HR Dissertation Topics: Fresh & Trending Research Ideas for 2025

You may be a student of human resource management looking at your last dissertation dead in the face, scrolling to type HR dissertation topics into your search bar with the hope of hitting the jackpot. You are not the only one. Deciding what to write about may be like a puzzle as well.

What is new, researchable, and interesting in the dynamically changing business place? It is also not enough to identify the topic that is interesting, but also the one that will be valuable to the current trends in the HR field, provides depth in analysis, as well as aligns with the HR practices that take place in the real world.

Here is a carefully selected compilation of HR dissertation ideas that are popular and unique in this article, and are categorized clearly and with real-life examples. No matter your interests in employee engagement, talent acquisition, remote work policies, performance management, or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), you can find something to get you motivated in the field of study.

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Why is the topic of the HR dissertation important?

The Significance of Relevancy and Originality

The scenario in human resource management is very dynamic. The HR now goes beyond conventional roles in the field of hybrid work structures and AI-centred recruitment. In your dissertation topic, these changes have to be reflected, and issues of the era must be touched upon. A novel subject enables you to make contributions to the debate within your industry, excel in your studies, and maybe even shape the HR practice of tomorrow.

Matching Topics with Career Goals

Your portfolio can be your dissertation as well. In case your goal is to become an HR analyst, researching data-powered performance measurement will leave any prospective employer impressed. Do you love ethical leadership? Learn more about the workplace culture in post-pandemic offices; it can become a good match for your aims. Selecting a topic that will be easy to write will not only ease your writing process but will enhance your professional profile too.

New HR Dissertation Topics in 2025: Categories and Samples

Remote Working and Hybrid Models

Teleworking was no longer a patch but a way of doing business in many enterprises. The students who study this field can investigate how it can influence team collaboration or productivity, the well-being of employees, and employee retention strategies.

Long-term impacts of hybrid work on employee motivation

This question may explore the effect of flexibility on job satisfaction or perhaps the fact that there is a loss of productivity when there is no physical supervision. The interviews of the remote employees can give crucial data, as well as metrics of the company’s performance.

Contextual Insight

Firms such as Twitter and Shopify have adopted remote work completely, while others, such as Apple, require presence in offices. You may compare these strategies in your research and make more general conclusions.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has ceased to be a mere compliance issue; it has turned into a high priority in progressive HR practices. Changing institutions to more diverse and equitable workplaces, the question of how organizations work on inclusion, bias reduction, or equity in leadership is an already well-researched area that can be the subject of a rich dissertation. The situation that is worth investigating is the influence of implicit bias training on inclusive hiring. 

Under this topic, the students are allowed to discuss whether such training makes a difference to the recruitment decision. What they could do is take case studies of multinational companies or interview hiring managers to determine the effectiveness of such training. 

To the students, a dissertation in DEI would not only form part of a relevant and timely research, but also get them in tune with current corporate ideals, with social responsibility being an increasingly demanding component in corporate planning. Such emphasis can make them visionary individuals who practice in the progressive discipline of human resource management.

HR Technology and Data Analytics

With the growing impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics on the recruitment and monitoring of staff performance, the necessity for the critical evaluation of the ethical and practical aspects of AI application emerges. 

The question of whether AI-based recruitment tools can remove the impact of human bias or contribute to its strengthening is an interesting direction for inquiry. A dissertation on the subject matter may seek answers on whether hiring platforms using algorithms enhance fairness in the recruitment process, or whether it is simply a carbon copy of the bias in this recruitment process. 

The students can obtain possible findings, such as interesting tendencies and results, by comparing the companies that use AI in the process of making hiring decisions with other companies that rely on traditional methods. This analysis can be focused on the supporting tools like HireVue or Pymetrics, which can serve as real-life examples of the way AI transforms the recruiter-candidate experience. The investigation of the mentioned platforms can help give a good context of how technology affects human resource practices on a greater scale.

Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding

In the present competitive job market, attracting the top talent can no longer be achieved through the provision of a decent salary, but rather needs an excellent and attractive employer brand. A study of the applicant’s behaviour about the employer branding, social media presence, and general esteem of the workplace can turn into a very relevant and interesting dissertation. 

One of the possible areas concerns the impact of employer branding on Millennials and Gen Z recruitment decisions. This can be analysed using a comparative approach between startups and established corporations to know which attributes of a brand, including innovation, work-life balance, or social benefit, seem to be more important to young people seeking employment. One can back this up with approaches such as surveys, focus groups, or LinkedIn analytics to obtain real-life answers. 

In real-life practice, it may be helpful to consider the employer image created by such high-profile brands as Google or Netflix. Their employment of a job portal, employee testimonial, and social media campaign provides extensive resources in order to examine how branding strategies positively or negatively influence the recruitment process.

Employee Well-Being and Mental Health

Human Resources, with the increased attention to mental well-being at the workplace, has broadened its scope to incorporate not only emotional well-being support, stress management, and psychological safety. This trend creates valuable research prospects in determining the relationship between the mental health policy and employee performance. 

An interesting topic of a dissertation may revolve around the impact of a mental health program on employee retention in high-stress professions like healthcare, finance, or IT. Through studying the turnover rates compared to definite well-being programmes, and enriching the information with the interview data from the HR leaders, the students will be able to discover how conducive policies affect the stability of the workforce. 

The practical implications of this kind of study are quite sizable, too. They indicate that the scholar is not only sensitive to fundamentals of HR strategy, but also cares about the establishment of caring and resilient work cultures, an attribute that has become quite vital in professional spheres nowadays.

Performance Management in a Digital Era

The process of performance evaluation has changed greatly since the time when employees used to be evaluated once a year, because now dynamic real-time feedback systems based on performance evaluation are actively used. 

Such development signifies a wider change of culture in the workplace, particularly as remote and hybrid work patterns grow in popularity. One idea that may be the subject of a relevant dissertation is to think about the redesign of performance appraisal in distance teams. 

Some of the most important questions may concern how managers can effectively monitor the progress of employees, provide them with timely feedback, and maintain accountability in distributed teams. 

FAQ

Conclusion

Selecting the topic of your HR dissertation is not only the initial stage of your academic project; this is when you will make your first contribution to the domain of human resource management. A good, apt, and informative topic makes your writing simpler but also helps you to be a budding professional.

When you go deeper into research on topics such as digital HR, DEI, employee wellness, or talent strategy, keep in mind that your findings can influence the way organizations treat people, manage talent, and foster an inclusive culture. Use your dissertation to show your interests, critical intellect, and enthusiasm for human resources.