20 Best Free Online HR Courses with Certificates in 2024!
Like any other Field, in Human resources, one needs to grow every single day by learning new things. This is why taking free online HR courses with certificates is the easiest way to be ahead of the curve. What’s more? There are several online courses that don’t require any investment from you.
If you want to up your skills game or improve on an existing skill whether that is in recruiting, managing or conflict resolution there is an online course for you. After a lot of research, we’ve gathered there to help you get started quickly.
If you are looking to be more efficient in your everyday tasks then you should check out the StartupHR toolkit. It has the largest collection of ready-made HR policies, documents, letters, calculators, and much more. So you don’t have to start any document from scratch.
Let Us Look At The List of The 20 Top Free Online HR Courses in India.
1. Human Resources Foundation Course by Linkedin
2. HR Interviewing techniques (Linkedin)
3. HR short Course (Oxford Home Study Center)
4. Preparing to Manage HR (Coursera and University of Minnesota)
5. Strategic Human Resources (LinkedIn Learning)
6. Diploma in HR (Alison)
7. People and Organizations (MIT)
8. Managing Human Capital (Wharton School via Coursera)
9. Human Resources: Recruitment and Selection The Open University
10. HR Fundamentals
11. Free online HR course (Brentwood Open Learning College)
12. Onboarding New Hires as a Manager (LinkedIn Learning)
13. Facilitating Group Discussions (Open Learn)
14. Strategic View of performance (Open Learn)
15. Developing Your skills as an HR professional (Open Learn)
16. What is strategy? (Open Learn)
17. Building a Remote Workforce (Bernie U)
18. Organizational Behavior (Know Your People): Coursera
19. Introduction to International HRM
20. People Management
1. Human Resources Foundation Course by Linkedin
As an HR professional, your foundation needs to be rock solid. In case, you’d like to brush up on some past skills or revisit some principles then this course is for you. The course is taught by Colorado University professor Wayne Cas, an author of the award-winning book on subjects like Human Resources, Business Management and Applied Psychology.
The course is an hour long and discusses interviewing techniques, the role of HR in career development, how to create systems for internal training and much more. This course comes with a PDF certificate of completion. What’s more? The course is completely free for new LinkedIn users as it is hosted on LinkedIn Learning. So if you’re going to make courses a part of your life, start with the basics.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Foundation course
3. Fit for beginner level
4. An award-winning author as an instructor
5. 1-hour self-paced
6. Completely free
7. Certificate of completion
8. Additional resources available
2. HR Interviewing techniques (Linkedin)
The interviewing techniques of HR managers are changing drastically in today’s times. As an HR professional, you need to keep brushing up on your interviewing skills to keep up with it. The course is taught by Barbara Bruno, an internationally recognized top expert in staffing and recruiting.
The course is of one and a half hours and gives a certificate of completion. It also teaches you how to stay in touch with new hires and how to evaluate the best candidate. It was released in January of 2021 and has been seen by almost 20,000 students already.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Fit for Intermediate level
3. Expert as an instructor
4. 1 hour and 17 minutes of content
5. Access on computer or phone
6. Completely Free
7. Certificate of completion
3. HR short Course (Oxford Home Study Center)
The Oxford Home Study Center is one of the top online business, art, and industrial schools. This “short” course is 20 hours long and covers the basics of entry-level HR for free. This Free online course in Human resources teaches more than just the basics of HR. It gives you the skills and knowledge for anyone seeking a career in Human Resources.
The course covers topics like Introduction to HR Management, Recruitment and Selection, and Employee Training and Development. It even provides a certificate for the same. However, the one downside to this course is that if you learn better through videos this might not be for you as the entire course is in text.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Beginner to intermediate level
3. 20 hours of text content
4. Downloadable resources
5. Entry-level knowledge
6. Taught by industry leaders
7. Supplemental material
8. CPE credit
9. Endorsed by OHSC
10. Specific info for interviewing
11. Certificate of completion by OHSC
4. Preparing to Manage HR (Coursera and University of Minnesota)
Managing employees is a large part of an HR professional’s job profile. Taught by John W Budd, an HR management professor at the University of Minnesota. The technique of managing human resources varies from person to person and company to company.
This five-part course teaches subjects like HRM, people management, non-monetary compensation and alternative HR approaches. This course is fit for an introductory level of learning. This 4-week free online HR course covers human resource management with depth. This free online hr course helps you learn the principles and the tactics of handling employees. Furthermore, it gives you an understanding of how to motivate your employees, how to learn what makes them tick, and more. It is a part of a larger course. This course also includes extra assessments, quizzes, peer review, and optional extra study.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Fit for Intermediate level
3. 13 hours of content over 4 weeks
4. In association with the University of Minnesota
5. College professor instructor
6. Includes quizzes, extra study, and assessments
7. Certificate of completion
8. Content rating of 97% by 24,023 people.
9. Available in English, Korean, Vietnamese and Arabic
5. Strategic Human Resources (LinkedIn Learning)
As HR professionals it is easy for us to get caught up in everyday admin tasks. This free online course in Human resources helps you improve upon different elements of HR with a focus on people. Taught by Catherine Mattice, an HR expert who has taught several companies how to create respectful workplaces.
This 1-hour class helps you learn the strategy of Human Resources. It teaches the process of assessing current needs, forecasting the future and how to support the overall organizational vision. It also relates analytics to real-world situations.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Fit for Intermediate level
3. 13,313 members like this course
4. 1 hour worth of content
5. Business professional instructor
6. Extra resources
7. Certificate of completion
6. Diploma in HR (Alison)
This free diploma course from Alison is a unique offering. It helps you build a base for Human Resources and gives you a certificate to show on your resume. It is great for a new HR professional or an experienced professional looking to brush up on the basics.
This 8-10 hour course covers topics from hiring an employee to their termination. This Free online course in Human resources is divided into 10 modules which cover the key HR functions along with the role of an HR professional. It teaches you how to maintain the relation of an employee with the company and how to retain them.
Benefits
1. Free Course
2. Certificate available with a fee
3. 8-10 hours of content
4. Fit for beginners
5. 127,478 Students enrolled in it
6. Alison certification
7. Rated 3.8 stars
7. People and Organizations (MIT)
Created in 2010, this MIT course isn’t equipped with the latest HR strategies and tricks. However, by being backed by MIT university, this free course is still a huge value addition to any resume and CV. Taught by Prof. Thomas A. Kochan, an MIT professor.
This course has 25 sessions, each one is 1.5 hours long. The course covers the history of human work in content with scientists, engineers and other professionals. It highlights the major work challenges in HRM profession and uses interactive exercises to help you overcome them. The course covers critical skills like negotiations, teamwork and leadership. Furthermore, the website might be a little difficult to navigate.
Benefits
1. Free of cost
2. 25 sessions
3. 1.5-hour-long session
4. Intermediate level
5. Taught by well-renowned MIT professor
6. Covers critical life skills
7. Backed by the MIT name
8. Includes notes
8. Managing Human Capital (Wharton School via Coursera)
Part of the business foundation specialization course on Coursera, this course is created by This is one of the best free online HR courses as it covers the most important aspect of HR – the employees. It is taught by two professors – Professor Micheal Useem and Professor Peter Cappelli. Both of them are professors of the Wharton school.
This course is one of the best free online HR courses. They spread out to take 2-3 hours a week. It teaches you how to discover and retain good employees and maintain a good company culture. It touches on subjects of motivation and reward, making good decisions, and changing an organization’s architecture. Primarily a video-based course with a quiz and a reading for every module.
Benefits
1. Free of cost
2. 4 weeks long course
3. About 7 hours of content
4. Taught by two professors
5. Certificate of completion
6. 4.54/5 rating
7. Offered by the University of Pennsylvania
8. Beginner level
9. Available in English and Korean
9. Human Resources: Recruitment and Selection The Open University
Recruitment and selection of the right employees is an important task of the human resource department. This is why taking this course will help you brush up your skills and learn the art of recruitment and selection in depth.
This 12-hour long course is offered by the Open University’s OpenLearn platform. A great thing about the platform is that it does not require students to sign up for an account to start their courses. The course teaches subjects like finding and screening job applicants, exploration of employee personality types and specifying job and person requirements. This course is an intermediate level course and therefore is great even for professionals. However, the course is primarily text-based along with a few practical activities.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Offered by Open University
3. Intermediate level course
4. Statement of participation on completion
5. 12-hour worth of content
6. A specific in-depth course
7. Updated in 2018
10. Hr Fundamentals
Every Human Resource professional must keep on developing their skills and keep up with the recent changes in the business. This course talks about the practices that an HR professional should develop, the skills that HR professionals should have and a basic understanding of business and business goals. It is taught by four HR professionals namely, Sarah Davis, David D’Souza, Steve George and Stuart Haden.
Developed by CIPD, this free HR course is 15-hour long and is spread out in 5 weeks. Furthermore, it is one of the best free online HR courses, especially to build a foundation for HR studies. The course also teaches planning, analyzing and strategizing. The course is created to help new and aspiring professionals.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Taught by four HR professionals
3. Fit for beginners
4. 15 hours worth of content spread out in 5 weeks
5. Rated 4.8 stars
6. 58,175 enrolled for this course
7. Extra fees for certificate
8. Video-based
11. Free online HR course (Brentwood Open Learning College)
Endorsed by BOLC (Brentwood Open Learning College) this entry-level course can be the perfect quick and easy way to learn about HRM. This free online course in Human resources is best suited for professionals looking to brush up or relearn recruitment, selection, training, ongoing staff development, and more.
This 20-hour course can be enrolled in at any time and is a self-paced course. Furthermore, they provide a certificate of completion. The course is dived into 3 parts – Introduction to HR, Recruitment and Selection and Staff training and development.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Extra fees for certificate
3. Fit for beginners
4. 20 hours of content
5. Contact details – +44 292 0026 229 and info@bolc.co.uk
6. Endorsed by Brentwood Open Learning college
12. Onboarding New Hires as a Manager (LinkedIn Learning)
Onboarding new employees is a series of tasks to be done right. If it isn’t done right, the employee will take much longer to adjust to the office environment. This is more so the case while hiring a new manager. Which is why you should take a specialized course to onboard a manager.
This ½ course is taught byTodd Dewett, one of the most-watched leaders. He is a speaker, an author, and an expert in authenticity. He has a Ph.D. in management and organizational behavior. This free online HR courses talk about the best practices that an HR should do on the first day of the employee, how to ensure that the employee has the necessary tools to get started, and to understand whether mentoring will be required or not. The course completion will give the student a certificate of completion.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Fit for beginners
3. Taught by leadership expert
4. Includes certificate of completion
5. Includes 2 chapter quizzes
6. 890 members like the course
7. ½ hour worth of content
8. Video-based course
9. Specialised information for onboarding a new employee
13. Facilitating Group Discussions (Open Learn)
Managing group discussions is an underrated skill. Being good at facilitating ground discussions will help you select the right employee, it will prepare you to led meetings and will help you understand human behavior better. Furthermore, it will help increase employee engagement in a company and will help the employee build a good relationship with each other.
This 2-hour course dives deep into tho facilitating meetings and discussions in the workplace. It teaches you facilitation styles, facilitative behaviors, and also gives you resources to deal with difficult situations. The best thing about the Open Learn platform is that you can learn without having to sign up for a course.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Video-based course
3. Specialised information
4. 2 hour worth of content
5. No-sign in required
6. Updated in 2019
7. Downloadable in word, kindle, pdf and epub
8. Statement of participation included
14. Strategic View of performance (Open Learn)
The Human resource department is a partner of the company. This is why an HR professional should have a basic understanding of business and strategy. This online course in human resources divides strategy into three different approaches and helps you understand the process of the decision.
This 4-hour long course will help you understand how business works and understand the market-based approach, resource-based approach, and how to use both of them. Furthermore, it helps you understand the value chain and emergent strategy.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. 4 hour’s worth of content
3. Advance course in business
4. No sign in required
5. Statement of participation included
6. Video-based
15. Developing Your skills as an HR professional (Open Learn)
You are as good as your skills in this world. Therefore, it is your duty as an HR professional to develop your skills and stay efficient. These free online HR courses teach you how to develop some important skills in organizing yourself, time, stress and teams or groups.
This 9 hours long advanced course is offered by Open Learn. The course is divided into 5 parts. All the parts help you learn how to be more efficient as an HR professional and how to keep developing your skills. It also provides a free statement of completion and has quizzes to ensure you’ve learned from this course.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. 9 hour’s worth of content
3. Advance course in strategy
4. Helps you be a more efficient HR professional
5. No sign in required
6. Statement of participation included
7. Video-based
16. What is strategy? (Open Learn)
Being able to create a successful strategy is a skill that not just HR professionals but individuals should learn. Through this course, you will learn the major theories of strategies in the professional world and understand important concepts of strategy and strategy-related vocabulary.
This 5-hour long course is an advanced level course. It will help an HR professional do an in-depth analysis of HR strategies. Furthermore, the course even teaches the process of applying Mintzberg’s 5 Ps framework. This course is recommended for working professionals to help them upgrade their skills.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. 5 hours worth of content
3. Level 3: Advanced level course
4. For people wanting an in-depth analysis of HR strategies
5. Recommended for working professionals
6. No sign in required
7. Video-based
8. Statement of completion
17. Building a Remote Workforce (Bernie U)
This is the course that every HR professional should take in 2021. As the pandemic has made working remotely a norm, you as an HR professional have to learn new skills to keep up. This course will teach you how to recruit, hire, and manage the performance of your employee remotely.
The course is divided into 6 classes and covers topics related to remote company culture, technology, onboarding and more. It also includes additional resources like onboarding compliance cheat sheet, onboarding cheat sheet, performance management case study and teaches you how to write a compelling job description.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Beginner/Intermediate Level
3. 6 classes
4. Offered by BernieU school for HR education
5. Updated in 2019
6. Focused on working with a remote team
18. Organizational Behavior (Know Your People): Coursera
Part of the Global Master of Business Administration (Global MBA) degree in Coursera is an important course for any HR professional. Organizations have changed, management has changed, which is why it is crucial to managing your workforce well. As an HR professional, it’s your job to manage employees well. However, that can be a challenging task. This free online HR course will help you navigate and understand the process of optimizing your work environment.
This course is taught by professor Rebecca Mitchell of the Macquarie Business School. This 19-hour course is perfect for anyone learning organizational management or is a professional Human resource manager. This 100% online course is offered by Macquarie University. It is divided into four weeks of courses.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Beginner level
3. 19 hours
4. 100% online
5. Part of a global MBA degree
6. Offered by Macquarie University
19. Introduction to International HRM
Get introduced to the ideas and strategy that is used internationally for efficient human resource management. This free online course in Human resources will help you understand theories and HR practices in different countries, thereby allowing you to build your own strategy. It is taught by Xue Zhou, an Assistant Professor in Project Management at Coventry University.
This 6-hour course is developed by Coventry University and it will teach you the best practices around the world. The course is designed for professionals who’d like to understand the concept of human resources and expand their HR knowledge to an international market. This course is created for human resource professionals at a management level.
Benefits
1. Advance level course
2. 6 hours worth of content
3. Taught by an assistant professor
4. Offered by Coventry University
20. People Management
Everyone can learn to be better at people management. That is why you can take this course to learn to be an even better leader. This course will help you learn different aspects of people management and will help you appreciate the challenges you will face being a first-time manager. Furthermore, it will answer questions like “how should I give feedback” that every first-time manager has. Taught by the IIM Bangalore professor Vasanthi Srinivasan.
This course is spread out to 6 weeks and is 2-4 hours long. It is offered for free by IIMBx on edX. What’s more? The course is a great pick for any new manager or an HR professional at an introductory level.
Benefits
1. Free of Cost
2. Fit for beginner level
3. 6 weeks worth of content 2-4 hours each week.
4. Taught by a professor of HRM at IIM Bangalore
5. Offered by IIMBx
6. Can get a certificate for a fee
Conclusion
Whether you are an entry-level employee or have been an HR professional for years, you will find the right free course for yourself in this list for sure. Learning is a part of life and should be a continuous process. This is the only way to grow and to learn new things. It’s a good thing that free online HR courses can help you with the same.
In the spirit of learning, subscribe to our newsletter to get high-quality HR-related content every time we upload.
Join a Community of 75,000+ HR Professionals
POSH TRAINING
Leadership Skills
Training Budget Template
FORM 01 – Employees’ Registration Form