Books for the modern, data-driven HR professional (incl. People Analytics)

With great pleasure I’ve studied and worked in the field of people analytics, where we seek to leverage employee, management-, and business information to better organize and manage our personnel. Here, data has proven valuable itself indispensible for the organization of the future.

Data and analytics have not traditionally been high on the list of HR professionals. Fortunately, there is an increased awareness that the 21st century (HR) manager has to be . But where to start learning? The plentiful available resources can be daunting…

Have a look at these 100+ amazing books
for (starting) people analytics specialists.
My personal recommendations are included as pictures,
but feel free to ask for more detailed suggestions!

Categories (clickable)

• Behavioural Psychology: focus on behavioural psychology and economics, including decision-making and the biases therein.
• Technology: focus on the implications of new technology….
  • Ethics: … on society and humanity, and what can go wrong.
  • … for the future of work, workforce, and organization. Includes people analytics case studies.
• ent: focus on industrial and organizational psychology, HR, leadership, and business strategy.
• s: focus on the technical books explaining statistical concepts and applied data analysis.
  • …. more technical books on how to conduct people analytics studies step-by-step in (statistical) software.
  • Programming: … technical books specifically aimed at (statistical) programming and data analysis.
• Communication: focus on information exchange, presentation, and data visualization.

Behavioural Psychology books

Technology books

Ethics in Data & Machine Learning

Digital & Data-driven HR

Management books

Statistics books

Applied People Analytics

Programming

You can find an overview of 20+ free programming books here.

Data Visualization books

A note of thanks

I want to thank the active people analytics community, publishing in management journals, but also on social media. I knew Littral Shemer Haim already hosted a people analytics reading list, and so did Analytics in HR (Erik van Vulpen) and Workplaceif (Manoj Kumar). After Jared Valdron called for book recommendation on people analytics on LinkedIn, and nearly 60 people replied, I thought let’s merge these overviews.

Hence, a big thank you and acknowledgement to all those who’ve contributed directly or indirectly. I hope this comprehensive merged overview is helpful.