Human Resource Management

Taught modules

Compulsory modules

• People Resourcing and Talent Management

  This module will give you an understanding of the principal internal and external environmental contexts of contemporary organisations and how these affect both organisational and HR strategies.  You will engage with leading edge practices for planning and recruiting organisational workforces, including the risks and benefits of using technology, and learn how to create an integrated people plan.

• Employee Engagement, Performance and Reward

  This module will provide you with a critical understanding of how contemporary organisations elicit employee engagement and performance, and the challenges associated with doing so. You'll engage with theoretical perspectives on individual and collective employment relationships as the basis for managing employees – drawing on the key themes of authority, power, and control - and how the levers at management’s disposal, notably, those associated with reward and performance management can be deployed to best effect. You'll also explores dysfunction and conflict in the employment relationship from both theoretical and practical standpoints, and the role of the HR professional in managing the relationship between stakeholders.

• Learning, Development and Coaching

  You will gain a critical understanding of the contribution that learning and development can make to individuals and organisations, together with practical skills in designing and implementing leading edge learning & development programmes. You will develop the understanding required to create a coaching programme in the workplace, and facilitate a coaching style of management.

• Employment Law

  To work in HR, it is essential for you to develop knowledge, understanding and skills required to brief organisations on how current and future developments in employment law (British Jurisprudence) impact on HR practices, and to give up-to-date, timely and accurate advice concerning the practical application of employment law in the workplace. You will critically reflect on theory and practice from an ethical and professional standpoint, and be provided the opportunity for applied learning and continuous professional development.

• Understanding Organisations and Managing Change

  This module provides you with a framework for understanding and analysing organisations with a particular reference to group processes, cultural dynamics, leadership and change. Using different theoretical perspectives, you will analyse organisations and the process of organising. Knowledge and skills are developed to enable you to manage and support change more effectively, ethically, and professionally.

• Contemporary Issues and Challenges for HRM

  You will be introduced to contemporary themes associated with critical management and organisation theory, with the objective of creating an in-depth and critical understanding of some of the challenges posed in work and organisations today. Such challenges include work intensification, increasing inequalities, algorithms, managing ethically, changing patterns of work such as the gig economy, crises and the employment relationship, digital transformations, and alternative organisational forms.

  You will draw on multiple and often competing perspectives on the study of organisations (e.g. capitalist political economy, diverse economies and post-capitalist work organisation) to explore current debates and reflect on the latest developments and what they mean for HR practitioners and future HRM practice.

• Developing Skills for Business Leadership

  This module will help you develop and improve a range of definable skills which are pivotal to successful management practice and effective leadership. You’ll develop self-awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses as an effective leader and team player.You’ll progress essential skills such as the confidence and the ability to articulate your skills and attributes that are required for professional development, lifelong learning and employment. You’ll also have the opportunity to explore different leadership perspectives on topics such as ethics, coaching, career management, wellbeing, presentation, and communication.

• Critical Investigation Skills

  This module provides you with a framework to critically assess and investigate organisations and organisational processes. You will develop an understanding of research methodology as both a practical and philosophical enquiry to enhance your organisational knowledge and research skills. In linking paradigms in organisation theory to those in methods of enquiry, the module introduces you to all stages of research: problematization, research design, data collection and analysis methods, & research ethics. You will carry out a pilot project to trial out various methodologies. Based on your acquired theoretical and methodological understanding, your own interests, and your ideas about a future career, you develop a viable research proposal (MA/MSc/PgDip) for your capstone research projects (MA/MSc). 

Optional modules