written by
Sunny Suman

Five Books Human Resource Professionals Must Read

Learning & Development Personal Effectiveness HR Certification 3 min read

Reading books by Human Resource professionals is an important facet for success in their field.

As per HR Dive, in order to be effective, constant and continuous learning is an essential pre-requisite for anyone and human resource professionals are no exception.

Reading books offers an opportunity to re-experiment the experience of authors which they usually write after real-world execution.

If you scan the literature, lot of information is available; on what are the books, preferably to be read by Human Resource Professionals to sharpen their knowledge and skills.

As per business2.community.com, human resource professionals must read 8 HR books, selected by the author.

Similarly, Harver.com recommends 15 best HR books, to be read.

Hrdive.com recommends 5 books, which must be read by HR leaders.

For team-building, betterteam.com lists the top 10 HR books.

For taking optimum advantage of technology in human resource management,hrtechnologist.com recommends 5 books that every HR professional should read.

In fact, the list of books for human resource is huge and encompasses almost it’s every field.

Keeping the above in view, it is extremely difficult to select 5 books, out of thousands available.

Despite this, an effort has been made by us, to suggest to you, reading of 5 books, as given below. These books represent a wide spectrum of multi-faceted aspects of human resource management.

Human resource professionals- 5 books to read
Photographer: Thought Catalog | Source: Unsplash

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

The book is about companies that become great and, if summarised in one word, it is about discipline. It’s a very insightful book for anyone who wants to take their teams or organizations to new levels.

It shows, how one can create a culture of discipline, by confronting with brutal facts to make good decisions.

The Hedgehog Concept, is mentioned here and it consists of the following

  • Get right people on Board,
  • Use right technology and
  • Back up the momentum generated by joining of right people.

2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Slightly philosophical in nature, it is a book for the modern times, when darkness surrounds you, while leading your organization. The book, even after several decades, stays one of the bestsellers, just emphasizing the fact that its philosophies are still effective. Scores of entrepreneurs and top managers have stated about having read the book and finding it helpful.

3. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott

Reading the book can help you to learn to overcome barriers to meaningful conversations, handle emotions on both sides of the table, expand and enrich your most valuable assets. It may also help you in maintaining good relationship, increase clarity and improve understanding. Further, the author claims that it may also help in catalysing creativity, problem-solving, sparking passion and connecting with colleagues, customers, and friends at a deeper level.

4. Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg was the COO of Facebook in 2013, when she wrote this book.Though Michele Obama, in 2018, said that leaning in doesn’t always work. The book would create an excellent perspective for anyone wanting to do well in HR career.The book has anecdotes questioning the movement of talented women towards being homemakers. Another point discussed through anecdotes is that there’s no one way to rise up the ladder. And similarly, there are several other points made and discussed.

5.Aligning Human Resources and Business Strategy by Linda Holbeche

Using case studies from top global organizations, Linda Holbeche tries to answer the big question: What difference can the aspiring HR strategist make to business value? It can enable you to learn how an HR can improve the relationship between people strategy and business success.

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