Graduate Certificate in Human Resources Leadership

Overview

HR gets invited into strategy conversations too late, and usually on the strength of one person's credibility rather than the function's. Changing that requires being able to argue in the terms the rest of the executive team argues in: what a retention problem costs, what a culture change is supposed to produce, and how you would know whether it worked.

This certificate is about that argument, across two graduate courses.

The first works through where HR leadership came from and where it is going: the leadership strategies organizations are actually using, how globalization, technology and workforce diversity are reshaping the expectations people bring to work, and the leader's role in building a value-based culture that serves strategic goals rather than decorating them.

The second turns to execution. Workforce development and retention, rewards, motivation, training, cultural awareness, and teamwork are held against the economic, legal, environmental, and technological pressures that constrain all of it. You finish with measurement tools for management effectiveness and a plan for executing strategic objectives, which is the part that makes the rest defensible.

What you will learn

By the end of the certificate you will be able to:

• Trace how human resources leadership developed into a strategic function, and where current practice is heading
• Assess what globalization, technology and workforce diversity are doing to work/life balance, for the organization and for the individual
• Build a value-based culture that supports strategic goals rather than sitting alongside them
• Design worker-based strategies at executive level, and defend them to an executive audience
• Develop and retain a workforce through rewards, motivation, training, cultural awareness and teamwork
• Balance competing pressures; a volatile economy, environmental and legal risk, technology change, and workforce needs that move faster than policy
• Measure the efficiency and effectiveness of your own management systems, with tools rather than impressions
• Produce a blueprint for executing strategic objectives, the certificate's final deliverable
   

Norwich University's online Human Resource Leadership Certificate is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP® recertification activities.