Human Resource Management
The textbook covers some topics in depth, but leaves key elements out of other topic areas. For example, the section related to workforce planning in chapter 2 does not completely cover supply and demand and does not discuss actions that can be taken to respond to anticipated surpluses and shortages. Background and reference checks were not covered in the chapter on selection. Employment laws were covered briefly in chapter 3 and interspersed throughout the text. It felt like a piecemeal approach.
The textbook included complete chapters on employee communication, retention and motivation, and safety and health. These are topics I normally reference, but do not cover in depth in my course.
I did not find any inaccuracies. However, I found that in some places the author used different terminology than what is normally used by human resource management professionals.
The textbook was originally published around 2011 and key cases and laws are not included in the text. Many of the YouTube videos are available, but are dated.
The book provides good examples and cases to explore the concepts and terminology.
Yes.
The book incorporates the practice of introducing a topic and then indicating that the topic will be explored further in later sections and chapters of the textbook. This practice would make it hard to assign chapters out of order.
The chapters are not organized in the order I normally teach the topics and topics are covered in more than one chapter. Compensation and benefits are discussed in the same chapter. Typically I use texts that include separate chapters for pay structure, incentive pay and benefits and I cover the topics in more depth.
The interface is fairly clean. Several of the videos required an access authentication code. However, most of the links to videos worked.
I did not find any problems with the grammar in the textbook.
I did not notice any insensitive or offensive examples or references in the text.
This book does not fit my needs. According to the preface, "competing books are focused on the academic part of HRM, which is necessary in a university or college setting. However, the goal with this book is not only to provide the necessary academic background information but also to present the material with a practitioner’s focus on both large and small businesses." I needed the book to go into more depth in some areas and include less information on other topics.
The organization of the topics and the flow of the textbook also does not work with the way I teach my class.
However, I will use this textbook as a source for my teaching. The text includes excellent cases, discussion questions, tables, videos, etc. that I can use to enhance the class.