Human Resources Undergraduate Certificate Curriculum

This course is an introduction to distance learning, study skills and techniques, reading textbooks and study guides, and reviewing for examinations. You’ll learn about individual life goals and steps needed to fulfill them; similarities between personal financial goals and business goals; determining personal financial goals; setting up a budget; and researching, planning, starting up, and maintaining a business.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Identify the four basic kinds of life goals
• Examine your individual life goals and the steps needed to fulfill them
• Recognize how your personal financial goals mirror that of most businesses
• Use time management skills to make the most of your day
• Determine personal financial goals
• Set up a typical budget
• Explain why creative thinking, research, planning, gathering resources, and production and marketing are vital for the start-up and maintenance of a business

This course will familiarize you with both the business environment and the manager’s role within it. It covers decision making, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, as well as developing an ethical perspective.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Summarize the functions of management and the basic steps in various planning processes
• Explain how to make effective decisions as a manager and a leader
• Describe the fundamental elements of an organization’s structure and the components of an organization’s competitive environment
• Explain principles for setting goals that motivate employees, why companies develop control systems, and why teamwork is beneficial
• Analyze why diversity is a critical organizational and managerial issue, and describe the criteria for technology decisions and managing change

This course is designed to introduce you to the human resource field. You’ll learn basic concepts, theories, and perspectives related to effective human resource management. There are case studies and features that will help you understand practical problems and applications of human resource management principles.

If you’re seriously thinking about a career in human resource management, you should take advantage of these extra features, even when they aren’t assigned.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Describe the elements of human resource management, including labor considerations, regulation, and management of workflow
• Explain how companies should prepare for and implement HRM to hire new employees and create training programs
• Identify the aspects of employee, career, and turnover management
• Summarize how employees are paid, including legal requirements, performance-based pay, commissions, salaries, and benefits
• Describe other HRM functions including collective bargaining, labor relations, global HRM, and building a high-performance organization
• Explain key aspects of the field of human resource management

This course provides an introduction to the various methods of organizing material for a professional setting. You’ll compose business documents using the ABC method. These include memos, emails, outlines, reports, and proposals, descriptions, and organizing materials. You’ll also work on honing your grammar skills.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Recognize how to use words correctly and effectively
• Produce a well-constructed interoffice memo, workplace email, and business letter
• Produce a brief business report based on findings obtained using research techniques and methods of documentation
• Produce an informal report that lists findings of an investigation and provides recommendations for issues raised in the findings
• Describe procedures for creating proposals, descriptions, instructions, and manuals for the workplace
• Create a detailed proposal designed to solve an internal human resource issue

This course highlights important points of compensation in contemporary work environments. Throughout your studies, you’ll learn about different forms of pay, compensation strategies, competitive pay models, and performance evaluation and management techniques. You’ll also learn about different laws surrounding compensation and global pay systems.

At the end of this course, you’ll complete an essay that asks you to take all you’ve learned throughout your studies and analyze a number of different job postings that cover these concepts.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Explain the factors and methods included in compensation strategies
• Describe how to evaluate employee performance and motivate workers using compensation strategies
• Explain how unions, laws, and special groups affect compensation
• Discuss labor regulation locally and globally
• Compare job postings for different pay models

Employee training takes place in every business. In some organizations, employee training is a formalized process that continues throughout an employee’s entire career. In other organizations, employee training is an informal event used to introduce new employees to the basic skills they’ll need to complete their tasks. Your current or future employer will approach training by some combination of the two methods. This course will help you make employee training a more efficient and effective process. After completing this course, you should be a valuable asset to any employer.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Show the various elements in the organizational training process
• Categorize the various training designs and methods
• Analyze the significance of development, implementation, and evaluation of training process
• Describe the concept of adult learning theory and discuss how it influences employee training
• List and describe the interrelationships among the five phases of the training process model

This course will introduce you to the many different elements that comprise employee benefits. The knowledge you gain from this course will help your career as a benefit specialist. It will also help you understand the history, and many of the governmental issues, concerning benefit programs today. When you complete this course, you’ll understand the full employee benefit-planning process.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Analyze the fundamentals of employee benefits
• Point out the types and purposes of group insurance
• Categorize the benefits and purposes of group medical insurance
• Distinguish the purpose of group dental insurance and other group insurance benefits
• Differentiate the various types of plans associated with retirement
• Categorize the types and benefits of profit-sharing plans and other similar plans
• Apply your knowledge on employee benefits for evaluating the benefit packages of three similar companies

Upon completion of this course, you’ll know a lot more about labor relations in America. Despite the heavy emphasis on self-reliance and entrepreneurship in our society, the great majority of us won’t discover the next version of Microsoft or become titans of industry or masters of the universe in the realm of international finance. Any healthy society needs competent teachers, reliable electricians, compassionate and competent healthcare workers, devoted law enforcement officers, firefighters, lathe operators, and technicians of all kinds. Capital may move the pieces on the economic board and corporations many pretend to be “people” whose “free speech” is reckoned in dollars, but at the fabled end of the day, it’s average, everyday people like us who must carry the weight of day-to-day labor. Capital means nothing without labor. Labor means too little if it isn’t justly rewarded and garbed in dignity.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Analyze the role played by labor unions and the impact of labor laws
• Explain labor relations management and bargaining strategies, structure, and constraints
• Discuss empowerment, partnership, globalization, and financialization
• Analyze various labor relations standards and considerations and what’s expected of the union
• Analyze the successes and challenges facing ALPA