7 Best HR Books for HR Professionals
If you want to evolve and become a HR professional of the future, then the 7 books listed below will take you there.
Every year in the world of HR, new technologies, practices, ways of working, trends, and developments are made. As HR professionals, we not only have to keep up to date with all the developments, but we need to position ourselves to be experts and take what we know and apply it to our respective companies.
If you read and master the books below, you will be well equipped and able to be the HR professional that drives and takes your organization into the future.
Work Rules! Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live And Lead
Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives
HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources
The New HR Analytics: Predicting the Economic Value of Your Company's Human Capital Investments
California Employment Law: An Employer's Guide: Revised & Updated for 2019 or SHRM Essential Guide to Employment Law
If you do a search for books HR professionals should read and this book is not on that list, do not waste your time on that site. This book was revolutionary.
In this book Lazlo Bock describes the epitome of a HR department and the mindset that HR professionals need to have to get there. This books showcases the power of HR analytics and the power of experimentation. This book will not only inspire you but it will impart upon you a future oriented perspective of HR.
"Every office, every team, every project is an opportunity to run an experiment and learn form it."
This book will help you become a strategic HR partner to your clients and organization.It focuses on how HR can contribute strategically to the business and measure its strategic impact. The authors hit on what I call the strategic alignment of human capital. They explain that HR needs to help drive the strategy of the organization further by adding value. This is not your parent's HR, where HR just did whatever made employees happy. No, this is the HR that is designing measurement systems and testing hypotheses regarding employee behavior, customer satisfaction, and lining it to sales, and the company's financial performance.
This book will show you that HR is vital strategic partner in any business and it will also help you be and function as that strategic partner by teaching you what strategic HR is all about.
"Strategy implementation, rather than strategy content, differentiates successful from unsuccessful firms . . . The linchpin of successful strategy implementation is a strategically focused workforce, which we consider the ultimate HR performance driver."
The future of work is knowledge work. Knowledge workers utilize their ideas and collaboration to drive businesses forward. This is the Intelligence age. The knowledge that a person possesses and his or her ability and willingness to share that knowledge is where value is created in organizations today.
However, for knowledge workers to be effective in coming up with ideas, sharing them, and voicing opposing opinions and thoughts, psychological safety must exist. If psychological safety does not exist, then creativity, continuous improvement, and progress are stifled.
This book will not only show you organizations benefit from being psychological safe. It will provide you with a roadmap to get there.
"The fearless organization is one in which interpersonal fear is minimized so that team and organizational performance can be maximized in a knowledge intensive world. It is not one devoid of anxiety about the future!"
For HR to be a strategic partner it must provide insight and improve decision making. This is the evolution of HR.
It requires not only that HR professionals be able to gather data, measure it, and analyze it but be able to draw strategic insights that further an organization's strategy, create organizational change, and increase organizational effectiveness.
This book will teach you how to build and use human capital measurement systems with powerful and logical frameworks that help leaders understand the connection between human capital and organizational success.It will help you move from being a counter to being an influencer in your organization.
At times this book delves into some very technical. It uses a number of equations and statistics. But the logical frameworks and the thought process it uses to analyze situations will make you a better HR professional.
"Business leaders inside and outside of the HR profession need more rigorous, logical, and principles-based framework for understanding the connections between human capital and organization success . . . [they are also] often unaware of existing scientifically supported ways to measure and evaluate the implications of decision about human resources."
I have harped on it again and again. This book just puts a bow on it. HR professionals of the future are a new breed from the past.
This book will help you understand the competencies and mindset that is required to take HR into the future. This book exemplifies and explains the following shifts in thought in HR:
From Individuals to Organizations - HR must think in more holistic terms. It must go from thinking how can I can help this person better communicate to how can I increase collaboration and create a psychologically safe space for the team.
From People to Business - Traditionally, HR professionals were thought of as people who "liked people". However, today must have knowledge of the business and be business literate. They must be able to make tradeoffs and decide what is not only right for the people but what is right for the business.
From Events to Programs - Too often some leader or someone in HR will clamor to commence with diversity training. However, as any adept HR professional knows, "The positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two, and a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash." Rather than thinking one and done, HR professionals must have a long-term and reiterative view of things.
From Past to Future - There are lessons to be learned from the past so we do not repeat it and knowledge to be gained. However, HR must have the future in sight and be pushing the organization forward along it strategic journey to its future state.
From Administrative to Strategy - This is not the HR your parents had. HR does not simply hire and fire people or just handle your benefits. To truly be strategic HR professionals must master being strategy interpreters and facilitators.
The insights in this book are amazing. If you want to learn what is and should be demanded from HR and want practical ideas on how HR and HR professionals can get there, then this book is for you.
HR analytics is a movement that is empowering leaders and organizations to "Manage tomorrow, today". Predictive capabilities have been employed and developed in almost every part of business. HR is no exception.
This book will help you understand and build the predictive capability of your HR department. Too often are leaders assuming that an initiative, training, or project will have value without offering any supporting data. This book will help you bring these issues to the surface and explain how predictive analytics can make a difference in your company. It contains a consortium of thought leaders and their perspectives on the future of analytics in HR.
"The next generation of human resources leaders are being introduced to 'analytical thinking' as a key competency . . . As the benefits of good analytics prevail, there will be no turning back! Better tools. Better decisions. Better organizations."
7. California Employment Law: An Employer's Guide: Revised & Updated for 2019 or SHRM Essential Guide to Employment Law
Last but certainly not least, I recommend that you pick up a copy of one of the two. If you are in California, then I definitely recommend California Employ Law. But if not, SHRMs guide will do.
But more often than not, if you are up to date on what California requires and their practices, you will be fine in your own locale.
We live in a litigious world and HR professionals must have a solid understanding and ability to navigate an increasingly complex legal landscape.
Having these books readily available on your bookshelf or Kindle and a firm grasp of their ideas and principles will not only prepare for the future of HR but it will also make you an all around better HR professional.
