Welcome

Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager book cover

Welcome to our book site! If you’re a first-time manager, an experienced manager keen to do right by your team, a student aspiring to a management career, or an instructor teaching

people management skills, Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager is the book for you. This website has a heap of resources designed to help you get the most value from the book. On this page, there’s the table of contents and the official book blurb (with a sneak peek at Chapter 5). There’s a video in which we describe the book’s features. If you’d like to get to know us a bit better, you’ll find our bios and a publication playlist on the Our Research tab.

Want to learn more about people management? The Resources tab showcases In a Nutshell, a video series on key people management topics. The Resources tab also features Undercover Manager, a chapter-by-chapter skill development series. So look around, have a browse, and enjoy!

We hope that Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager helps you to become the manager you want to be! We were thinking of you the entire time we were writing this book, so it’s really good to connect. Drop us a line and tell us about your experience with it – you can reach us through the links at the bottom of this page or on Our Research page.

Offical Book Blurb

Official Book Blurb

Sample chapter

Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager gives every manager, regardless of their functional role, access to cutting-edge research and evidence-based recommendations so they can approach their people management responsibilities with confidence.

Day-to-day people management is increasingly the responsibility of front-line managers, not HR professionals. But managers are often poorly prepared for these responsibilities; they receive little training (and sometimes have little interest!) in HR. People management is never easy, and it is particularly challenging in COVID-19’s "next normal" workplace, where managers must engage diverse employees across a wide range of working arrangements. This book focuses on the special relationship that line managers have with their employees and describes managers’ responsibilities across the entire employee lifecycle – from front-end recruiting and hiring through to long-term retention. The content is grounded in rigorous academic research, but the book’s conversational tone conveys basic principles without technical jargon. Each chapter includes Manager’s Checkpoints to help readers apply the material to their own workplace, and Manager’s Knots that address gray areas inherent in people management.

The book is designed for any reader currently working as a line manager, or aspiring to a managerial role, who wants to improve their people management skills.