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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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The Essential HR Handbook summary
Sharon Armstrong & Barbara Mitchell
A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager or HR Professional
14 mins
What is The Essential HR Handbook about?
The Essential HR Handbook (2008) is a guide to human resources management. These blinks are full of useful tools and important insights on how to manage your organization’s most important resource: human capital.
Table of Contents
The Essential HR Handbook
summarized in 6 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 6
Successful organizations align human resources planning with their overall strategy.
When you think of a human resources department, do you imagine an isolated, hidden office with a set of duties limited to simply hiring and firing?
Well, think again; human resources or HR is much more than recruitment and layoffs. In fact, HR is responsible not only for the acquisition, training, appraisal and compensation of an organization’s employees, but also for dealing with issues like health and safety.
So, if an organization truly wants to be successful, it needs to link its HR planning to its greater organizational strategy. For instance, it’s important for every organization to build a strategy that lays out exactly how its goals will be achieved. To make these goals a reality, the managers then allocate available resources.
And here’s where HR comes in, because the people working in the organization are one such resource – and a very important one at that.
After all, a typical human resources department will generally receive a hefty chunk of an organization’s budget to spend on things like salaries and benefits. So, if the organization fails to put its HR planning in line with its overall strategy, broad success will be hard to achieve.
For example, if an organization hasn’t put together a strong benefits package for its current and future employees, it might struggle to attract the high-quality talent it needs to succeed.
It’s important to keep HR updated on all organizational targets; doing so will help the department understand the role employees are meant to play in achieving these goals, which is the first step in determining whether the right people are on staff, and who still needs to be hired.
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Best quote from The Essential HR Handbook
If you dont know where youre going, how will you know when you get there?
—Sharon Armstrong & Barbara Mitchell
Who should read The Essential HR Handbook?
- Anyone working in human resources
- Managers who want a better understanding of their organization’s inner workings
- Anybody who is in the process of hiring new employees
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