Managing Human Capital in Retail

In this course, you will cover the fundamentals of human capital management with a focus on the retail industry. Professor Matthew Bidwell will start by examining the critical role that people play in creating value within any business, and will then assess how that value is fostered by various organizational practices. Professor Bidwell then does a deep-dive into some of the practices that drive organizational success: how to hire effectively; how to develop and retain a skilled workforce; and to motivate employees to contribute to organizational success. By the end of this course, you will have a better understanding of how human capital contributes to the success of the business, a critical role in shaping your organizational capacity.

• Module 1: Human Capital and Performance
• In this module, you will begin to assess the links between managing people and organizational performance and how human capital can drive value. You will examine methods of managing people in ways that create value. using the ability-motivation-opportunities framework. By the end of this module, you will have a clearer understanding of how human capital management operates as a system, the ways these systems interrelate across a company, and how it all relates to a broader organizational strategy.
• Module 2: High Performance Staffing
• In this module, you will examine various elements of high performance staffing, an important concept in effective human capital management. You will delve into specific best practices for making the right decision in your hiring process and how the internal hiring pipeline plays a role in this decision making process. By the end of this module, you will be able to identify the benefits of adopting effective hiring practices and understand how this contributes to to well-established internal hiring channels in the future.
• Module 3: Development and Retention
• In this module, you will consider the best ways to develop and retain current employees. You'll think critically about job skills as well as the the drawbacks and benefits of job training depending on your approach. You'll examine the impact of turnover, and the loss of organizational investment in an employee associated with attrition. By the end of this module, you'll be able to identify reasons why an employee leaves an organization and develop a plan for retaining valuable members of your team.
• Module 4: Motivating the Frontline Workforce
• In this module, you will continue examining human capital in the organizational workforce. You'll utilize your knowledge about employee retention to now focus on employee motivation, identifying multiple factors that play a role in employee satisfaction. You'll discuss how to pay employees effectively and how to design a job so that employees feel motivated on a day-to-day basis. By the end of this module, you will possess a wide array of tools to incentivize employees to work effectively over longer periods of time with a company.