The Best HR Books to Read

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of HR, continuous learning and professional growth remain essential for staying ahead. One of the most valuable resources for HR professionals is books. From timeless classics to newly released gems, HR books provide insights and practical strategies to help you build a robust HR foundation.

This blog post explores the significance of HR books and presents a curated list of the best HR books to read in 2025, offering actionable takeaways and a fresh perspective on HR management.

Let’s dive into the updated collection of remarkable HR books that every professional should consider reading this year.

HR Books for Human Resource Management

Fundamentals of Human Resource Management: Susan L. Verhulst, David A. DeCenzo 

Fully revised and updated with input from practicing HR professionals, Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, 14th Edition provides HR people with a concise yet thorough introduction to the quickly evolving world of Human Resource Management (HR). 

This conversational and engaging HR book is designed to enhance online and distance learning and covers nearly all topics and competencies recommended by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI) including human resource functions, strategy, planning, legal context, employee relations, talent acquisition, training and development, performance management, total rewards, health, safety, and labor relations. 

Where to buy this valuable HR book: Amazon

Human Resource Management: Functions, Applications, and Skill Development: Robert N. Lussier | John R. Hendon 

Fundamentals of Human Resource Management: Functions, Applications, Skill Development helps recruiters of all majors build the skills they need to recruit, select, train, and develop employees. Bestselling authors Robert N. Lussier and John R. Hendon explore the important strategic function HR plays in today's organizations. 

A wide variety of applications, self-assessments, and experiential exercises keep students engaged and help them see the relevancy of HR as they learn skills they can use in their personal and professional lives. The Second Edition of the HR book includes 13 new case studies and new coverage of the agile workplace, generational differences gamification, social media, and diversity and inclusion. 

Where to buy this useful HR book: Amazon

Best Human Resource Management Practices and Firm Performance in the Pacific Island Countries: Swastika Naidu and Anand Chand, PhD 

A new perspective of HRM and SHRM has emerged from the “best HRM practices and firm performance model for the PICs” that have been tested in this HR book. This new perspective of HRM and SHRM is called as “Interactive Interdependent Contextual Perspective.” There are three reasons for naming it that. First, the internal environmental factors and the external environmental factors unique to the PICs interact in the relationship between systems of best HRM practices and HRM outcomes in luxury hotels and upmarket hotels in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. 

Second, HRM practices are interdependent on each other and have more impact on firm performance when it is implemented as systems of best HRM practices rather than as individual best HRM practices. Third, the contextual variables, such as internal environmental factors and external environmental factors unique to the PICs interact in the relationship between systems of best HRM practices. This is also considered one of the best HR books of all time. 

Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

International Human Resource Management: Trends, Practices and Future Directions: Connie Zheng 

Thoroughly updated and expanded, the fifth edition of International Human Resource Management focuses on international human resource management (IHRM) within multinational enterprises (MNEs). The HR analytics book has been designed to lead readers through all of the key topics of IHRM in a highly engaging and approachable way. 

In addition to the key topics and rich pedagogy students have come to expect, chapters have been updated, including an expanded chapter on Comparative and National Culture. Uncovering precisely why IHRM is important for success in international business, and how IHRM policies and practices function within the multinational enterprise, this comprehensive book for HR professionals provides an outstanding foundation for understanding the theory and practice of IHRM. It is one of the best HR books for beginners, instructors, and IHRM professionals. 

Where to buy this HR book online: Amazon

Human Resource Management: A Transformative Approach: Cam Caldwell, PhD, Verl Anderson, PhD 

Dr. Cam Caldwell and Dr. Verl Anderson have written the best HR book extensively about successful organizations and the obligation of leaders and human resource professionals in today’s challenging world. This new HR book focuses on the need for a new transformative approach to human resource management to redefine individuals’ lives and organizational cultures. 

Dr. Cam Caldwell and Dr. Verl Anderson combine outstanding scholarly experience with more than twenty-five years of practitioner insights into explaining how and why human resource professionals must recalibrate their sites in contributing to their organizations’ success. 

Where to buy this HR book online: Amazon.

HR Strategy Books

Redefining HR: Transforming People Teams to Drive Business Performance: Lars Schmidt 

Redefining HR is a book for HR professionals to refresh their knowledge 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 an HR book for beginners, and practitioners, with insights from people professionals at the leading edge of HR's transformation from companies including Hubspot, Reddit, Stripe, Mastercard, Eventbrite, VaynerMedia, Asana. Written by a leading innovator in the HR industry, this HR book illuminates new perspectives and approaches for rethinking recruitment, talent management, performance, and reward to save time, reduce costs, and achieve greater business success. 

It covers key HR practices including diversity and inclusion, people analytics, learning and development (L&D), and employee experience. It is supported by global case studies from organizations including Siemens, Upwork, CVS, Schneider Electric, Delivery Hero, and more. Redefining HR is an essential resource for all HR professionals and business leaders wanting to create an exceptional people management function.

Where to buy: Amazon

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead: Laszlo Bock 

Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, Work Rules! provides teaching examples from a range of industries lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. 

Bock takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands. Work Rules!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including:

• Take away managers' power over employees
• Learn from your best employees and your worst
• Hire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them
• Pay unfairly (it's more fair!)
• Don't trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the future
• Default to open transparent and welcome feedback
• If you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough. 

Where to buy: Amazon

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't: Simon Sinek 

Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.

In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation, and failure. Why? The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. "Officers eat last," he said. 

Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What's symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their comfort--even their survival--for the good of those in their care. 

Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

Putting The Human Back Into HR: Success as an HR professional begins with you: Su Patel 

HUMAN RESOURCES VS HUMAN PROCESSES HR professionals can be either very process and policy driven, or too soft and spend too much time listening to employee problems, often resulting in not being valued by the business or the staff. Su Patel shares the 5 areas HR professionals need to master to be effective in their role, along with practical advice to develop a more balanced approach while making a positive impact on any business and the people who work there. 

Read this book and follow Su’s advice to: Develop a great partnership brand where the business will value and respect you: Create an enjoyable work environment for your employees and yourself: Become more proactive rather than reactive to change: Deliver measurable results and prove your worth to your company. If you’re an HR professional, this book is about your personal development. It is about how you can bring all the areas of HR together, to feel more fulfilled in your role and bring your people along with you. 

Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

Agile HR: Deliver Value in a Changing World of Work: Natal Dank 

From small tech start-ups or large traditional companies, organizations need to be fast, flexible, and digitally empowered to succeed. However, too many companies are stuck with siloed, compliance-driven HR processes that work in opposition to the business rather than supporting it. 

This results in the view that HR is slow and out of touch. However, Agile HR shows that this doesn't need to be the case. Covering every aspect of the HR function from people processes, ways of working, and HR services to organization design, operating models, and HR teams, Agile HR is an essential guide for all HR practitioners wanting to make their HR practices agile and drive business performance but don't know where to start. 

As well as guidance on how to deal with resistance, manage a backlog, and deal with constraints, there is also invaluable guidance on how HR can prioritize effectively and assess which activities to pursue, which to develop, which to rework, and which to abandon to achieve continuous business improvement. 

Supported by case studies from organizations who have seen the benefits of an agile approach to HR including Sky Betting & Gaming and MUJI, this is critical reading for all HR professionals in organizations of any size needing to adopt fast, flexible, and evolving agile approaches to effectively compete in the new world of work. Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

Organizational Culture HR Books

Culture Code: Charles Duhigg 

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A marvel of insight and practicality Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit. How do you build and sustain a great team? The Culture Code reveals the secrets of some of the best teams in the world – from Pixar to Google to US Navy SEALs – explaining the three skills such groups have mastered to generate trust and a willingness to collaborate. 

Combining cutting-edge science, on-the-ground insight, and practical ideas for action, it offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded. There are profound ideas on every single page, stories that will change the way you work, the way you lead, and the impact you have on the world. 

Highly recommended, an urgent read.’ Seth Godin, author of Linchpin‘Truly brilliant. Read it immediately’ Adam Grant, author of Originals‘Well-told stories, with actionable lessons’ Financial Times.

 Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

Bring Your Human to Work: Erica Keswin 

As a workplace strategist and business coach, Erica Keswin has spent over 20 years working with top business leaders and executives to build successful organizations that honor relationships. 

Featuring case studies from top brands such as Lyft, Starbucks, Mogul, and SoulCycle, to name a few, Bring Your Human to Work distills the key practices of most human companies into applicable advice that any business leader can use to build a “human workplace.” These building blocks include:

• Understanding your company’s role in the world, beyond financial profit
• Encouraging employees to be healthy in body and spirit
• Running your meetings with the clear purpose
• Making space for face-to-face interaction
• Building professional development into company culture
• Inspiring your workforce to give back to the community
• Simply saying “thank you” A human company is real, genuine, aligned, and true to itself. A real company flaunts its humanity, instead of hiding it. It’s what the most successful, sustainable companies are doing today, and there’s no reason yours can’t be the same. 

Where to buy this HR Book: Amazon

The Drama-Free Workplace: Petti Perez 

Companies spend millions on legal compliance training and initiatives to eliminate workplace drama and the resulting low morale and lawsuits, but don’t always get the results they want. Most organizations understand that simply checking legal compliance boxes around sexual harassment, bias, etc. isn’t enough but are at a loss on how to implement solutions, especially in today’s post - #MeToo world. Patti Perez is an attorney, HR expert, trainer, and former state regulator, who has conducted over 1,200 workplace investigations. 

In this unique book, she explains the secret to avoiding all forms of drama, legal exposure, and low morale: A healthy workplace culture. Patti combines the lessons learned from 25 years of professional experience with robust data from behavioral science research to debunk common myths, including the belief that a focus on legal compliance leads to a healthy workplace culture. (In fact, it increases the likelihood of getting sued). The Drama-Free Workplace includes a section with easy-to-understand causes, effects, and solutions to problems related to:

• Sexual harassment
• Bias and Diversity
• Ethics lapses The HR book also includes helpful information on:
• Becoming an organization that values and practices fearlessness, fairness, and freedom
• Anticipating situations that give rise to drama, with detailed advice on how to prevent it from happening
• Using emotional intelligence to communicate more precisely and persuasively about sensitive, controversial topics in the workplace

Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

The Fearless Organization: Amy C. Edmondson 

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent―but what good does this talent do if no one can speak their mind? 

The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule, or intimidate. Not every idea is good, and yes there are stupid questions, and yes dissent can slow things down, but talking through these things is an essential part of the creative process. 

People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing. 

Where to buy this HR book: Amazon

Hire With Your Head: Lou Adler 

In the newly revised HR Book's Fourth Edition of Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams, influential recruiting and hiring expert Lou Adler delivers a practical guide to consistently identifying and hiring the best people and scaling that process throughout your company. 

This HR book will help you address your hiring and recruitment issues, not just by making you more efficient, but also by reforming your entire process to align with how top talent looks for new jobs, compare offers, and select opportunities. You'll discover:

• Discover what it takes to ensure more Win-Win Hiring outcomes by hiring for the anniversary date rather than the start date
• How to use a "High Tech, High Touch" approach to raise the talent bar
• Expand the talent pool to include more outstanding, high-potential, and diverse talent by defining work as a series of key performance objectives 

Where to buy this HR book: Amazon