 Welcome my name is Brigitte Krohn and I'm the author of the book evidence-based human research management what we know about people in workplaces Today, I will talk about the contents of the book and introduce you to the key concepts that we will discuss Also, I'm going to explain to you how you can best study the book or use the book in a research project or in a consultancy project So let's start with some important concepts The entire book is about work and workplaces people spend a tremendous part of their of their lives in workplaces And what do we know about that? So for example When does work make people happy when does it make people healthy and productive and from the organization's perspective When our workplace is fair, how can workplaces contribute to innovative organizations? How can they attract people from the labor market or how can workplaces be ready for future? developments for change The mechanism that will help to understand how to manage this is called human resource management So this book will be about designing effective human resource management in order to make better workplaces For people and for organizations What is human resource management? Human resource management has a lot of definitions and I particularly like this one which was Descripted by Jackson Schuller and young in 2014. It's a long one I'll cut it in pieces. So first and foremost human resource management is the sum of all the strategy the policies procedures and day-to-day acts That together aim to guide Employer-employee relations in organizations. So hence To make it simple. It's everything that happens in organizations to make sure that employees Work together with employers to achieve the goals of the organization But that's not it. So it is the goals of the organization But we cannot just do anything we need to ensure that these activities all align with various contextual conditions such as Organizational characteristics industry dynamics Competition the labor market legal and institutional settings and societal dynamics So human resource management is about managing people in workplaces But it is taking into account all these different contextual conditions to make sure that people are happy and Workplaces can be productive and help organizations reach their goals in this book I'll take a Simpler focus because as this definition is very complete It's also very difficult it makes it sometimes very hard to understand for an organization or a manager or an employee What they should actually do to be more happy or more productive So the focus of the book is different I'm going to focus on human resource practices and these are the policies and procedures actually used for managing employment relations As they are experienced by people in workplaces so think for example if you want to have a job in an organization you could apply to an organization and all the things that you Meet alongside before you enter the organization. These are part of human resource practices So for example recruitment was there an advertisement or was it through the internet? For example, did you have a selection interview or did you have to do some tests? So these are all examples of work of human resource practices Human resource practices are not the strategy as a whole, but they are the things that managers teams project leaders and employees All use to manage people in workplaces. I already give some examples about HR practices, but there are many many more Don't get scared in many textbooks. You'll find this kind of sequence of HR practices There are practices that you that organizations use before people enter the organization There are practices that organizations use when people work in the organization and there are practices that are used when people Finish work and go to a next job or to retirement. So just to highlight some examples There's selection already mentioned that as an HR practice that is used to welcome people to the organization To decide who is more suitable for a job than others Then while people working there's an entire list of HR practices just highlighting one Here's the for example training and development So to make sure that people are prepared for the jobs they do or maybe to progress to another job in the organization They need to follow training or follow development activities. So this is also an example of an HR practice Then to conclude this these examples, there are also practices used for transition and here I'll highlight for example the situation where an organization needs to cut Staff for whatever reasons they are going to reorganize or move the organization. So which practices can actually help work for us to To prepare people to leave the organization and maybe find another job or get a reimbursement for For their services. So Just to highlight a few this illustrates that there are many many many different choices that organizations managers can use to to To manage the employment relation So a difficult question is if you study human resource management, should you know all of these practices By heart before you go to an organization and design an entire human resource management system or is it better to Understand the problem that you have at hand and make a wise decision which practice might work best So in this book, I'll take the latter approach when to use which HR practice So the answer to this question when to use which HR practice is simply it depends It depends on what is needed. Is there something that needs to needs to change? How much money is there is it gonna be an expensive practice or should it be something that is really cheap? And very important which age our practice is the most effective for the thing that you have at hand So these questions are core to ask before you start Deciding which HR practice is the is the best to implement so Important to know is that if you if you take this perspective rather than implementing everything at the same time is that Implementing human resource practices means making decisions. So it's a decision-making process The aim of this book is to help practitioners like yourself students managers human resource professionals to make better decisions about effective human resource practices to ensure That people in organizations are happy healthy and productive so It seems so simple. Why don't organizations use effective human resource practices? Well in my experience before I started working in academia There's always the rush of the day. There's always things that happen and at the immediate attention. There's always Someone who calls that they have the solution for everything. So basically a lot of things happen in organizations without this Very careful decision-making process about human resource practices. Why don't all organizations use effective HR practices? Well because Each organization also have has its own characteristics their needs their possibilities small organizations will have less Less means less money less time to implement very extensive careerjectors for everybody for example so difference in organizations make that there are different use for HR practices and also within organizations and Outside organizations. There are many many stakeholders as stakeholders or parties that have an interest in what? Happening in organizations. So for example workers. They have may have a Expectations what happens in human resource management, but also management Customers may have a particular view on on how employees are treated in the organization Or how what the quality should be the government imposing all kinds of rules and regulations So all these stakeholders have different interests in human resource management and HR practices should fit that context But an effective practice also means that it fits with the context in which in which it is used And finally, why don't all organizations use effective HR practices just because some practices are just cheap and easy easy to implement however they might not be effective or even an ethical and That's also an important thing that we need to take into account when we design HR practices a final problem is that The effectiveness of HR practices also involves some understanding of research so how can Research contributes to knowing about effective HR practices Human resource management is a domain where a lot of research happens and a lot of this research is published Only there is a gap. There's a gap between where the research is produced and published and the information that practitioners like yourself, maybe or like managers and HR professionals read there was a nice research by Colbert and Ryan and Brown in the early 2000s about What's human resource professionals actually know about effective practices so effective practices in this definition is Practices for which we have research evidence that if you do something they have better performance than when you don't use the practice, right? And these things have been published so for over a period of hundred years There's a lot of research evidence for HR practices. So what they did is they collected the 50 most the strongest evidenced HR practices and they've proposed a questionnaire to HR managers Asking do you agree that it is better to use structured selection interviews than open-ended Free free questions in selection and they had 50 of those kind of questions and Managers could say I agree or I disagree. Well the findings indicate that managers HR managers are the professionals That are supposed to know about human resource management and organizations that they only also 50% of these questions, right? So even in the people that studied human resource management. There is a lack of knowledge about best practice of about best research human resource practices the Magazines and the information that HR managers and other practitioners who have even studied less for the about human resource management They gather their information from practitioners journals and practitioners journals are nice They are easy to read they bring stories. They bring stories about Sometimes about good practice and sometimes just about Experiences of people and what they do is actually present Professionals with random evidence So if you are facing a particular problem, it may be difficult to find Within this information the right evidence for the for the decision that you want to take On the other hand Academics who do the research they publish not in the HR magazines, but they put it publish in journals like the Journal of Management these are Also a particular type of journals They are difficult to read because they are very very thorough and built in theories and using all these Statistical words, so they're not an easy read and they're not nice to read maybe Also problematic is that many of these journals are behind paywalls So you have to actually be a member of some kind of academic library to have access to these journals Although this is actually improving nowadays with the open access movement So journals like Journal of Management difficult to read behind a paywall Another problem is is that it's also difficult to understand where to begin where to find the evidence Because to keep to stay with the example of selection interviews There's so much research about that and if you just start reading you'll find like 200 or more hits in academic journals about effective or less effective selection methods So there must be a way to be clever about what you are really going to Need when you take a decision about HR practices My opinion here is that you don't need to know everything You don't need to know the entire list of effective practices because the list is a not complete and B It's difficult to remember everything It's it's much more important to use a clever decision-making process when you have a problem for which you want to implement an HR practice and in the book and in this introduction I will explain to you how You can make clever decisions based on academic research as well as practical knowledge to make better decisions about people in workplaces So be smart use evidence-based Human resource management What is it evidence-based human resource management evidence-based human resource management is just in time you use it once you have a problem and It will help you to make better decisions It will help you to find the best Intervention for a problem on the time when you need it, but in a rigorous and based on research evidence way It and it's in my opinion not just for human resource experts But actually also for managers employees employee representatives and for example consultants They can all use this approach to evidence-based human resource management and make better workplaces So let me tell you about the book evidence-based human resource management what we know about people in workplaces the book can be a starting point for when you want to do a An evidence-based human resource management project So if you have a problem in the organization, but it also provides you with an overview of the best evidence for the For human resource practices, so it provides you with an overview of the best research knowledge the best theories And the evidence for the for the theories The book is structured in four parts now elaborate a little bit about how what they entail The first part is about doing evidence-based human resource management and in this clip and the next I will Tell you a bit more about how that works exactly So that's really the decision-making process to make better decisions about people in workplaces chapter one of the book Then it moves on with content the first part of the book is about the business case for human resource management a business case means from an organization perspective if you invest money in Employees in workplaces and human resource practices then it should be beneficial for the organization So that's what we call a business case So it is all about motivation Making sure that people are ready for change how to implement change and how to manage knowledge in your organization to ensure innovation so chapters two three and four are all about evidence for human resource practices human resource theories that help Through investing in people to improve businesses But that's not all in the third part We will dive into the context of human context of human resource management remember the definition It is important to know the context of the organization in order to make sure that the practices that you choose Align with the context that nobody's going to object against that or that they're That you end up without people or without an organization in the end Three topics there the war for talent is about the labor markets labor shortages What attracts people to organizations and how to keep them in the organization? So it's all about competition with other organizations for employees the power of workers is about industrial relations and industrial relations is the entire social system Political system around organizations where for example trade unions and governments have a say in what's happening in organizations The final chapter in this part is about diversity and inclusion societies are very diverse think age think gender think people with a Different national backgrounds think different sexual preferences. So all these kind of diversity Things can lead to you conflicts or Mel Not so well managed Situations in organization you want to avoid and also to make people happy. You need to pay attention to diversity and inclusion The final chapter really takes the employee perspective the employee perspective means that People work and they want to be happy So what should work look like to make to ensure that people are able to live a happy life We'll dive into topics like decent work. We'll also talk about stress theories as a negative outcome after each part of the book you'll find a case with Study questions and these will help you to digest the theories that are mentioned in each chapter So that's the contents I'm going to show you in the next slide what the structure of the chapters looks like So what does each chapter look like well each chapter begins with a quick overview one page here about the key theories and key research And practices that is presented in the book Then it moves on with setting the scene. There's an introduction of the domain of a certain topic About people in workplaces. So for example In the chapter war for talent We will elaborate a little bit about labor markets about demand and supply and we will talk about what's the the origin of this concept war for talent After this introduction each chapter lays out the key theories that exist in that field So for example again in the war for talent, we will talk about psychological contracts, but also about some economic theories about labor markets Then the chapter provides an overview of the research evidence So by cleverly combining all the input that has been researched before we tell you to We show you what the evidence for the theories is and of course There has been a selection of theories for which there is sound research evidence So you can trust that the information in the book is grounded in a proper and long-standing research Up to then it's quite academic or Research oriented, but then each chapter turns to the practices. So how can you translate this evidence into? practical research practices and each chapter provides an overview of example HR practices So these are not these solutions for all the HR problems that exist in organizations These are just meant as examples to make you think about potential HR Interventions that you can use for the problem that you are working on and then of course each chapter ends with a short summary with the Summarizes again the key theories and the key human research Management practices also in the final part of the chapter you can find an overview with all the references that are mentioned in the chapter And these are selected in such a way that they help you to find Access to further reading so for example should you want to know more about research evidence You can look up the papers that are cited there, and you'll find much more detail They can also help you to find even further research Should you be interested in that topic? So if you're looking for an effective human research practice for a problem that you have at hand Huge evidence-based human research management decision-making. What is it? It starts with understanding a problem Somebody says there's something the matter, but what is the matter exactly? It's your task to sort out first. What is exactly the problem? What should improve? When you do this intervention, what should improve in a measurable way after you do a new human research management practice if you have Understood what the what the thing is you want to change in your organization you can formulate a question so a Question that will help you guide an evidence-based human research management project Then the task is to find out about the research evidence so if you were thinking about using a certain domain of HHR practices to Improve the problem that you have you can look up that domain of HHR practices in the book and find the theories and research Evidence for that theories and the example practices in there, but that's not enough Given that organizations exist in a context and that HR Interventions that you do should fit the context It's also your task to find the evidence in work in the organization So what is known about the problem in the organization? What has been tried before what works? What are contextual conditions that we need to take into account when designing HHR practices? So it's always about these two things research evidence Combined with evidence from from the organization After you gather all this information you sit together with your team or by yourself and You evaluate all the evidence was it reliable was it was it evidence that we can trust was it evidence that is really Related to the problem that we're that we're interested in and after striping out the evidence That is not so relevant you end up with the evidence that does count and you can develop an HR practice and that's a fun part Then of course after you've been on the drawing table you need to go back to the organization and implement It in the organization So in the next clip I'll also explain a little bit what you could do to make sure that it lands in the organization and of course you're not that done then because you started with it met with a problem you wanted to change something of Course you want to know eventually if the entire process of developing a new HR practice really improves the The problem where you started from So evidence-based human research management decision-making is a process It's a cycle because after some time you'll probably find that there's our Adjustments needed or a new problem arises and then you start the cycle all over again Some people say that it sounds like a lot of work Well, it might but if you do this more often you will get used to Doing a quick research and doing a quick exploration in the organization and you will You should always take and take into consideration that better decisions or better HR practices will in the end pay off So they may take a week longer before you design and implement them But the return on investment. So what it actually delivers is much better So what are the benefits of have of working in an evidence-based human research management way in organizations? First and foremost, you will have a better understanding of problems in the organization and with with a better understanding of problems You will also be able to come up with better better solutions Doing this and involving employees involving managers this will Encourage a culture of learning and curiosity You will see that once an organization starts to use evidence-based management in multiple domains The organization is is engaging in in an open and learning learning manner and this is at the expense or in a good way at the expense of organizational politics and power play So also because evidence-based human research management needs data There is a cumulative availability Availability about of data about people in organizations And those studying human research studies human resource management They were they may know that HR analytics is a field in development is much required for and Data alone do nothing. It's really the analytics the understanding and to use it to improve organizations that will be beneficial And like said it will lead to a reduction of organizational politics So reflecting Maybe You can ask the question. When is human evidence-based human resource management not useful? Well already the man already mentioned that it may take a bit more time. So arguably In day-to-day management decisions, it's not really necessary to do to do a large evidence-based human resource management project Or in crisis situations remember the COVID pandemic when the entire workforce was supposed to work from home from one day to the next And nobody really knew what would work best So these two Situations might be situations where doing an evidence-based human research management project will take too long some counter arguments if you are used To do to working in an evidence-based Way in your organization before it will improve decision-making even in day-to-day decisions Based on all the experience you used in previous projects Of course the pandemic hit and we didn't know what to do But then there was a lot of knowledge about you know Digital working there was a lot of knowledge about how important it is to keep in touch with your employees so all this kind of knowledge Based and grounded in research evidence helps organize it helped organizations to organize online working for their for their employees and also having such a culture of collecting evidence and Evaluating that will really improve organizational learning and I will highlight in chapter 3 and yet hearing knowledge clips How important this is for the performance of organizations? So conclusion evidence-based human research management is a procedure to improve decisions about people in workplaces Doing evidence-based human research management leads to more effective HR practices And it will contribute to an organizational culture of learning and knowledge sharing This will also improve decision-making on a day-to-day basis and during crisis So what do you know now? We discussed the definitions of human research management and HR practices We also discussed the need for evidence evidence-based decision-making about people in workplaces And I demonstrated to you how you can how you can best use the book in the next and final slide I'll show you how to obtain a free copy of the book If you use the the QR codes the upper one you will find a connection to a website It will provide you with a free online copy of the book or a free downloadable PDF Should you be interested in obtaining a hard copy of the book you can use the lower one and Find access to the webshop of Tilberk University open press or you can go to the bookstore and find the book over there Good luck studying