Overview

Defines the terms used across the ISO 30400 family of human resource management standards, providing the common vocabulary on which the other HR standards depend.

ISO 30400:2022 defines terms used in human resource management standards. It is a vocabulary standard: it contains definitions rather than requirements or guidance, and its role is to ensure that the other documents produced by ISO/TC 260 use terminology consistently. The 2022 edition is the second edition and replaces ISO 30400:2016, which has been withdrawn.

Vocabulary standards are easy to overlook but they carry real weight in this family. Human resource management is a field where the same word carries different meanings across countries, sectors and HR software vendors — terms such as workforce, headcount, full-time equivalent, turnover, engagement, competence, human capital and talent are all used loosely in ordinary business language. When a standard such as ISO 30414 asks an organization to disclose a workforce metric, the number is only comparable if the underlying term means the same thing everywhere. ISO 30400 supplies that shared meaning.

Scope of the definitions. The standard covers terminology across the areas addressed by the ISO 30400 family, including terms relating to the workforce and its composition, human governance and human capital, recruitment and resourcing, competence and learning, performance, diversity and inclusion, and human capital measurement and reporting. Definitions are structured with notes to entry where a term's application differs by context or jurisdiction.

How it is used. ISO 30400 is normally read alongside whichever HR standard an organization is applying rather than on its own: ISO 30414 for human capital reporting and disclosure, ISO 30415 for diversity and inclusion, ISO 30409 for workforce planning, and the various ISO 30400-series technical specifications covering individual metric clusters. Organizations that build HR dashboards or feed workforce data into sustainability and ESG reporting commonly use it as the reference for their internal data dictionary, so that HR, finance and reporting functions agree on definitions before numbers are published.

Certification. Vocabulary standards are not certifiable and there is no audit or certification scheme against ISO 30400. It was last published in November 2022 and is subject to ISO's normal periodic review cycle.

Purpose

To define the terms used across ISO human resource management standards so that HR concepts and metrics are understood and applied consistently within and between organizations.

Key Benefits

• Consistent terminology across all ISO 30400-series HR standards
• Improves comparability of workforce metrics between organizations and jurisdictions
• Useful reference for building an internal HR data dictionary
• Reduces ambiguity between HR, finance and reporting functions
• Supports accurate implementation of ISO 30414 human capital disclosure
• Provides notes to entry clarifying context-dependent usage

Key Requirements

• Note: this is a vocabulary standard containing definitions, not requirements. Its content covers:
• Terms relating to the workforce and workforce composition
• Terms relating to human governance and human capital
• Terms relating to recruitment, resourcing and mobility
• Terms relating to competence, learning and development
• Terms relating to performance and productivity
• Terms relating to diversity and inclusion
• Terms relating to human capital measurement, reporting and disclosure

Who Needs This Standard?

HR analytics and reporting teams, organizations implementing ISO 30414 or ISO 30415, HR systems and HRIS implementers, ESG and sustainability reporting teams handling social metrics, and standards writers and consultants working in human resource management.

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