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GLOSSARY


Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a popular group ideation technique that relies on spontaneous, unfiltered creativity. The basic idea of training the human brain to trigger a "storm of ideas" and put them on paper as uncensored as possible was first formulated in 1939 by the American author Alex F. Osborn and further developed by management theorist Charles Hutchison Clark. The method of brainstorming aims at the fast and unfiltered collection of ideas, for example by asking the participants to simply 'throw their ideas into the room'.


Business Plan

The business plan is a comprehensive and structured presentation of your business idea and describes how you want to turn it into reality. It represents a roadmap for your business start-up and future business development.


Checklist

Written enumeration of characteristics that comprehensively describe an object. Checklists are intended to prevent the forgetting or accidental or deliberate ignorance of partial aspects. The lists do not place high demands on the user and are therefore often used in practice, e.g. in material tests or in project work.


Competences

Competence is the ability to combine knowledge and skills in such a way that job-related tasks that are self-employed in accordance with the requirements, are to be managed independently and according to the situation. Competent people are characterized by the fact that based on knowledge, skills and abilities also in new, open, unmanageable and dynamic situations to act self-organized and goal-oriented.


Corporate culture

Corporate culture refers to all prevailing values, norms and attitudes that determine decisions, actions and behaviors within a company. It influences how a company works, how structures are built and how the members of the organization communicate and collaborate with each other. The corporate culture consists of behavior acquired over the years, unwritten rules, attitudes and manners. These influence everyday business life partly consciously, but unconsciously. An organization functions almost like a small-scale society. The corporate culture includes accepted and daily applied social rules. It shapes both how it feels to be part of this society and how the company looks to the outside world.


Employee appraisal

The employee appraisal is a fundamental and enormously important instrument of personnel management. In practice, the term employee appraisal often has different meanings. On the one hand, the employee appraisal includes all interviews that take place at regular but also irregular intervals between the supervisor and the employee with event-related content. On the other hand, in some companies, the term employee appraisal is only understood as the annual appraisal. If the employee appraisal takes place on paper, this is often based on personnel forms and guidelines, which are also subsequently used for the structure and structure of the interview.


Employer attractiveness

Employer attractiveness or the attraction of an organization for the employer. It provides companies with benefits in the form of the opportunity to provide themselves at any time on the labour market with suitable forces for covering vacancies or realizing growth strategies.


Enterprise

A company or an enterprise is an economic association of persons who give themselves a legal form and develop products or services from resources for the purpose of achieving turnover and profit. Companies and firms can consist of one person, but also take on global proportions. In most cases, however, a distinction is made between self-employed and freelancers and the real companies, which have structures and processes of a company and employ several people.


Entrepreneurship

The term entrepreneurship - start-up scene or start-up culture- deals as an economic sub-discipline with the founding process or the founding of new organizations as a reaction to identified opportunities and as an expression of specific founder personalities who bear a personal capital risk. Entrepreneur was a term for a military leader in French since the 16th century. Thus, in the 18th century, it was B. F. de Belister who first named a person who sells goods at the contracted price and tries to buy them as cheaply as possible (so-called arbitrage, e.g. in contrast to later definitions a risk-free business). A start-up is an early and temporary development phase of an innovative company that claims to present a scalable business model, e.g. to grow to a greater extent.


Healthy workplace

It is not workplaces that are healthy (or unhealthy), but people in workplaces are healthy (or sick). For this reason, employees should be involved and advised in setting up their workplace. In this sense, the workplace does not only include the technical equipment, but the entire psycho-social working environment - from the office chair to the activity and the cooperation context to the balance of work and private life.


Knowledge

Knowledge is the term for information collected through the interpretation of experience. Knowledge builds up through interaction with the world and is ordered and stored in the mind of everyone. It is also stored in the organizational area in the minds of employees, on paper and in electronic systems. Two forms of knowledge can be distinguished: 1. Implicit knowledge that is unconsciously present in a person's mind without having to be put into words. 2. Explicit knowledge that can be shared with others and recorded in written documents and procedures


Leadership style

Leadership styles refer to the behavior of executives towards employees in subordinate positions. The leadership style says a lot about the corporate culture and the image of people in a company. In times of a shortage of skilled workers, well-managed employees are an important indicator of a well-managed company. Therefore, more companies are trying to retain employees with flexible working hours, fringe benefits, a balanced work-life balance, etc.


Labour risks prevention

In occupational health and safety and in the context of labour risk prevention hazard refers to any source of a work-related accident or a work-related health impairment. This refers to the effects of harmful substances, energies and the stresses that have a detrimental effect on the worker from the working environment. Such hazards are caused by various causes. The German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health mentions: deficiencies in the design of the workplace regarding the workplace, workplace itself, work equipment (machines, tools), working materials, physical, chemical and biological influences, defects in personal protective equipment due to selection, use or damage, deficiencies in work organisation and deficiencies in the qualification and competence of the worker.


Meetings

A meeting, also known as a conference, is a meeting of two or more people for a specific reason. Meetings are convened for a variety of reasons, including planning, decision-making, problem solving, communication or exchange of information. It can be informal, such as when multiple people meet to exchange ideas, or formally, when accurate procedures are followed. Formal meetings are chaired by a chairperson and follow an agenda that has been set in advance, the reports are recorded in the minutes. Some meetings, such as board meetings and annual general meetings, are subject to legal requirements and take place regularly.


Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the conscious perception and the experience of the current moment and with everything that goes with it: thoughts, emotions, sensory impressions, physical processes and everything – simply everything that happens around you and falls into your perception. An important aspect: There is no evaluation during mindful experience. They only perceive without categorizing, classifying or evaluating according to good and bad.


Motivation

Motivation is an inner drive that enables people to take on a task with commitment and, at best, to pursue it until the goal is achieved. Motivation arises when several factors come together – important are, for example, basic interest in the task, prospect of a sense of achievement and a positive climate that encourages people to pursue the matter even if there are hurdles and difficulties.


Management

Management is the use of personal skills to identification and achievement of organizational goals using appropriate resources. Management also includes recognizing what needs to be done, organising resources, and helping employees accomplish the tasks required


Office workplace

The office workplace is a workplace where information is generated, processed and evaluated, received and forwarded. Primarily, these are planning, development, project, consulting, management, administrative or communication activities and these tasks supporting functions.


Onboarding

Onboarding (shortened from "taking on board") is a term from human resources management. It refers to the hiring (or recruitment) and admission of new employees by a company and, above all, all measures that promote integration. The opposite is offboarding.


Productivity

Productivity is a measure of the performance of the production factors labour and capital. In general terms, productivity represents the ratio of production quantity (output) and factor input (input). Depending on which factor of production is considered, one obtains either labour productivity, capital productivity or total factor productivity from labour and capital. In the long term, capital productivity has fallen and labour productivity has risen sharply. The main contributor to this development is the fact that employees are working with increasingly powerful machines at their workplaces.


Problem solving

Problem solving is the successful completion a task for which there was still no solution.


Remote work

Mobile or remote working is a form of location-independent work. Employees who work mobile do not have a fixed workplace – neither in the office nor at home. They perform without the workplace being predetermined. So they can just as well work from a café, a co-working space or a park.


Risk assessment

As a central element of occupational health and safety, risk assessment includes the systematic assessment of the hazards and stresses associated with their work for employees. It thus forms an essential basis for the derivation of targeted occupational health and safety measures.


Self – assessment

Self-assessment is the ability to realistically assess oneself – essential character traits, strengths, weaknesses, key qualifications and competences. The counterpart to self-assessment is the external assessment by third parties – teachers, examiners, superiors.


Stress

Behind the phenomenon of stress is initially a harmless, but vital mechanism that the brain triggers and that prepares the body for a threat. It adjusts the body to fight or flee. What used to be vital for survival now benefits you in challenging situations. The stress stimulates cause stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, to rise in the blood within a brief time. Once the situation is over, the tension and excitement subside. Recovery and balancing phases follow. Although stress reactions only burden the body for a brief time, attention increases as a result. Senses are sharpened and top performance is possible. The stress response not only increases performance, but also releases happiness hormones and strengthens self-confidence. In these situations, the stress is perceived as strengthening. Therefore, there is often talk of eustress, the positive stress. The opposite of eustress is distress, the negative stress. It is long-lasting and chronic, thereby having a negative effect on mental and physical health. With constant stress, the body remains on alert – or in other words – in escape mode. As a result, stress-related hormones in the blood and blood pressure remain high and no longer reach normal levels.


SME

The term SME covers micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The Federal Statistical Office defines SMEs by turnover and employment size classes based on recommendation (2003/361/EC) of the European Commission. Size class Persons in employment Annual turnover Small enterprises up to 9 and up to EUR 2 million Small enterprises to 49 and up to EUR 10 million Medium enterprises to 249 and up to EUR 50 million Large enterprises over 249 or over EUR 50 million


Safety

Occupational safety or safety at work is the safety of employees at work, e.g. the control and minimization of risks to their safety and health. It is therefore an integral part of occupational health and safety within the meaning of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, which takes measures to prevent accidents at work and work-related health hazards.


Team

A (temporarily closed) group of people who have a common identity, pursue a common goal for a certain period and do so on their own responsibility, mutual consent and of their own free will.


Teamwork

Teamwork is an intensive and active form of collaboration between individuals in a team or working group. The team consists of at least two people. Communication between team members and mutual support are central processes in teamwork. In contrast to group work, in which the focus is on the processing of individual subtasks, the focus of teamwork is increasingly on the exchange relationship. This usually lasts for a longer period. The team pursues a common goal and takes joint responsibility for the achievement of goals.


Team building

Team building is the selection and bringing together of different people as well as the development of skills within the group that are needed to achieve agreed goals. It is therefore the phase and the planning of the team composition meant. A well-thought-out team building should rely on team members with different qualifications so that all tasks can be managed with the necessary knowledge. Another goal is a good working atmosphere created by the assembled members, which increases productivity.


Traffic light system

The traffic light system is used to make an easy and quick classification of the answers. The users of the instrument are asked to tick according to the traffic light system which statements apply to the company (green), which partially apply (blue) and which are not true (red). In this way, it is immediately apparent where there is a need for action in the company to improve the ability to work.


Talent management

This refers to internally and externally directed strategies, methods and measures with which a company ensures that the key positions critical to business success are filled with the right employees: the goal-oriented action to discover, attract, develop, promote, optimally position and retain talent.


Work sessions

Working session where several people work on a topic or problem


Work Ability Index (WAI)

The Work Ability Index (WAI) is used to assess a person's individual workability in a particular job. The instrument considers above all the subjective assessment of the interviewee. The result shows how urgently action is needed overall in the areas of individual health, competence/knowledge of the employee, working environment and leadership/management. The WAI was developed in the 1980s by an interdisciplinary team of occupational physicians, psychologists and sports scientists at the Finish Institute of Occupational Health and has now been translated into about twenty-five languages. It is used worldwide (Europe, Australia, North and South America) both in occupational health work and in research projects.


Workability

The term workability includes individual aspects such as health and competencies as well as company- or work-specific aspects such as working conditions and leadership and corporate culture. It therefore describes not only the individual requirements of a person to meet the work requirements that arise, but also the operational conditions - both aspects are equally covered in the concept of workability. Workability thus means a balanced balance between the requirements of work or a workplace on the one hand and the aspects of health (individual), competence (individual), working conditions (company-specific) and corporate culture (company-specific) on the other.


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