Ben Lillitos

I had wanted to do an MSc for several years. There were three core reasons for this:

Growth: Learning is key to growth. Undergraduate degrees tend to help enrich foundational knowledge of a topic, whereas a master’s degree can help test and grow your ability to think laterally and craft more critical arguments. I had explored doing my CIPD too but wanted something with both academic rigour and business relevance, hence the Henley Business School course was ideal, as it came with CIPD accreditation and a great business brand.

Career shift: I wanted to use the MSc in HR to help me pivot my career into a more generalist direction of HR; my background to date had been in a relatively niche area of assessment and development, succession planning, and executive search.

People: HR - and much of life - is about people. The academic team and wider programme team are simply brilliant. I spoke to various course directors and support teams while exploring what institutions to study at and their respective courses. Henley staff were incredibly friendly and approachable, highly responsive, and flexible in their approach. I can also comment that this remained true throughout the year in what was a difficult time due to Covid-19.

The MSc has given me a broader grounding in the functional topic area of HR; it helped to reinforce and enrich the areas I was familiar with, while also giving me a framework and structure in which to add, absorb, and connect new concepts of HR in practice.

The highlight of the programme was the course community. My course started during the first few waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, and hence much of the course shifted to a remote study and teaching environment (although some in-class teaching was still available). This meant that the students needed to engage in new ways, and this was very much embraced and supported by course administrators, in terms of the delivery of learning material all the way through to the examination processes. In short, the course staff adapted to a changing situation and so too did the students.

Do it. The staff care and the support team are second to none and the broader resources on offer are excellent. The business school also has strong links to industry and is widely recognised in the UK and beyond.