15 HR Books That Will Guide You Through 2022 and Beyond

The changes and advancements in HR mirror that of our society and businesses. And with constant changes in the way we approach people management, it is important to keep up with HR trends and the new theories which drive them. This includes theories and stories in all spheres; from improving the employee experience with minimal trade-offs with productivity to research-based blueprints for the modern recruiter. All of these are featured in our list of some of the best HR books of 2022.

HR Books to Keep You at the Top of Your Game

Familiarizing yourself with these theories and stories is invaluable for advancing your HR expertise and staying on top of your game. And there’s no better way to do so than by picking up a good old book. If you are not sure where to start from, look no further, because we at HireBee have picked out a comprehensive list of books every HR professional should read. Covering all relevant areas experiencing considerable amounts of transformation, our list features some of the best HR books of 2022 for all HR professionals with different responsibilities.

A World of Good: Lessons From Around the World in Improving the Employee Experience

Sleeping at work, taking long lunch breaks, and turning up late are no longer necessarily the characteristics of a lazy worker. Since the middle of the last century, psychologists have been focused on the workplace and the effect it has on us. Thousands of studies have been dedicated to improving the world of work, and in recent years this trend has grown rapidly as the modern employer reacts to changing expectations. 

Finding ways to improve the lives of employees should be a priority for every employer. More than ever, an organization’s front line affects its bottom line. ‘A World of Good’ brings together some surprising workplace practices from more than fifteen countries and underpins them with interviews and psychological research.

Promotions Are So Yesterday: Redefine Career Development. Help Employees Thrive

The time-honored tradition of defining career development exclusively in terms of promotions, moves, and title changes is dead. Beyond, between, and besides the climb up the positional ladder, there are many other ways that employees can—and want to—grow. 

In Promotions Are So Yesterday, Julie Winkle Giulioni offers you a new approach to developing your employees’ careers and helping them thrive in a company when promotions are not readily available. Discover an easy-to-apply framework of seven alternative dimensions of development (contribution, competence, confidence, connection, challenge, contentment, and choice) that will engage your employees—dynamic opportunities for growth that are completely within your control as a manager.

HR for Hybrid Working 

Many employees are looking for a mix of remote and office work. How can HR professionals adapt policies and practices to ensure hybrid working is effective for the workforce and the business?

HR for Hybrid Working covers everything that people professionals need to succeed in a hybrid working model and manage the transition to this new way of working. It shows why and how contractual documents, policies, pay and reward terms need to change, how to manage to change employee expectations, and how to assess and communicate to staff what work can be done partially remotely and manage the impact on company culture. There is also insight on how to adapt learning and development (L&D) and wellbeing activities to ensure they support employee development.

Elemental Change 

‘You never step in the same river twice.’ Our intensely interconnected world never stops evolving. Amid the chaos of intended and unexpected consequences, we’re expected to lead a change initiative. We have to learn fast, as it has already started. This highly practical, human, and humorous book shows us how to make complex change attainable – organizational, professional, or personal – whether you have years of experience or are facing your first major challenge. It helps us think about what change is and means, how we prepare for it, and what we do to make it successful. It may just be the most readable book about change yet.

The Elemental Workplace 

You may well be reading this at work. Look around you I am sure you will agree your workplace could be significantly better. Do you tolerate a mediocre, uninspiring, and dysfunctional environment, because that’s the way it’s always been? It doesn’t have to be. Everyone deserves a fantastic workplace, a positive environment in which to live, learn, grow, share, and contribute. Yet it need not be difficult to create if you follow this simple and intuitive framework. An Elemental Workplace is a standard that everyone can attain, not an elite pipedream for the privileged few. 

Confessions of an HR Pro: Stories of Defeat & Triumph 

Are you an HR Professional with years of experience but losing motivation? Are you new to HR and trying to find your way? Are you new to leadership in HR navigating your seat at the table? Are you feeling disconnected from your HR community?

This book will help you to regain your HR mojo, find your community, and gain clarity on your way forward. Based on real-life experiences from HR Professionals who felt just like you at some point in their careers, you will learn about our moments of defeat and triumph. Powerful collection of HR stories for beginners and professionals alike.

The Robot-Proof Recruiter. A survival guide for recruitment & sourcing professionals! 

In a world of work where recruiters hear their role is at risk from AI, robotics, and chatbots, attracting and recruiting the right people effectively has never been more important. 

The Robot-Proof Recruiter enables you to become the recruiter that candidates trust and the one they want to talk to. It contains guidance on:

• how to recruit without an existing online presence or reputation,
• how to work effectively with hiring managers to improve the candidate experience, and
• how to use technology to support the candidate’s journey from initial outreach, to application, to an employee, and through to alumnus.

A human resource guidebook for people who want to recruit the right people for their organization.

The Human Resource Professional’s Guide to Change Management. Practical Tools and Techniques to Enact Meaningful and Lasting Organizational Change

The ability to help an organization effectively deal with change is a key competency that all HR professionals must possess. However, many people in the HR function have not received any formal training or instruction on how to fulfill this key role. Further, HR professionals are often paralyzed or frustrated by senior management attitudes and practices, thereby feeling left out of the change process entirely or powerless within it. This book provides HR professionals with key resources and concepts to successfully launch, implement and maintain change management initiatives within their organizations. Practical tools and explanations will illuminate critical change management competencies and processes thereby enabling HR professionals to take on strategic and active roles as they guide and lead employees, at all levels throughout an organization, to successfully deal with change.

Stop Collaborate and Listen!  Developing Impactful HR Partnerships through Collaboration 

Human resource departments have earned a negative reputation as reclusive information hoarders, the company “cleaners,” and the department of no. But opportunities exist for changing that narrative through collaborative partnerships. In Stop, Collaborate, and Listen, author Tina Marie Wohlfield shares strategies for transforming human resources work from mindless paper-pushing to a positive, employee-centered force for change in the workplace. As a twenty-five-year veteran in the field of HR, Wohlfield presents a call to action for sharing knowledge, data, and resources to effectively leverage internal relationships and earn trust and credibility as a strategic partner. She offers personal stories, insight, concrete success tips, and lessons taken straight from the trenches on maximizing the ability to listen and collaborate with stakeholders. The result? HR engagement has an impact on all levels of the organization.

Unlocking High Performance: How to use performance management to engage and empower employees to reach their full potential 

Traditional performance management processes are often ineffective in increasing workforce engagement and fostering a positive employer-employee relationship. The established method of annually scoring employees against a list of static objectives can make employees feel undervalued and frustrated and can hinder, rather than advance, staff development.

Unlocking High Performance shows you how to transform this process to get the best out of your workforce. It presents a new model for performance management based on the three components of planning, cultivation, and accountability, and situates this process within the wider aims of promoting work as a healthy relationship between employer and employee rather than a restrictive contract to be complied with.

The Talent Fix: A Leader’s Guide to Recruiting Great Talent

The Talent Fix is a book I wrote to answer the question, what would I do if your CEO came in and asked me to take over Talent Acquisition at your company? Actually, from how I would interview for that job all the way through how I would build the process and tech stack. 

Redefining HR 

In these times of change and disruption, HR must adapt, fast. But how can HR professionals critically assess their current processes and activities to identify what areas they need to think differently about in order to drive business results? This book provides the answers to enable all aspects of people’s functions to perform to their full potential.

Redefining HR is a refreshing take on the evolution of the field of Human Resources and People Operations. It’s an in-depth guide to the fundamental components of modern HR and provides a tangible framework of progressive ideas and practices for HR practitioners, people leaders, and business executives. This is not a theoretical examination of HR. This is a book for practitioners, with insights from people professionals at the leading edge of HR’s transformation from companies including Hubspot, Reddit, Stripe, Mastercard, Eventbrite, VaynerMedia, and Asana.

Full Stack Recruiter: The Ultimate Edition

Whether you are already working in recruitment, new to the industry, or just hoping to begin your career as a recruiter, there are essential strategies used by successful recruiters that will help you accelerate your career. Of course, no one is born knowing these things; they come from years of experience in the field. That’s exactly what this book is: years of practical, real-world experience distilled into one comprehensive guide to succeeding in your recruiting career in the digital era.

This book is designed to help recruiters gain a broad understanding of the industry while expanding and deepening the knowledge of more senior professionals. Whether you belong in the first category or the second, this book will help you take your career to the next level.

Recognition Rebooted, A Smarter Approach to Employee Recognition

Employee Recognition as we know it gets rebooted! For Managers and HR professionals.What if most employee recognition best practices are wrong? What if it’s not the gift card, anniversary award, or the mug that’s making the difference? Many organizations assume they are doing fine with their approach to employee recognition, but most employees don’t agree. More than 65% of employees feel under-recognized, which matters because they are twice as likely to quit in the next year. With good intentions, traditional recognition approaches often undermine your organization and end up making it harder for leaders and costly to the business.

What’s more, Recognition Rebooted requires no transformation of your organization or program, nor buy-in from other busy leaders. It’s just you and your team. If those other things do happen—and they will—that’s an added bonus.

Whether or not you have an existing recognition program, make your job easier and let Recognition Rebooted come to the rescue!

Don’t Feed the Elephants! Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Partnerships

You see the giant footprints the moment you walk through the door. The conference room is a swirling mess of tension, heaviness, anxiety, and peanut shells. Something is very wrong with your team. Everybody knows it, but nobody is talking about it.

It’s obvious there’s an elephant in the room. Is it an Avoidephant, feeding off the fears of retaliation and exclusion? Perhaps it’s a Blamephant—whom we love to feed because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Or is it one of the other five types of elephants?

No matter what type you’re dealing with, executive coach Sarah Noll Wilson knows your elephant is not there by accident. It was created, and someone has been feeding it. Is it you?

In Don’t Feed the Elephants!, Sarah explores how you can address the true elephant in the room: avoidance. She shares tips for having conversations you may be avoiding, invites you to get curious instead of furious, and shows how to own your role rather than passing blame. You’ll come away with a shared language to free the elephants you see—and the confidence to do so.

Colonels of Wisdom Vol 1 – A Daughter’s Reflection on Leadership

This study guide is intended as a compliment to the book, Colonels of Wisdom – A Daughter’s Reflection on Leadership, not as a replacement. The Colonel’s quotes are listed here. The commentary on the quotes is not. There are 52 quotes, which allows you to process once a week for a year-long study.

Colonels of Wisdom Vol 2 – A Daughter’s Reflection on Significance

As the daughter of a career Air Force officer, Lauren Schieffer, CSP, gained profound independence and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The lessons she learned have helped her make smart decisions and overcome adversity with humility and a sense of humor. In this Volume II, Lauren combines quotes from “The Colonel” with heartfelt and engaging stories, highlighting the subtle, but crucial difference between mere success and true significance.

The Enjoyable Company: Making Work Work in a Post-Pandemic World

The LivingCore has released a publication called The Enjoyable Company: Making Work Work in a Post-Pandemic World. In it, they claim we should use the opportunity given to us by the global pandemic, to radically reshape our organizations. The goal is simple: to make work truly enjoyable. But to do that, we first need to understand what joy really is, and what steps leaders can take to make it work for their people. The Enjoyable Company provides this information and guides leaders through questions and exercises to put them into action.

“When your employees truly enjoy their work and feel they are a genuine part of your organization, they bring their full, authentic selves to the workplace. And with them, their full potential, dedicated to the common goals of your organization. Joy is the most fundamental thing we, as people, want to experience. We claim that companies exist to fulfill this purpose. Successful business developments and innovations will follow. And with them, financial success. We made this guide for the owners, leaders, and courageous individuals who want to make this vision a reality.” -The Enjoyable Company

Enjoy Your Reading

We hope some of these HR books have piqued your interest and that you’ll consider reading them. We believe that there is a lot of helpful information in these books which will help you in the workplace and that it is truly important to keep up to date with the newest ideas and developments in your industry to see where the market is heading. Also, consider subscribing to our newsletter and checking out our product to see if it may be the right fit for your business’s hiring needs.