Human resource management

Undergraduate degrees

Our Human Resource Management (HRM) undergraduate degree provides a solid foundation in business and HRM. Led by some of the leading researchers in HRM, you learn about key people issues and topics facing organisations in the current climate, including, diversity and inclusion, digital HRM and people analytics, and the legal foundations of managing people. What makes our undergraduate degree different is the emphasis on sustainability and business ethics, which helps you to become a critical thinker and reflective practitioner. By graduation, you'll be equipped with all the necessary skills and contemporary knowledge required by people management specialists today and will stand out in the graduate job market. You can also choose to include a placement year, or opt for a study abroad year and develop an advanced level of professional and personal skills.

Career prospects

Human resources roles are some of the fastest growing jobs in organisations today. This degree will prepare you for a range of roles from recruitment and selection, to training and development, and new and emerging roles in the profession such as digital HR and people analytics. Gaining CIPD Level 5 accreditation upon successful completion of this course will further strengthen your prospects for a successful career within the industry.  Find out more about the skills you'll learn and the career path your degree could lead to on our Essex Business School web pages.

Postgraduate Masters Degrees

The world of work and the management of people is constantly evolving with enhanced digitalisation, hybrid work, and precarity. No matter the type of organisation, people need to be recruited, managed, and motivated to maintain a productive workplace.

At Essex, you'll gain the industry knowledge and practical skills needed to excel in your career in human resource management, organisational change management, and surrounding fields. Your Masters education will focus on sustainable and ethical people management, providing a solid foundation for you to engage with organisational issues and problems critically and practically.

Whether you’re a newly qualified graduate or an experienced professional looking for a CIPD-accredited course, Essex Business School provides an academically rigorous and applied human resources education so you can rise to the top as a leader or practitioner. 

Postgraduate Research Degrees

Is the UK's productivity crisis a result of low morale, or a lack of investment in training? Could gamification help to solve recruitment challenges? How can we solve gender imbalances in the workplace? If you want to explore some of human resource management's most important issues, a PhD at Essex could be for you.

At Essex, you can become part of a lively, global research community of more than 100 doctoral students, joining us from around five continents. Our PhD Management Studies at our Colchester Campus enables you to pursue research into important aspects of human resource management, from ethics and historical perspectives to Human Resource Management (HRM) issues within specific industries and beyond.

Our Centre for Work, Organisation and Society will give you access to the latest research from around the world through seminars and networking opportunities. You'll also be able to join and benefit from the research carried out within our dedicated research group; Organisation Studies and Human Resource Management Group. A business isn’t a collection of stock, equipment, and buildings, it is an organisation made up of people., and this research group digs deep into the heart of the people-related issues facing all types of organisations.

You'll join Essex Business School, where you will be supervised by world-leading academics with a wide range of management research interests, from international HRM to power elites. Whoever you are supervised by, you'll experience a supportive research environment, where you develop your professional skills and research expertise in your chosen area.

Start your application with us

Whichever stage you're at with your application, whether you're just beginning or looking for more information, our Research Finder tool allows you to search for potential supervisors, find funding and research opportunities, access our publications, and explore our current research initiatives. You can discover exactly what you're looking for by entering keywords, or searching by a particular theme. Visit our Research Finder, or use the search bar below.

More information can be found about research degrees and our research community on our school pages. Our courses below will help guide you through the various research degree programmes we offer.