Human Resource Management - Dr. Lindsey Greco, Oklahoma State University

Hello! Hi! What is your name? My name is Dr. Lindsey Greco and I am an associate professor at the Spears School of Business in the management department. Alright, and where did you get your undergrad and grad school degrees? So I got my undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Georgia, I have a master's degree in IO psychology or industrial organizational psychology, and that's just a fancy way of saying "work psychology", and then I have my PhD in Business Administration and that's from the University of Iowa. What year did you start at Spears? I started at Spears in 2016. Okay and what courses do you teach? I currently am teaching the human resource management class for undergraduates. I also teach in our PhD program, so I teach an organizational behavior class for our PhD students and then I will also be teaching our research methods class for the PhD students too.

You mentioned HR Management, what do you think are top three things your students should take away from your course. So I think that obviously I think everything in the classes are very important, but I think human resource management is a really important skill for students to walk away with, in my opinion. The number one most important thing that I hope that students come out of my class learning is that, there's never usually black and white answers to a lot of things. There's a lot of things in life that are very complicated, and there might be a lot of gray area, and in managing people there's not necessarily always a clear right and wrong, and that sometimes it can be a little bit more complicated than that. So I really try to teach a lot of nuance in the class and I think it's important to for people to understand when they're talking about managing people. The second most important thing, that I really hope people walk out of my class learning is about motivation. So I spend a lot of time talking about what motivates people and what unmotivates people, because I think that if you're managing others in in any capacity, whether you're an official management role or just working with others, it's really important to understand why people are motivated to do certain things. Whether it's work really hard or whether, it's you know, leave two hours early. So understanding why people are motivated is really important and HR has a lot to do with that. Anything from pay, to the way that your job is structured, to you know, your commitment to the organization. All of those things affect how motivated you are at work. And then I think the third thing and this is something that I think is a really hot topic right now, is I talk a decent amount about pay in my class and especially as it relates to motivation. I think it's really important nowadays, it's such an important topic for people especially getting jobs, but then also on the other end, right? Like companies are struggling to pay people more a lot of times. So I think pay is a really important topic that we cover in my class, and just understanding how pay is set, what it motivates people to do, and then also understanding your own worth as a worker, right? like what are you worth to a company? So I think pay is a really important topic, just in terms of understanding all the nuances around pay.

So if the students really love your class and want to continue that even more, what could they possibly get into as far as Spears and OSU goes? So there are lots of opportunities for students interested in HR. The first thing that I usually suggest for students is going to the HRM Club, the human resource management club. And I'm the faculty advisor for that club. So every semester they bring in a bunch of great speakers, and they usually have food and the great thing about that club, especially, is a lot of these companies that are interested in coming in are also usually interested in having interns. It's one of those things where you know, I think more and more companies are expecting internships, so it's a great way to get connected with local companies, who are interested in who need HR folks. So I think that the HRM Club is a great way to get involved. In terms of academics, you can minor in HR, which I've had several students do, and again that's something that looks really, you know, going out looks really great on your resume. If you are interested in doing a little bit more you can also concentrate in HR as part of like the MBA program. So there's a lot of opportunities within Spears to get involved academically. And then we can also support people if they're interested in certificates that come from outside from other organizations. Thee society for human resource management (SHRM) offers certificates that a lot of organizations are interested in and so we can also support students who are interested in those.