10 Most Useful Books for HR Managers
The HR industry is continuously evolving, and new perspectives and ideas appear every day. Books are the most accessible way of learning and maintaining a connection with your field of activity. Include on your reading list adjacent topics such as psychology, statistics, and personal development. Due to COVID-19, labor markets register dramatic changes, and you need to prepare yourself for a change in human resources management. Companies look for different sets of skills, online recruitment and onboarding become a necessity, and HR management has to adapt to the remote workforce. Amid the wave of changes, HR managers have to be more flexible, emphatic, and visionary.
Nowadays, HR managers do much more than administrating documents. They create the company’s culture, analyze human resource trends, make predictions, and improve employees’ work satisfaction, loyalty towards the company, and performance.
The following 10 books help you understand your workforce, boost morale, and future-proof your career for the post-pandemic work environment.
HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources by Dave Ulrich, Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank, Mike Ulrich
The inspiring book provides fundamental ideas and tools for developing a successful career in HR management. It’s full of examples, data, and studies but packed as enjoyable reading. Dave Ulrich is a renowned professor, speaker, author, and expert in HR management, famous for this broad approach to the HR industry. HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources links HR activities with business goals. An HR manager needs to have many roles, including Credible Activist, Capability Builder, Change Champion, Human Resource Integrator and Innovator, and Technology Proponent. The book underlines the importance of digital skills, prediction abilities, and efficiency.
Get a taste of the book by reading the first chapter, here.
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HR Disrupted: It’s time for something different by Lucy Adams
A book that speaks about finding a new direction is food for thought in a time of change. This book tries to answer many questions but, more importantly, to raise awareness. The world is changing.
How do you change the way you lead and support employees?
Lucy Adams focuses on three pillars: to treat employees like adults; to treat employees like we treat our customers; to treat employees as human beings. The book provides ideas and tools to help you start on a new path.
The best process in the world isn’t going to make someone a competent manager, so shoe-horning him into a procedure to make him give feedback to his team isn’t going to help. If someone is no good at managing then he shouldn’t be in a leadership role in the first place. — Lucy Adams.
Continue reading about Ten Effective Ways to Manage Employees Remotely.___
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
Laszlo Bock is the head of Google’s innovative People Operations. With such impressive background, his approach to hiring the best people and making sure they have a successful career path is always welcome. Like Lucy Adams, Laszlo Bock also insists on investing in personal development and treating the employees humanly and even friendly. Work Rules! offers valuable insights on how to learn from employees, be more transparent, use data for predictions, and be closer to the employees than to managers.
“We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It’s not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.” — Laszlo Bock
Here is a podcast hosted by LSE Department of Management with Laszlo Bock on Insights from Inside Google that Will Transform How you Live and Lead
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First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
This book is just one of the many books Marcus Buckingham wrote on subjects such as work, leadership, management, and being successful. He and Curt Coffman studied more than 80000 managers to see what they do to be successful. Reading this book, you’ll find out their conclusions and practical lessons for managers at any level. It seems that successful managers are unconventional, aware of their position, emphatic. They focus on the outcome, performance measurements, and building solid connections. Furthermore, they treat each employee as an individual, take time to get to know their workforce, and give each employee the correct role. Learning from real managers is a very practical and straightforward method.
Here is Markus discussed about the ritual every excelent manager conceives with every 1 on 1 weekly with their people, and more specific: Frequent strength based based checkins about near term future work.
TIP: We have some a new article on 12 Key People Management Skills That Will Make You Shine in 2021, check it out. ___
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman focuses on the human mind and presents exquisite insights into how we think and make decisions. While it may seem that this isn’t a book for an HR manager, it helps you more than you think. Daniel Kahneman explains the two systems that drive the way we think. Amid examples, studies, and research, you’ll find solutions for many HR issues: bad decisions based on intuition, classifying people based on our previous experiences; cognitive biases; overconfidence in corporate strategies. The book is full of demonstrations in which the readers can find themselves. And if you reach the point where you observe how you behave, you’re on the right track.
Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. Listen to him speaking about his work.
If you plan to become a better team manager, we present ten bullet-proof team management tips. ___
The School of Life, An Emotional Education by The School of Life and Alain de Botton
An HR manager needs more than technical and administrative skills. If you want to understand your employees and respond rather than react, this book is for you.
The HR industry lacks emotional intelligence, and employees don’t feel acknowledged and understood. As a result, they lack confidence, responsibility, and performance. Alain de Botton is a writer and philosopher who speaks openly about our non-existing education in human emotions. After reading this book, you’ll be more efficient, empathic, and resilient, and better at communication and growing relationships.
“Being properly mature involves a frank, unfrightened relationship with one’s own darkness, complexity and ambition. It involves accepting that not everything that makes us happy will please others or be honoured as especially ‘nice’, but it can be important to explore and hold on to it nevertheless.”
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How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This is a classic book, first published in 1936 and sold in over 15 million copies. Dale Carnegie put in this book six ways to make people like you, 12 ways to make them think like you, and nine ways to change them without upsetting them. Along the way, this book helped many people find success because it provides a simple recipe. But you have to filter the formula through your principles and take it with a grain of salt. As an HR manager, you need social skills. Not to impose your point of view but to make everyone feel included and safe. You need to cultivate honest relationships, avoid bias, and give everyone the same chances.
Here is a general perspective on what you will learn by reading this book, according to Wikipedia:
- Get you out of a mental rut, give you new thoughts, new visions, new ambitions.
- Enable you to make friends quickly and easily.
- Increase your popularity.
- Help you to win people to your way of thinking.
- Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done.
- Enable you to win new clients, new customers.
- Increase your earning power.
- Make you a better salesman, a better executive.
- Help you to handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant.
- Make you a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist.
- Make the principles of psychology easy for you to apply in your daily contacts.
- Help you to arouse enthusiasm among your associates.
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Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy by Andy Headworth
Hiring the best people means more than finding people with the required skills. It means finding people that fit a specific team and will be happy in your company. Social media gives you a different perspective and valuable insights.
Andy Headworth covers in his book everything you need to know about the relationship between social media and recruitment. You’ll find tips on building your strategy, what HR procedures you need to follow, and how to use data and technology to your advantage. Social media is a massive factor in the future work environment.
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Hiring for Attitude: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting and Selecting People with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude by Mark Murphy
Top leadership strategist Mark Murphy believes that attitude is sometimes more important than skills. This book focuses on why new employees fail and help you hire the right people based on your company’s culture. You’ll find practical tips for conducting an interview, the most common mistakes HR managers make, and how a single employee can ruin the energy of an entire team. Based on case studies and aptitude tests, this book will make a difference in any company, small or large.
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The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
Habits may be the source of your company’s success or failure. The New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg explains in this book everything you should know about habits. And understanding human nature is vital for an HR manager. You’ll learn why some companies struggle to change, how the proper habits can lead people to success, and how you can change your habits. The book showcases that habits are crucial to becoming more productive, building successful companies, and creating robust relationships.
In case you haven’t read this bestseller yet, here is an animated book summary to get you started.
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Conclusion
You can find a long list of books for HR managers. Some are more technical, others more philosophical. Some are business-oriented, others are people-oriented. There isn’t a single recipe or book that can teach you everything you need to know. Moreover, the HR industry has to adapt to society’s evolution and keep up with labor markets. It’s a puzzle you need to solve by yourself. As Carlos Ruiz Zafón once said, “Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
