HR Front End – "letter icons"

When I log in and view the employees table there are four icons in the top near the “add new employee” button the letters; “A N S M”? What are these for and do they do anything? I can see the class is “letter icons” but they are not clickable and never change. I thought perhaps they were random employee initials but we don’t have any employees with those initials.

They also show up on the grid under departments and again have no functionality. Can you please tell me what these are for.

thanks,
-brad