3 Books on HR Essential for Entrepreneurs

You’ve launched a business and hired a team of employees who will help your company grow and thrive. But when it comes to managing those people, it’s up to you to ensure that your human resources policies are being followed to the letter. This can be a challenge for many entrepreneurs, particularly when HR is a completely new arena for them.

To get a handle on the most essential HR facts that every entrepreneur should know, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite books on the subject. These books will offer tips on everything you need — as well as the features you may not have realized you needed — as part of your overall HR strategy, and can help you ramp up your human resources operations so you’ll always be in compliance with the labor laws and your team members will be enthusiastic about contributing to your firm’s growth.

Consider adding these three books to your end-of-summer reading list so you can ensure that your HR policies are strong.

The Power of People by Nigel Guenole, Jonathan Ferrar and Sheri Feinzig

When entrepreneurs are trying to prove that their products are viable, the most important metric is always in the numbers. How many sales do you have? Which followers have you cultivated? How much money have you raised? In this book, the authors use a similar approach to HR. They use analyses from successful people operations strategies and show how effective those approaches can be for other companies.

They also show how you can use analytics at your organization to strengthen your business strategy, and how HR can be a critical part of growing your company. While you may separate business growth from HR, these functions should be synergized to make the most of your team, and this book helps you figure out the best way to do that.

Featuring case studies that demonstrate exactly how to put these practices into reality, you can learn quite a few effective strategies about how to build and grow your HR team with The Power of People.

The HR Answer Book by Shawn Smith and Rebecca Mazin

No entrepreneur knows it all, particularly when it comes to managing human resources. Fortunately, you can find answers to over 200 of your common HR questions with this book, which provides answers to questions about sourcing excellent candidates, how you should handle a termination, what employee handbooks should include and much more.

The book also includes templates for performance improvement goal forms and documents outlining which questions you should ask job candidates, which you can copy and alter for your own needs. One of the best things about this book is that you don’t necessarily have to read it cover to cover on day one. Instead, you can use it as a reference guide every time you have a question about HR. Perhaps you need information about onboarding today, but next week you’ll be seeking answers on how to deal with employee conflict. You can select which chapters you need as you go, which makes The HR Answer Book an essential resource.

HR on Purpose by Steve Browne

Sometimes it can be hard to understand a concept in theory — you instead need to see it in practice. This book does a good job of helping you see HR concepts in reality because Browne relates each concept to an actual, real-life scenario. His vast experience in the HR field allows him to translate each process into tangible step-by-step guidance that can help you build your team in the most cohesive way possible.

The author also discusses some roadblocks he hit along the way during his HR career, so you can avoid these issues. The stories he tells about his experiences in the industry give you an inside view of what to expect from your team, how to resolve issues and how to prevent problems from happening in the first place. Most importantly, HR on Purpose shows why having HR policies in place during the early stages of your company’s journey will help you maintain a team that works together well.