2023 HR Department of 1 Virtual Master Class: Mastering HR Fundamentals

Tuesday, April 18 – Thursday, April 20, 2023

Program Length: 12 hours

Human Resources (HR) is one of the most critical functions in a company, responsible for the people-oriented policies and procedures. In many ways, the future success of your company lies with HR. But the job is anything but simple. At first glance, the magnitude of the challenges of being an HR department of one may seem overwhelming. However, every challenge presents a corresponding opportunity for you to take and maintain a strong leadership position in your company.

HR management plays a pivotal role in:

• Developing strategies to make sure the organization has the people it needs to meet short- and long-term goals.
• Creating and communicating organizational policies and practices
• Keeping thorough records and ensuring confidentiality
• Attracting, retaining, developing, and motivating excellent employees
• Building strong leaders and teams
• Improving job performance, increasing quality and quantity of work
• Developing and implementing a fair and legal disciplinary system
• Contributing to the organization’s strategic planning

Master the fundamentals of HR by attending our virtual Master Class on April 18-20, 2023! Join Dr. Darricka Sorells for this informative event. This virtual workshop is designed to enable you to excel in your role as a solo HR practitioner.

You'll learn how to:

• Become a real partner and have input into the strategic planning process;
• Build key partnerships with management and gain trust of employees;
• Plan effectively for your organization’s short-term, midrange, and long-term priorities;
• Determine the most effective ways to communicate the company’s objectives and policies;
• Set a budget and allocate resources;
• Ensure recordkeeping is efficient and compliant with state, federal, or local government recordkeeping and reporting requirements;
• Recruit and hire the best candidates to support your organization;
• Build strong leaders and teams;
• Use performance management to identify top employees and eliminate sub-par performers;
• Perform systematic analysis of existing or proposed positions or group of positions within your organization; and
• Identify when and how you should outsource HR functions.

2023 HR Department of 1 Virtual Master Class: Mastering HR Fundamentals

Agenda

*All Times are in Eastern

Day 1: Mastering HR Fundamentals

12:00 p.m. – 12:05 p.m.
Speaker Introduction and Opening Remarks

12:05 p.m. – 1:05 p.m.
Getting Started & Leveraging HR

When you are an HR department of one, you have to be jack-of-all-trades, involved in hiring, resource allocation, compensation, benefits, compliance with laws affecting employees and the workplace, and safety and health issues all with the utmost ethical standards. If you are new to HR, you should quickly learn HR jargon and develop a network of people and resources that you can turn to when you have questions or problems.

If you want to be a real partner in your company’s business and have input into the strategic planning process, you’ll need to leverage your position. That means assuming responsibility for all people-related performance issues, as well as for the HR mainstays of pay and paperwork.

This session will cover how you can access the resources you need, align the HR agenda with your company’s standards, and establish credibility and influence, as well as how to “sell” your competencies and capabilities to the C-Suite and HR’s customers (employees, supervisors, and management).

1:05 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
BREAK

1:15 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.
Learn Your Organization & Build Partnerships

One of the most important things you can do as a solo HR practitioner is learn the organization you’re in, from bottom to top and edge to edge. An excellent exercise for a new solo HR manager is to conduct an HR audit. This is basically an investigation of your organization’s current practices, policies, and procedures. Once you are familiar with the organization, it’s time to build deeper, stronger relationships. HR is the communications link between all departments, so it is essential that you develop productive relationships with managers from every sector. But it’s not enough to get management on board with your program—you must have the support of employees. This session will discuss types of audits you can do, steps you can take to learn about the people, processes, and products that are essential in your organization, and tips for building strong relationships with both managers and employees.

1:45 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Setting Priorities

As a human resources department of one, your success will stem from your ability to plan effectively for your organization’s short-term, midrange, and long-term priorities. Strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next several years, how it’s going to get there, and how it will know if it got there or not. With your strategic plan, you are committing to paper a definition of your department’s goals and the steps you will take to achieve them. This session includes information on all the critical HR areas that factor into your department’s strategic plan.

2:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
BREAK

2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
HR Communications

Communication with employees is vital to your HR function. In fact, effective communication from HR is so important to your organization that the following information is just an introduction. This session will include an overview of the most effective ways that HR professionals communicate the company’s objectives and policies.

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Recordkeeping

Good records will help you administer your company’s HR policies with great efficiency, eliminating guesswork. Efficient recordkeeping will aid in proving your compliance with state, federal, or local government recordkeeping and reporting requirements. Also, your records provide documentation to defend your decisions on such matters as hiring, discipline, and compensation. We’ll explore all this and more.

3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Q&A Session

Do you have any lingering questions or want to revisit a concept or two from earlier in the day? Use this time to get your questions answered before today’s workshop comes to a close.

Day 2: Strategic HR

12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
Recruiting & Hiring

At one time, placing an ad in the “help wanted” section of the newspaper was the primary way to recruit. Now, recruitment can (and must) reach a more diverse segment of the population. Employers can tap into this market of potential candidates when looking to fill positions. Getting those résumés in is just the beginning. Once you sort through them and narrow down your list of likely candidates, it’s time to start calling people in for interviews. This session will cover how HR can design varied and creative recruiting techniques to locate the best employees and then select the best candidate through a fair and equitable hiring process.

1:15 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
BREAK

1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Leadership and Team Building

One of your key responsibilities is staff development. Your organization needs strong leadership if it is to gain and maintain a competitive advantage. Among your organization’s employees are people whose innate leadership qualities may be untapped and whose talents and skills are underutilized. Your job is to help managers look for and recognize these next-generation leaders when they find them, and to help those managers build effective teams. This session will offer strategies for developing leaders, building strong teams, and assessing how they are preforming.

2:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
BREAK

2:45 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Budgeting and Resource Allocation

Planning and budgeting are critical functions, and knowing how to put together a good budget empowers you and strengthens your strategic role. If you have already worked with budgets and budgeting, you’re ahead of the game! But if you haven’t, all is not lost. This session will go over a very simple process for creating a budget.

3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Q&A Session

This is your chance to ask any remaining questions you may have about the information covered in today's session. Take advantage of this opportunity to get clarification from the presenter.

Day 3: Strategic HR (continued)

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Performance Management

Finding and hiring the best employees is just the beginning. Once those employees come on board, you need a system to help them grow and develop on the job. You’ll also have to be able to identify and reward your top performers, and identify sub-par performers and develop plans to either improve their performance or weed them out. This session will walk you through the basics of a performance management system.

1:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
BREAK

1:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Job Analysis

Job analysis is the systematic analysis of an existing or proposed position or group of positions within an organization. Understanding and being able to perform good job analysis is an essential HR function forming the basis of selection, promotion, training, and so on. Discover the best ways to establish what exists, what works, and what should be changed.

2:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
BREAK

2:45 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Outsourcing

Do you often wonder how you’ll ever tackle the tasks required of you, given all of the day-to-day work on your plate? If you want to help your company get to the next level, you need to keep from getting bogged down in nonrevenue-producing administrative processes. And you can do that through outsourcing. The most common examples of successful outsourcing include payroll, benefits administration, records management, and recruiting—and using temp agencies, technology experts, attorneys, and compensation and benefits consultants to oversee certain functions. This session will help you answer the question “How do I know whether I should outsource, and if I do, what should I outsource?”

3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Q&A Session

This is your time to get answers to any remaining questions you may have about the information covered in today's training. Use this opportunity to get clarification from the presenter before the course comes to an end.

— Agenda subject to change —

2023 HR Department of 1 Virtual Master Class: Mastering HR Fundamentals

Schedule

April — Class Schedule (Eastern time)

2023 HR Department of 1 Virtual Master Class: Mastering HR Fundamentals

Speakers

Dr. Darricka Sorrells, sHRBP, CCMP
Business and Human Capital Strategist, Aggrandize Consulting

Darricka Sorrells is a professional speaker, business and leadership consultant, and human capital strategist and founder of Aggrandize Consulting, LLC. She has over 25 years of experience partnering with executives and professionals, and leading teams across multiple industries and countries. Darricka is passionate about and experienced in human resources, business strategy, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging (DEI&B), and people development. She has a track record of leading and developing novice HR teams. Darricka is a highly sought-after trainer and teaches many Leadership, Management, DEI&B, Workplace Laws, and Human Resources courses. Additionally, she is an Associate Professor for a global university.

Dr. Sorrells holds a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership with a focus on Global Consulting from Regent University, a Master of Science in Administration with a concentration in Human Resources Administration from Central Michigan University, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and minor in Computer Information Systems from High Point University. She also holds several certifications, including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I), Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP), and strategic Human Resources Business Partner (sHRBP).

2023 HR Department of 1 Virtual Master Class: Mastering HR Fundamentals

Frequently Asked Questions

What computer set-up do I need to attend this class?

This will be hosted on Zoom. Attendees should have access to a computer that has a microphone and speakers/headphone connection to participate. There is also an option to dial in if needed. You can read the full system requirements for Zoom by visiting https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362023-Zoom-system-requirements-Windows-macOS-Linux. You can also test your system by visiting https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115002262083-Joining-a-test-meeting.

For the best overall and highest quality connection experience we recommend using the Zoom Meetings application, but if you cannot download or run the application, you may join via a Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari web browser by going to https://join.zoom.us/, clicking on “Join a Meeting” at the top of the window, and entering the meeting information; please be sure to enter your full name when prompted. You can also click on the link provided and choose “Join from Your Browser” at the bottom of the window (just cancel the app initiation as needed). For complete instructions see https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362593-Launching-Zoom-from-a-web-browser.

2023 HR Department of 1 Virtual Master Class: Mastering HR Fundamentals

Credit Information

*Coming Soon!