HR Fundamentals Made Simpler

Explore workforce planning within recruitment and selection by examining human resource planning, alternative staffing, diversity and inclusion, and employment contracts to optimize staffing and organizational success.

Plan human resources by forecasting labor demand and supply, identifying shortages or surpluses, and setting goals for strategic planning, with options such as downsizing, outsourcing, and overtime.

Explore alternative staffing as a contingent approach, detailing part-time work, flex time, compressed workweeks, and job sharing to optimize staffing options.

Explore diversity and inclusion, defining diversity as differences and inclusion as leveraging them, and examine employment contracts, verbal, written, or implied, at-will, and job offers outlining compensation and benefits.

Explore workforce recruitment by covering four topics: recruiting itself, sources of recruitment, recruitment metrics that measure performance, and the onboarding phase.

Identify and attract potential employees through recruiting, generating applicants and maintaining applicant status, while determining needs, expanding candidate pools, reducing underqualified applicants, and evaluating recruiting techniques and sources.

Compare internal and external recruiting sources, detailing internal methods—job posting, rehiring, and succession planning—and external methods such as LinkedIn, internships, referrals, and outplacement firms.

Explore the recruiting matrix by measuring quantity and quality of applicants, time to fill, and cost per hire. Learn how each metric evaluates source effectiveness and overall hiring success.

Onboarding guides new hires through five stages: recruiting, selection, orientation, coaching and support, and training, while mentoring and feedback help adjust to culture, expectations, and job performance.

Delve into the workforce selection process as the final aspect after planning and recruitment, and master its five topics: criteria, predictors and performance, screening, testing and reviewing, and interviewing candidates.

Screen applicants, test and review, interview candidates, and check references and background checks to inform the final selection, while assessing job fit and cultural atmosphere.

Identify selection criteria and predictors of job performance, and assess validity and reliability of measures. Examine person environment, person job, person organization, and person group fit in hiring decisions.

Learn how employers use pre-employment screening to verify minimum qualifications before applications, via three methods: application forms, electronic assessments, and resume screening.

Learn how testing and reviewing help organizations predict which applicants will be most useful by using cognitive aptitude, physical abilities, job knowledge, work sample, and personality tests.

Learn how to interview candidates using structured and unstructured formats, including situational and behavioral approaches. Follow a clear procedure: structure, prepare, establish rapport, ask questions, and close, with resume review.

Examine the pay component of compensation and benefits, including base rate, incentives, total reward, pay design, legal requirements, market forces, and pay level, job, and pay structures.

Explore total reward, covering fixed pay, variable pay, benefits, and work life balance, and how base pay, incentives, and benefits shape the employment offering.

Explore pay design via job structure and variable pay, linking pay across jobs to qualifications and experience, and review legal standards on minimum wage, overtime, living wage, and child labor.

Explore legal requirements for pay, including equal pay, minimum wage (living wage), overtime for exempt and non-exempt workers, and child labor restrictions under government regulation.

explains how market forces shape costs, pricing, and profit in product and labor markets, guiding decisions to attract and retain qualified workers while staying competitive.

Explore external competitiveness and internal fairness, benchmarking to shape pay structures, and balance direct and indirect compensation—base salary, incentives, time off, benefits, and pension plans.

Explore pay level, job structure, and pay structure as compensation decisions. Learn how levels and market forces, plus evaluation methods—point, ranking, classification, factor comparison—shape pay and promotions.

Explore incentives and benefits. Learn about incentive pay, individual performance pay plans, group performance pay plans, and employee benefits.

Explore incentive pay as performance related pay, including individual and group incentives, how costs, expected influence, and policy alignment shape rewards tied to performance.

Explore individual performance pay plans, linking pay to outcomes like service quality, sales growth, or attendance, and learn common approaches such as piecework, merit pay, cash awards, and sales bonuses.

Learn how group performance pay plans use gain sharing to reward cost savings and value added, with Scanlon plan and Rucker plans, plus stock and profit sharing options.

Explore employee benefits as part of total compensation, including Social Security, pensions, retirement savings, and insurance that attract, retain, and motivate employees.

Explore performance management within HR development and retention, covering job performance management, performance planning, monitoring, appraisal, and development.

Explore job performance as the set of behaviors aligned with organizational goals, and learn a four-stage measurement process: planning, monitoring, appraisal, and development for human resources.

Collaboratively develop performance plans through performance planning and management by objective (MPO), identifying common goals and smart criteria: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bounded.

Monitor individual performance, remove obstacles, and update objectives. Recognize system factors drive most results, apply positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, extinction, counseling, feedback, and coaching.

Explore performance appraisal as a systematic evaluation of employee performance, outlining objectives such as improvement, coaching, feedback, compensation, staffing decisions, and termination, plus appraisal methods and common errors.

Develop performance development by examining performance management and employee development, assessing work, and providing growth opportunities. Learn two review approaches: performance improvement plans and individual development plans that drive high-potential.

Explore eight topics in training and development, including training plan, training needs assessment, training designed for training program development, training implementation, training evaluation, employee development, and career development.

Explore the training plan within instructional system design, guiding knowledge and skills development for organizational effectiveness. Learn the five stages: analysis, design, development, implement, and evaluation.

Learn how to conduct a training needs assessment by identifying performance gaps, determining training requirements, and selecting interventions through organization, task, and individual assessments.

The lecture introduces training design, covering setting objectives, defining targets, and selecting a trainer, including learning objectives and the decision to develop in-house or outsource.

Classify training programs by on the job vs off the job and online versus offline, on the job training, informal learning, lectures, job instruction training, programmed learning, and simulated training.

Learn how to implement your training program to ensure transfer of training to the job, while addressing interference from the immediate environment, non-supportive culture, impractical content, and change discomfort.

Learn how to evaluate training by measuring reaction, learning, behavior, and results, ensuring objectives are met and showing impacts like reduced cost, improved quality, efficiency, productivity, and employee retention.

Explore employee development as an ongoing partnership to upgrade knowledge beyond current roles through training, learning experiences, work assignments, and assessments, using behavioral modeling, case studies, and simulations with feedback.

Explore career development, from career planning and management to ladders, paths, and dual ladders, including exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement stages, plus development opportunities like job redesign and rotation.

Explore employee relations with a focus on retention, turnover, focus groups, exit interviews, and alternative dispute resolution.

Explore employee turnover, including voluntary and involuntary categories, reasons like job dissatisfaction and pay, and how to measure turnover with rate, replacement, and separation costs.

Understand employee retention as turnover's counterpart; training and development assistance boosts job satisfaction and retention, while managers and HR professionals must consider job-related and personal reasons for staying or leaving.

Explore how an employee focus group uses guided discussions to gather feedback and improve engagement, strengthening commitment to work and the company.

Conduct exit interviews to gather reasons for leaving, summarize and analyze data by category, and provide managers with insights to improve retention and organizational practices.

Explore alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods, including open door policy, peer review, mediation, and arbitration, to resolve workplace disputes timely, constructively, and cost-effectively.

Explore employee separation by examining workforce reduction, progressive discipline, managing workplace behaviors, termination, and employee offboarding.

Explore workforce reduction as a cost-cutting strategy through mass terminations, or reduction in force, and identify drivers such as reducing costs, replacing labor with technology, and relocating to cheaper locations.

Explore progressive discipline as a four-stage process for addressing job-related behavior, from informal verbal warnings to two formal verbal warnings, written warnings, and termination, to guide improvement.

Understand the difference between culpable and non-culpable workplace behaviors and how each is dealt with. Identify absenteeism types, including innocent and culpable, and note aggressive behaviors, harassment, and physical violence.

Explain the termination reason and build a paper trail with negative performance reviews, client complaints, and written supervisor complaints. Hold a private meeting, explain severance, and curb gossip.

Streamline employee off-boarding by handling resignation letters, conducting handovers, issuing separation notices and final pay, returning company property, enforcing non-compete terms, notifying key contacts, and conducting exit interviews.