People and workplaces
Employees and management
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white-collar workers
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manual/blue-collar workers
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The people who work for a company, all the people on its payroll, are its employees, personnel, staff, workers or workforce. But these words can mean just the people carrying out the work of a company, rather than those leading it and organizing it: the management.
Note: Workforce, work-force and work force are all possible.
Management and administration
A company's activities may be spread over different sites. A company's most senior managers usually work in its head office or headquarters (HQ). Some managers have their own individual offices, but in many businesses, most employees work in open-plan offices: large areas where many people work together. Administration or, informally, admin, the everyday work supporting a company's activities, is often done in offices like these by administrative staff or support staff. For example, those giving technical help to buyers of the company's products are in technical support.
An open-plan office
Labour
Labour is spelled labor in AmE. Labor unions, organizations defending the interests of workers (AmE) are called trade unions in BrE.
When workers are not happy with pay or conditions, they may take industrial action:
■   a strike, stoppage or walk-out: workers stop working for a time.
■   a go-slow: workers continue to work, but more slowly than usual.
■   an overtime ban: workers refuse to work more than the normal number of hours.
Personnel and human resources
In larger organizations there is a human resources department (HRD) that deals with pay, recruitment, etc. This area is called human resources (HR) or human resource management (HRM). Another name for this department is the personnel department.
20                    Business Vocabulary in Use