Teaching Human Resources

What about the People? Teaching Human Resources in 20 Hours.
By Laura Jacob, President Pro Way Development.

Although I’m not a magician, for my next trick, I’m going to try and impart the importance of a strategic human resources department over five Saturday mornings to students at the University of Bridgeport’s IDEAL (I N N O V A T I V E D E G R E E E X C E L L E N C E I N A C C E L E R A T E D L E A R N I N G) program, targeted to working adults completing their undergraduate degree, www.bridgeport.edu.

Employees are an organization’s most important asset, responsible for customer service, sales, new products, patents and more. Unlike machines, websites, or other tools employees want decent pay, good working condition and benefits. Most companies develop Human Resources Policies; however, employees bring unique needs, performance standards and expectations to their role.

Managers of a team need to balance the needs of a group vs. those of the individual which can be a struggle. The resolution of these issues is often left to the human resources department. Each person at work wants to be treated as an individual and yet letting them dictate working conditions, hours, and other aspects of work can lead to unfairness, squabbles, and worse, legal mayhem.

What does an HR Manager do? They represent the needs of employees to management and management’s needs to the employee. This sometimes high wire act is made more complex by ensuring adherence to changing Federal and State labor laws, the economy, and building a cohesive work culture. Complicating things further is the fact that there are now four generations of people working together!

Good HR departments ensure the smooth running of an organization. Great HR departments are the savvy executive’s right hand resource, having moved from an administrative role of “personnel” in the 20th century to that of a strategic business partner.

In Marcus Buckingham’s book “First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently,” he noted that:

“The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.”

The culture that is the basis for the relationship that Buckingham describes is also shaped by an organization’s HR practices.

So, can HR Management be taught in 20 hours for the non HR professional? That’s the challenge of professors across the country teaching the one class in HR that students may attend. While personnel departments developed out of necessity today’s HR leader may have studied human resources in one of many graduate programs as well as receiving certifications through the Society for HR Management, www.shrm.org.

Topics of my course range from past and current human resources management theories and practices, selection and placement, training and development, basic compensation and benefits, recruitment and retention, modern interviewing techniques, the role of social networking sites, and technology in the practice of human resources.

A good HR textbook is great but unlike a history, math, or finance textbook, a large part of textbook’s content is out of date the minute it is published. Therefore, HR is a skill that needs periodic refreshers. With the textbook as a base, the class will be supplemented with guest speakers who are experts in their area of HR, by case studies, and a real-world look at the current human resources practices of each student’s company.