The HRM & Employment Relations department offers social science-based courses at bachelor and master level that prepare students for long-term professional life and qualify them for PhD studies.

HRM & Employment Relations is about designing and implementing strategies related to recruitment, work organization and employment risk management that contribute to the long-term sustainability of an organization. This requires knowing and being able to classify the requirements and interests of different actors (e.g. company management, employees, works council) and to influence decisions.

Our courses are aimed at committed students who want to understand the operational personnel practice as well as the institutional conditions (e.g. labor law, labor markets) of this practice in order to actively participate in shaping personnel policy. We emphasize constructive participation in discussions during seminars as well as professional cooperation in teams (e.g. in project work) to be a matter of course.

We offer students a holistic understanding of personnel work, which conveys applicable scientific knowledge at the interface of business administration/economics, sociology, psychology and law. We involve students in our ongoing projects, in which they learn to apply the knowledge they have acquired, and provide them with methodological tools for analyzing relevant operational issues.

Typical career perspectives for our students are positions in companies (e.g. HR specialist, executive, HR controller, works council), in consulting (e.g. management or HR consulting) as well as in HR policy advocacy groups (e.g. chambers of labor, trade associations). Furthermore, the courses offer an optimal preparation for further study programs at the University of Innsbruck (e.g. PhD Program Management) as well as at other universities.