How to Write a Presentation in Human Resources Management: What? Why? What for?
Each business owner understands that human resources are the most important component of any organization. It is very essential to know who to hire, ho w to maintain and reward the team. A good business holder knows when to train the team, educate it, empower the best employees, and reward to encourage their performance. It is impossible to do without a plan and experts who are aware of management principles. HRM provides information required for successful staff control with the benefit to the company or organization.
Students can write essays, dissertations, and reports on human resources management. Sometimes the*y have to create a presentation in HRM. Our article will help you create a presentation. It is the best option to present the topic vividly providing visual objects like pictures, diagrams, tables, and other infographics. Some students think that it is easy to create a PPT. One just takes a program and inserts some information about the topic. Is that really so? How to create a compelling presentation in human resources management?
How to Start a Presentation in Human Resources Management
Some tips can help you get ready for writing and avoid mistakes. Experts suggest doing 3 basic things.
1. Create an Outline
A person should create a plan that will reflect the structure, names of its parts, supporting facts, and the required time. The structure should be based on three questions:
- What am I going to present?
- Why do I want to present it?
- How am I going to present it?
Your outline should be detailed and lead you in the process of the creation of the presentation.
2. Search for Catchy and Reliable Information
Each academic paper needs information that can support the main idea and purpose of the report. One should look only for trustable sources. Students should not deal with the yellow press or blogs of doubtful personalities. These are some sample web sources in human resources management:
- Human Resources Edu
- HR.com
- Genesis HR Solutions
- North American Human Resource Management Association
- World Federation of People Management Associations
- The International Journal of Human Resource Management
It is better to mention sources on the margins of an outline. Later it will help students create a full list of applied sources and link in-text citations to their sources.
3. Select a Topic
If a student wants to impress the audience, he or she should look for a topic that interests the target audience. Consequently, it is necessary to investigate the target audience. What does it mean? It means to find out their priorities and preferences. Thanks to that, one will be able to select a winning topic. Below you can see sample topics that might interest some organizations and companies.
- How to turn a staff into a team?
- Onboarding New Team Members: How to Create a Friendly and Stimulative Atmosphere
- Talent Management: How to Attract Only Skillful Employees to Your Company
- How to Make Each Team Member Cooperate and Trust Each Other
- Autocratic, Democratic, Liberal, or Tutorial: What Type of Management Is More Effective in the XXI century?
How to Write a Presentation in Human Resources Management: Structure
A structure of a presentation resembles a structure of an essay. It must have a title, an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. To structure a presentation a person should keep in mind the following saying: “Tell what do you plan to present, tell the topic, and repeat what you have just said”.
Introduction
This section must introduce objectives, subjects, and details of the general topic and your topic area. You can also speak about the difficulties and challenges you have faced when preparing the presentation. Don’t forget to express your purpose using such words as ‘evaluate’, ‘analyze’, ‘argue’, ‘compare’, etc.
One more detail a person has to tell is the required time. Sometimes, there are set limits. As a rule, one should not exceed 20-30 minutes. Remember that too long presentations are not effective because people lose concentration in 10-15 minutes. If your presentation is longer, it would be better to interact with the audience and ask questions or create a situation where participants are to interact with each other. Due to that, they will not distract and lose the idea of the presentation.
If you are going to use PowerPoint, it will be better to present the introduction in 1 or 2 slides.
Key Message or the Body
The goal of this section is to provide the information a student has promised to present in the introduction. Professionals recommend dividing the information into three thematic subsections. Consequently, you might have no more than three goals. Why only 3? The reason for that is simple. Human memory cannot catch and bear more than three targets. Presentations are usually short and informative. It is hard to memorize and keep in mind all the details. That is why a presentation needs a structure and the body section mustn’t contain more than three subsections (3 slides).
Students can present these three ideas chronologically, by priority, by theme, or logically. They must support each thematic idea with examples and facts. To emphasize each subsection a person should summarize the first one before proceeding to the second one, then sum up the second one before the third one, and so on. All subsections are to be logically linked.
Conclusion
Students should thoroughly develop the conclusion to reinforce the above-presented messages. Use the words that signal the end of your speech like ‘to conclude’, ‘to wrap up’, etc. After that, restate the main idea of the presentation, sum up the key issues, and provide your audience with something they might take away.
How to Write a Presentation in Human Resources Management: Visual Details
It goes without saying that effective presentations need visual aids. Microsoft PowerPoint is the most popular tool for the creation of presentations. A person can add pictures, records, links, GIFs, and pieces of video to illustrate the material. Moreover, PPT offers different fonts, colors, and styles. Everybody knows that a text without pictures is hard to remember because of the lack of ‘memorable’ elements.
Presentation Programs
Choose the template that fits your purpose. You can even create diagrams, schemes, and tables in the slide to provide more information but use minimum space.
If you don’t want to use PowerPoint, there are other cool tools to create highly visual presentations:
NB! Do not make your slides wordy and watery! It is better to apply visual aids (pictures, tables, diagrams, infographics) and numbers (statistics) to convey important information. Use only relevant pictures! If it is hard to reduce data, avoid writing obvious things.
Experts recommend posting the created presentation on the Internet (for example, SlideShare). It will come to your rescue in case you forget to take your thumb drive. You will be able to send it to your tutor if he asks just by giving the link.
Required Devices
If you are going to show a presentation to a large audience, it will be necessary to have devices for its demonstration like a laptop, a projector, access to the Internet (if necessary), and smartphones.
A person should not read from slides. A presentation supports the words of the speaker but cannot replace the speech. Professionals suggest taking notes and facing the audience when giving a presentation.
Tips to Improve a Presentation
A student should select a topic, devices, and presentation tools. Is that enough? Experts give hints that help to improve a presentation and let a person succeed in it.
Hooks
A presentation should hook the reader. A person can use a story, an impressive fact, shocking statistics, or ask a provocative question. If a student must introduce a presentation to the audience, it will be better to use jokes and an imperative mood from time to time. Due to that, a person will catch the attention of the target audience and hold it. Present everything as a story with a happy ending.
Proofreading
It’s such a shame to face the audience with a presentation full of mistakes behind your back. When people see grammar and formatting mistakes, they stop taking a speaker seriously. That is why one should proofread each slide and pay attention to the word selection and formatting. Students can study samples and check if everything corresponds to the demanded format.
The best variant is to rest before editing. Thanks to that, a person will become more attentive and have more chances to notice mistakes. You can first scan the text in grammar checkers and tools that show the readability and then paste it on a slide.
Language
How knowledgeable is your audience? Make sure that it will understand your message. Simple English will fit the task. Delete jargon, use simple and short sentences, provide logical connection and flow.
Ways of Presentations
Students can introduce the presentation in different ways.
- Demonstration helps to show the solution of the problem in action
- A person can tell a story to involve the audience
- A student can choose a problem, present the already existing solutions, explain them, argue them, and conclude that only one of them is effective
- One can use transition words (first, the same way, compared to, etc.) to deliver the message smoothly
Don’t show off! You are to be approachable and friendly when giving the presentation. Try to set goals you can achieve and leave some time for the after-presentation questions from the audience. You should communicate through the values of your listeners.
Where to Take Visual Aids?
Today the Internet offers so many pictures, GIFs, and videos that one can use for the presentation. Nevertheless, in case a person wants to publish the PPT, it will be necessary to select pictures than do not contradict copyright policy. Moreover, college committees, professors, and tutors often do not like when students use ‘stolen’ materials. One can look for visual materials on free websites like Shutterstock and Pixabay. There is only one BUT: such pictures can be of low quality or have a logo on its background. What to do?
The first variant is to take pictures, make videos and create GIFs through specific programs. Due to that, the presentation will be 100% unique and nobody will blame you for plagiarism.
The second variant is to cite the used visual aids in the “References” on the last slide. One should also provide the link near the aid so that the reader could check the source.
The third variant is to ask a person who can create the required materials to help you. You will get unique visual aids and avoid plagiarism.
How to Create a Presentation?
If you have never created presentations, this plan will help you do that.
- select the program
- choose the layout of the slide you need
- type the text (brief and concise sentences)
- insert audio-visual materials
- edit and format text
- choose the style of the slide
- arrange slides logically
You can also set the time for the automatic switch. Never select colors for the text that will be hard to read. For example, too bright and too light colors on the white background will complicate reading. View the presentation and see whether your eyes hurt or you feel it difficult to read the text or headings.
Visual aids must be related to the topic and qualitative. Do not stick too many pictures to one slide. It is more comfortable to create diagrams in word or excel documents, copy or cut them out and paste.
If you want to show a piece of video or demonstrate a program that can help in HRM, it will be better to name it and attach a hyperlink to it. For example, a website offers programs that show the time each employee spends on social platforms. Name the program and insert a link or attach a hyperlink to its name.
Resources:
- D’Angelo, M. (2018, July 23). Beyond PowerPoint: Presentation Tools for Small Businesses. Retrieved from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6525-business-presentation-tools.html
- Lesson: Formatting Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Webucator. Retrieved from https://www.webucator.com/tutorial/learn-microsoft-powerpoint/formatting-microsoft-powerpoint-presentations.cfm
- Anonymous Author. (2015, April 29.). How to Make HR Presentations More Enjoyable. Retrieved from https://www.davis-staffing.com/2015/04/29/make-hr-presentations-more-enjoyable-staffing-agencies-in-chicago/
