foreign nationals who are hired by U.S. employers under the H1-B visa program to fill highly skilled vacancies due to a labor shortage of skilled U.S. applicants. |
| Implementation | A very rare procedure in which an employer imposes its last offer on all terms and conditions of employment. |
| Improper practice | The term used to describe an unfair labor practice in the public sector. |
| In-company/in-house counseling | An EAP program which is conducted by a trained professional counselor hired as an employee by the employer to handle all aspects of the company’s EAP. |
| Incentive pay | Additional compensation used to motivate and reward employees for exceeding performance or productivity goals. |
| Incentive pay plan | A plan providing additional compensation intended to serve as an incentive for excellent performance, exceeding productivity goals or standards, as well as other contributions in accordance with prescribed goals or standards. |
| Incentive stock option | An employee stock option plan that allows options to be granted or exercised on a tax-deferred basis. All gains on options are taxed only when the holder sells the stock. |
| Incidence rate | Indicates the number of workplace injuries/illnesses and the number of lost work days per 100 employees. |
| Inclusion | Ensuring that all of organizational talent is valued, treated fairly and respectfully, and is fully utilized in a way that enables the organization to succeed. It also means ensuring that everyone has equal access to opportunities and resources. |
| Independent contractor | A self-employed individual who performs a service for an employer under an express or implied agreement and who is not subject to the employer's control, or right to control, regarding the method and means in which the service is performed. |
| Independent union | Independent unions represent the employees of a single employer and are not affiliated with an international union or the AFL-CIO. They may be more effective in representing local interests of the employees, but may have less bargaining power than affiliated locals who may act in concert with other locals. |
| Indirect compensation | Compensation that is not paid directly to an employee and is calculated in addition to base salary and incentive pay (i.e., health/dental/vision insurance, vacation, retirement benefits, educational benefits, relocation expenses, etc.). |
| Indirect costs | Expenses, such as fringe benefits, overhead, utilities, rent or equipment, that have been incurred for the purpose of common general activities and cannot be identified or charged directly to the production of a specific project. |
| Indirect labor | Used to define labor that is necessary to support the manufacturing of a product, but is not directly involved with the actual process of manufacturing the product. |
| Individual with Handicaps | Any person who: (a) has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more of such person's major life activities; (b) has a record of such an impairment; or (c) is regarded as having such an impairment. This definition does not include an individual currently engaging in the illegal use of drugs, when the contractor acts on the basis of such use. This definition does not include an individual who is an alcoholic whose current abuse of alcohol prevents such individual from performing the duties of the job in question, or whose employment, by reason of such current alcohol abuse, would constitute a direct threat to property or safety of others. The term "individual with handicaps" is used interchangeably with "individual with a disability" and "handicapped individual." |
| Induction program | Programs designed to introduce and acclimate newly hired employees into the organization. |
| Industrial democracy | The involvement and empowerment of employees in decision-making within the organization by such methods as joint labor-management committees, work teams, quality circles, employee task forces, etc. |
| Industrial psychology | Applied psychology concerned with the study of human behavior in the workplace and how to efficiently manage an industrial labor force and problems encountered by employees. |
| Industrial rehabilitation | Programs designed to get employees who have been injured on the job back into the workforce and off workers’ compensation. |
| Industrial union | An industrial union is one which, for organizational purposes, includes all workers in a particular industry regardless of whether they are skilled or unskilled. |
| Industry wide bargaining | Multiemployer bargaining that results in the negotiation of one master contract for all employees within a particular industry by one or more unions representing workers throughout the entire industry.. |
| Inflation | An increase in the price of goods and services that is representative of the economy in its entirety. |
| Information picketing | A type of picketing done with the express intent not to cause a work stoppage, but to publicize either the existence of a labor dispute or information concerning the dispute. |
| Informed consent | An individual’s agreement to allow something to transpire subsequent to the individual having been informed of associated risks involved and alternatives. |
| Initiation fees | The fees an employee is required to pay a union upon becoming a member of the union. |
| Injunction | A court-issued order requiring a party to either do or refrain from doing a certain act. |
| Injunctive Relief | A court order requiring a person to perform, or to refrain from performing, a designated act. For example, in an enforcement action OFCCP might seek the injunctive relief of requiring that the contractor cease asking discriminatory questions on its job application. |
| Inpatriate | These foreign national employees have been transferred to work in the home country of an international organization on a temporary or permanent basis. |
| Inplacement counseling | A form of employee counseling geared toward acclimating recently promoted or transferred employees into their new positions or providing current employees guidance on the steps they need to take to be considered for promotion or transfer to alternative positions. |
| Insourcing | Refers to the process of internally administering employee benefit plans or other programs, as opposed to utilizing the services of a third-party provider. |
| Instructor-to-trainee ratio | The maximum number of trainees assigned per trainer. |
| Insubordination | The willful or repeated disobedience to an order or directive from a higher level manager or superior to a subordinate. |
| Intangible rewards | Nonmonetary reinforcing, such as praise, given to an employee in recognition of a job well done or a particular achievement. |
| Integrity testing | A pre-employment psychological assessment tool used to gauge an applicant’s honesty. |
| Intellectual property | Property which is protected under federal law, including trade secrets, confidential or proprietary information, copyrightable or creative works, ideas, patents or inventions. |
| Intelligence quotient (IQ) | The measure of an individual’s cognitive abilities, as measured by an intelligence test. |
| Interest | In interest-based negotiations, refers to the concerns, needs, or desires behind a particular issue. |
| Interest arbitration | An adjudication process uses to resolve impasses in contract negotiations. |
| Interest-based negotiations | A bargaining technique in which the parties start with interests rather than proposals; agree on criteria of acceptability that will be used to evaluate alternatives; generate several alternatives that are consistent with their interests, and apply the agreed-upon acceptability criteria to the alternatives so generated in order to arrive at mutually acceptable contract provisions. |
| Intermittent/reduced schedule leave | Under FMLA, intermittent and reduced schedule leave is used to describe leave that is not taken on a consecutive basis but rather taken in increments of days or hours. |
| Internal audit | The process of conducting an in-house examination of one or more of an organization’s processes, functions, programs, etc. |
| Internal disputes plan | A plan implemented by the AFL-CIO for resolving disputes among its affiliated members. |
| Internal equity | A term used to refer to employees’ perceived fairness of a company’s pay structure as it relates to their responsibilities, compensation, benefits, and working conditions compared with those of other employees in similar or like positions. |
| Internal recruitment | The practice of assessing the employer’s current workforce to determine whether or not current employees possess the required skills or qualifications to fill specific vacancies either through promotion or transfer. |
| Internal Review Procedure | An internal procedure of contractors capable of resolving discrimination complaints. By regulation OFCCP allows contractors 60 days to attempt to resolve internally a complaint of employment discrimination made by an employee who is an individual with handicaps, a special disabled veteran or a veteran of the Vietnam era. |
| Internal security practices | A right reserved to management by title 5, United States Code, section 7106(a)(1). The right to determine the internal security practices of an agency isn't limited to establishing "those policies and actions which are part of the Agency's plan to secure or safeguard its physical property against internal and external risks, to prevent improper or unauthorized disclosure of information, or to prevent the disruption of the Agency's activities. |
| Internal temporary pool employee | A pool of former employees who are called upon and hired to fill temporary staffing needs on an as-needed basis. |
| International Labor Organization (ILO) | A specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labor issues. |
| International representative | An officer of an international union who has been appointed by the union’s executive board to serve as a liaison between the national or international level of the union and locals. |
| International union | The national organization of a labor union. |
| Internship | A partnership between an organization and an educational institution, whereby students are hired by an employer for a specified period of time into a professional or technical position that correlates with their area of study in order to provide them with hands-on experience and prepare them for the workforce. |
| Interpersonal communications | Refers to the process of communicating with another person or group to express feelings, thoughts or information by means of physical gestures or verbal exchanges. |
| Interpretive Guidelines on Sexual Harassment | EEOC issued guidelines defining sexual harassment and the employer’s responsibility for maintaining a workplace environment which is free from sexual harassment or intimidation. |
| Intersectional discrimination | Discrimination not just because of one protected trait (e.g., race), but also because of the intersection of two or more protected bases (e.g., race and sex), i.e., Title VII prohibits discrimination against African American women even if the employer does not discriminate against White women or African American men |
| Intervention | The action taken by a competing labor union to place itself as a contender on the ballot for a recognition election originally initiated by another union. |
| Interview | Used during the selection process, an interview is a face-to-face meeting with an individual or group, which involves asking questions to elicit information from the applicant to determine whether or not an applicant is suitable for a position of employment. |
| Interview to offer ratio | The ratio of the numbers of individuals interviewed to actual offers extended. |
| Intrinsic reward | Refers to an outcome received by an individual as a result of engaging in a particular activity (i.e. a job well done) and for which there is no observable external or monetary incentives. |
| Investigatory examination | An examination conducted by an agency representative in which an employee is questioned as part of an inquiry to get facts. |
| Invitation to Self Identify | An invitation by the contractor, extended to employees and applicants for employment, to identify themselves as individuals with handicaps or special disabled or Vietnam era veterans for purposes of Section 503 or 38 U.S.C. �4212 in order to permit the contractor to make reasonable accommodation and take affirmative action on their behalf. All information obtained in response to such an invitation shall be kept confidential in accordance with 41 CFR 60-741.5(c)(1) or 60-250.5(d). |
| Invitation to self-identify | An invitation by an employer extended to all employees who believe they are covered by Section 402 or 503 to identify themselves as having a disability, being a disabled veteran, a Vietnam-era veteran or other eligible veteran for purposes of making reasonable accommodation and taking affirmative action. Applicants may no longer be asked to self-identify prior to an offer of employment being extended to them by the employer. |
| ISO 9000 | Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), it is a set of standards for quality management systems that is accepted around the world. Organizations that conform to these standards can receive ISO 9000 certification. The standard intended for quality management system assessment and registration is ISO 9001. The standards apply uniformly to organizations of any size or description. |