MSc Human Resource Management

Key information

• Duration: 1-year full time
• Start date: September 2023
• Apply by: 1 August 2023 (international), 1 September 2023 (UK)

This course will prepare you for a career in human resource management. You’ll gain advanced critical thinking skills, understand the key issues in the contemporary world of work, and get a solid grasp of the remit of human resource management (HRM) as a profession.

You learn how to challenge conventional wisdom and develop your confidence. Topics covered include:

• The contemporary context of work
• Employment and HRM
• Employee engagement and talent management
• Strategic and international HRM
• Employment relations
• Leading, managing and developing people.

Accreditation

• Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
• The University of Sussex Business School is accredited by EQUIS, the most comprehensive institutional accreditation system for business and management schools. Accreditation ensures a rigorous quality control, benchmarking against international standards and is acknowledged worldwide.

We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2022/23. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, or due to staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. It may not be possible to take some module combinations due to timetabling constraints. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Core modules

Core modules are taken by all students on the course. They give you a solid grounding in your chosen subject and prepare you to explore the topics that interest you most.

Autumn teaching

• Developing Skills for Business Leadership
• Employment Relations
• Leading, Managing and Developing People
• Work, Employment and Human Resource Management in Context

Spring teaching

• International Human Resource Management
• Research Methods for HRM
• Strategic Human Resource Management and Employee Engagement
• Talent Management

Summer teaching

• Research Project in Human Resource Management

Options

Alongside your core modules, you can choose options to broaden your horizons and tailor your course to your interests. This list gives you a flavour of our options, which are kept under review and may change, for example in response to student feedback or the latest research.

While it’s our aim for students to take their preferred combinations of options, this can’t be guaranteed and will be subject to timetabling. Options may be grouped and if so, students will be able to choose a set number of options from the selection available in any particular group.

Spring teaching

• Ethics and Organisations: Responsibility and Justice
• Management of Negotiation

We’ll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities described in this prospectus. However, we may need to make changes due to significant disruption, for example in response to COVID-19.

This CIPD-accredited course provides a comprehensive curriculum so that you can enter a range of careers in the field of human resources and take up roles such as:

• Compensation and benefits adviser
• Diversity and inclusion manager
• Employee engagement consultant
• Employee relations expert
• Head-hunter
• HR generalist
• HR information systems adviser
• Recruitment and development administrator
• Reward manager.

We offer advanced research methods training and the opportunity to carry out an independent piece of research. This prepares you for further study at PhD level or for a career in research consultancies and research institutes.

• 1st in the UK for annual research income in 2020/21 (Chartered Association of Business Schools)
• 13th in the UK for Business and Economics (The Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject 2022)
• Top 100 in the world (QS World University Rankings: Masters in Management Rankings 2023)