WGU D351: Functions of Human Resource Management

Where People Strategy Meets the Business: What D351 Actually Covers

D351, Functions of Human Resource Management, is the survey course covering what an HR department actually does all day. It sits in WGU's School of Business, carries three competency units, and appears in the catalog under the common course number HRM 2110. If you are in the B.S. Human Resource Management program, you meet it in your very first term. But this is not an HR-majors-only course: WGU's institutional catalog also places D351 in the standard course plans for the B.S. Business Management, Marketing, Finance, Communications, Supply Chain Management, and User Experience Design programs, usually in a later term. Most students arrive with no HR background, which is exactly the audience it is written for.

Direct answer: Treat D351 as a vocabulary-and-classification course, not an essay course. Learn the five function areas — strategic HR roles, talent acquisition, training and performance, employment regulation and employee relations, and total rewards — well enough to name the right concept when you are handed a short workplace scenario. Then let the pre-assessment coaching report tell you which one or two areas are genuinely weak, drill only those, and schedule your assessment.

WGU describes the course as an introduction to the management of human resources — the function focused on recruiting, managing, and directing the people who work in an organization. The official topic sweep runs across strategic workforce planning and talent acquisition; compensation and benefits; training and development; employee and labor relations; and occupational health, safety, and security. That is a wide net cast shallowly. You are not asked to build a compensation structure from scratch — you are asked to recognize what one is for, what it is called, and which HR function owns it.

It is worth taking seriously even if HR is not your career plan. WGU recommends completing Functions of Human Resources before attempting Employment and Labor Law (D352), and the terminology carries directly into D353 Strategic Training and Development. WGU also notes that the B.S. HRM program content is certified by the Society for Human Resource Management as aligning with its body of knowledge and is aligned with HRCI curriculum standards — so the vocabulary here is the vocabulary those certifications assume. Cramming and forgetting D351 tends to cost you twice later.

The Five Territories Your Assessment Walks Through

WGU publishes D351's competencies in its business program guidebooks, and they map cleanly onto five study territories. Build your notes around these headings rather than chapter numbers:

• Strategic HR roles and functions. How HR is structured, what HR professionals are responsible for, and how workforce planning ties people decisions to organizational strategy rather than sitting off to the side of it.
• Talent acquisition. How recruiting and selection are designed to meet the organization's current openings and its projected future needs — job analysis, sourcing, selection methods, and the difference between filling a seat and planning a workforce.
• Training, development, and performance management. Activities that improve what employees can do now and what they will be able to do later, plus the systems used to measure, evaluate, and influence employee performance.
• Employment regulation and employee relations. The federal employment-related regulations HR must operate inside, and HR's role in compliance and employee relations. Occupational health, safety, and security is also a named course topic, so do not skip it.
• Total rewards. Direct and indirect monetary and nonmonetary rewards — how compensation and benefits packages are assembled and justified.

Notice the verbs WGU uses in its competency statements: identifies, explains, describes. That is a deliberate signal about depth — you are checked on whether you can label and explain HR concepts, not execute them.

Honest Difficulty: A Light Course That Punishes Skimming

On paper this is one of the friendlier entries in the business core — a three-CU survey with knowledge-level competencies and material that reads more like a professional handbook than a technical text. If you have worked in an office, supervised anyone, or been through a hiring process from the inside, much of it will feel like a formalized version of things you already half-know.

The catch is breadth. What trips people here is not conceptual difficulty; it is the sheer number of near-synonyms packed into a short span. Recruitment versus selection versus talent acquisition. Training versus development. Direct versus indirect compensation. Performance appraisal methods that all sound plausible until you have to pick the one that matches a scenario. Skimming produces a comfortable familiarity that collapses when you must choose between four terms that all sound roughly right.

Our suggested planning window is a focused long weekend to two calm weeks, depending on whether HR vocabulary is new to you. Take the longer end if you are also carrying other courses. There is no prize for speed, and a retake costs more time than a careful first pass ever will.

A Two-Week Plan Built Around Recall, Not Rereading

Two moves pay for themselves before you study anything. The first is the one WGU lists as your opening competency: talk through your course planning tool report with your instructor and build a personalized plan together. The second is taking the pre-assessment early — before you feel ready, not after — because its coaching report shows which competency areas are already fine and which need real work. Studying all five territories evenly when two are already solid is the most common way students waste a week.

Days 1–3: build the map. Read the course material once at normal speed, but stop at the end of each section and write, from memory, a one-sentence definition of each new term plus one example. Do not copy from the text — the struggle to reproduce it is what makes the term stick.

Days 4–8: active recall on the confusable pairs. Make your own flashcards rather than downloading someone else's — writing the card is half the learning. Prioritize contrast cards: recruitment vs. selection, training vs. development, direct vs. indirect compensation, employee relations vs. labor relations. On the back, write not just the definition but a sentence on how you would tell the two apart in a scenario. Review in short spaced sessions rather than one long block.

Days 9–11: practice and scenario translation. Work through the course's own quizzes and any practice questions in the learning resource. When you get one wrong, do not just note the right answer — write one sentence on why the wrong option was tempting. That single habit converts recognition into discrimination. Then practice narrating small workplace situations from your own experience and tagging which of the five HR functions owns each one.

Days 12–14: retake the pre-assessment cold. No notes, no pausing. If an area still reads weak, revisit that section only. Then schedule your assessment and set up your testing space in advance so exam day is logistics-free.

Five Ways Students Trip in This Course

• Trusting recognition over recall. HR terminology reads as obvious. "I know what onboarding is" is not the same as distinguishing it from orientation under time pressure. Test yourself with the answer covered.
• Reading past the legal and compliance material. The employment-regulation competency is the least intuitive area for students with no HR background, and the one most often left until the night before. Give it its own study block, early.
• Hunting for shortcuts instead of studying. Search results for this course are flooded with sites selling "verified exam answers." Those are academic integrity violations, they are frequently wrong or out of date, and they leave you unable to handle items that reward real understanding. Use WGU's materials, your instructor, and your own notes.
• Skipping the course instructor. D351 has an assigned instructor whose job includes telling you where students commonly lose points. One short call usually saves hours of unfocused reading.
• Treating it as disposable. Students who cram D351 just to clear a term tend to pay for it in D352 and D353, where the same vocabulary is assumed knowledge.

D351 Readiness Checklist

• Can you name the five function areas without looking, and give a real-world example of each?
• Can you explain how strategic workforce planning differs from simply filling open positions?
• Can you walk through talent acquisition from job analysis to selection, in order?
• Can you distinguish training from development, and say which targets current versus future performance?
• Can you describe several performance appraisal approaches and say where each fits best?
• Can you explain HR's role in compliance with federal employment regulations without confusing compliance with enforcement?
• Can you sort a list of rewards into direct, indirect, monetary, and nonmonetary categories?
• Did you score comfortably on a cold retake of the pre-assessment, with no weak area flagged?
• Is your testing environment ready — quiet room, cleared desk, ID on hand, system check done?

D351 FAQ

How many competency units is D351 worth?

Three. WGU's institutional catalog lists Functions of Human Resource Management (course number D351, common course number HRM 2110) at three competency units, scheduled in the first term on the standard path for HR management students.

What kind of assessment does D351 use?

WGU's published competencies for D351 are knowledge-based — identify, explain, describe — rather than project- or paper-based. WGU does not publish the format in detail, so check your own course page for the current setup, proctoring requirements, and any version changes before you schedule.

How long does D351 usually take?

We suggest planning for one to two weeks of steady study. Students already in a people-management role often move faster, because the terminology has somewhere to land. Take the full two weeks if HR vocabulary is new to you or you are carrying other courses.

Do I need HR experience to pass this course?

No. D351 is written as an introduction and assumes no prior HR background. Work experience of any kind helps, because it gives you concrete examples to attach terms to, but the course builds from the ground up.

What should I study first if I only have a few days?

Take the pre-assessment and study to its coaching report. With no data yet, start with employment regulation and employee relations plus total rewards — those areas hold the most unfamiliar terminology for students without an HR background.

Which courses does D351 set me up for?

WGU recommends completing Functions of Human Resources before Employment and Labor Law (D352), and the vocabulary carries into D353 Strategic Training and Development. Because D351 also sits in several non-HR business degree plans, students often pair it with D081 Innovative and Strategic Thinking, D089 Principles of Economics, or D471A Global Supply Chain Management.

Browse more School of Business guides on our business college hub, or see every course we cover in the full guide index. For official course and program details, see the WGU B.S. Human Resource Management program page. This site is an independent study resource and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Western Governors University.