Research Papers / reasearch topic on human resource management [7]

I work for a large industrial manufacturer who has a sizable collection of internally developed online trainings. I think given your background it would be interesting to survey those types of organizations regarding the challenges and successes of those types of training programs. In my experience, manufacturers seem to have less technologically advanced employees on the whole as compared to banks, tech firms, etc. How does online trainings impact the learner in those environments? How does delivery method affect learners across the company who may vary in education from high school equivalency to Master's or PhD (for instance, if you had to roll out a training on Fraud or Compensation that would need to be delivered to a large cross section of employees)?

Dissertations / About employees? - Need hr research topic for Ph.d. [3]

I agree with EF_Kevin. I'm not sure of your situation but I would definitely spend some time in the topics suggested above to find where you can contribute to the field. For a PhD you basically want to find where the research is lacking to build a stronger foundation in that area.

Having said that, my company, as most in this situation, has had some challenges integrating companies it has purchased. There is probably a fair amount of research out there on increasing employee satisfaction at the bought company (as many times those employees resent being purchased and having to conform to the new company's standards) but I would be interested to know why do company's still have trouble with this (assuming there is a larger volume of research). And if there isn't a large volume then you have a bigger opportunity to contribute in that area.

Another topic my co-worker and I were discussing today is the effect of C-Suite communications on employee morale. For instance, some companies have an internal website where they can submit anonymous questions to the CEO, CFO, etc which are taken seriously and answered. Other companies may have a quarterly town hall meeting where the C-Suite may answer (or may say its a silly question and blow it off). It would be interesting to see how employees perceive the private vs public communication channels and how upper level management's responses (and transparency) affect employee engagement. Oh yes, that reminds me..."employee engagement" is a hot topic with companies. It's when the company, often times, hires an outside firm to benchmark its employees on different areas such as compensation, safety, happiness, job mobility, culture, etc.

Hope that helps!