Perhaps you are interested in being the contact person for job-seekers or attending community events as a company representative. If so, recruiting could be an excellent focus for your project. Recruiting is an area that holds great importance when getting to know a prospective employer (or a company in general). Focus your project on aspects such as job announcements or career fairs. Talk to a recruiter of any large-sized organization for helpful insights into the inner workings of how they build their workforce. You may even focus on creating a job posting system.
Research more specific topics such as EEOC and diversity hiring practices. Currently, many organizations are exploring better ways to hire and retain a diverse workforce that better represents the clients they serve. Focus your project either on organizations that are strong leaders in this area or on providing assistance to those organizations which may not be making this particular practice a priority.
Payroll systems have grown increasingly automated, but still varied and complex. It isn't always limited to just clerical procedures. In fact, today entire companies are outsourced to perform that function alone. Seek out a company, such as Automatic Data Processing (ADP), where you can gain access and insight into these items. Or spend time in a payroll office of a smaller business to better acquaint yourself with that function. An MBA project focused on the payroll aspect of HR could concentrate on preparing paychecks, computing time worked, recognizing problems, establishing information, posting wages or posting deductions and overtime.
If you are skilled in statistics, you may be interested in focusing your project on formulas for pay increases, tax issues or deductions. You may also go so far as to produce budget summaries for various other departments within a business. If you are more interested in the law as it applies to payroll, your project could instead focus on payroll regulations and standards. Those working in HR must remain up to speed with current regulations. Therefore, the further you explore any HR regulation, the better versed you will be when you enter the workforce.
Compensation and benefits perhaps play the greatest role when most people are making any job decision. Therefore, you may be especially interested in gaining more experience in these areas with your project. Within this topic, you can delve deeper into learning how and why companies make certain salary, healthcare or 401k options available. You might choose to answer the question, "How does salary motivate employees?" or "How are employees truly rewarded for their successes?" Consider this a great area to further both your professional knowledge and academic understanding of managing personnel through monetary motivation.
If you are interested in learning how companies come to select certain healthcare plans, it may be especially interesting for your project to focus on establishing a healthcare package for a new employee with specific known health risks.
Your project topic could center on 401k and other retirement options currently available in any given company. You might research plans that are more cost-effective or plans that are employee driven. Whichever you decide, as the American workforce continues to age, many employers are increasing interested in this topic.
Strong companies invest in the growth of their employees. Training can occur regularly (but doesn't always) and can be integrated into both small and large businesses. Employee evaluations can serve to promote staff or to solve performance issues. Options for this topic may include researching companies that include continuing education perks, analyzing the training needs of a company or observing standard operating processes for employee evaluations. If you are skilled in mentoring, program evaluation or public speaking and facilitation, this may be a good area for you as a student to further explore. You may even decide to create your own plan for staff development through training or biannual evaluations. Consider that many organizations are eager to have assistance and recommendations in building their ideal employee development programs. Perhaps you have coaching expertise to offer or a knack for identifying development needs.