Human resource describes both the people who work for an organization and the department that is responsible for managing resources related to employees. Human resource management is a term used to describe the management of employees focusing on needs such as recruiting and staffing, training and learning, labour and employee relations, and organization development.
WHAT IS HUMAN RESOURCES PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
The absence of project management skills ruins the essentiality of human resources in organizations while it is, in fact, a vital boost in that department. Human resources project management is simply the use of project management skills for HR purposes. It involves a process that enables a project manager to organize and lead the project team.
Human Resource Project Management describes the processes that organize, manage, and lead the project team. The team consists of people with assigned roles and responsibilities for completing the task. Team members working on a project may have varied skill sets, may be assigned full or part-time assignments, and may be included or removed from the team as the project progresses.
Team members working on a project may also be referred to as the project’s staff. Although specific roles and responsibilities are assigned to the project team members, the inclusion of all teammates in project planning and decision making is beneficial. Participation of team members during planning adds their expertise to the process and strengthens their commitment to the project. The subset of the project team is a project management team, which is responsible for leadership activities at all levels.
Human resources professionals are highly valued at a business and organization, due to the amount of information at their disposal and how much they need to manage it. For an HR professional to have an edge above others, having detailed project management skills can make all the difference. There will be all sorts of large-scale or ad hoc projects that you are expected to have the ability to handle. Some will pop up while you’re halfway done with other ones.
WHY SHOULD YOU INTEGRATE HR WITH PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
Project managers mitigate the risk involved in the delivery of projects by monitoring the entire process from ideas to planning to creation to execution and completion. This is quite similar to what a good HR team does, except in their case, they mitigate people-related risks to ensure every employee is set up for a successful, supported, and happy career. Since there are similarities with the roles, here are a few lessons from project management HR professionals can integrate into their craft:
IDENTIFY THE NEEDS: Before the commencement of any project, an efficient project manager takes his time to identify what the client seeks in a product, what is broken, and how the about-to-be created product fills that space. HR professionals can borrow a leaf from this and look for needs to solve instead of implementing projects such as a performance review plan or benefits partner because of a seeming requirement. Create a quarterly survey culture for employees to find out what their biggest challenges at work are and then make plans for solutions based on your findings. Doing this will boost productivity at work as less time will be spent doing the wrong things with the right intentions.
ASSIGN ROLES: Project managers know that it is impossible to carry the burden of the entire workload on themselves, so they assign the roles to team members. Assigning a task to the right talent is important for the successful completion of the project. HR professionals spend so much time on priorities like managing corporate social responsibility plans, planning responses to legislative needs and managing relationships with board members by themselves. There is only so much one person can do, and this is where assigning roles to come into play. Ensure that your team members are all set up to focus on the needs that are vital to HR and those things that they excel at, then assign the rest.
INVEST IN THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY – DO IT THE PLANLESS WAY: With the advent of technology, great project managers have adopted the use of project management software to ease the job process. Platforms such as Planless is embedded with tools to account for improved communication, higher quality products, better adherence to timeline and budget, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction. Project managers understand that engaging in large projects without the right software tool would be a Herculean or an impossible feat, and they, like many budding fields, have embraced the use of these tools to boost their productivity. HR project management isn’t left out of this initiative as the Planless platform caters to their every need.
Below are a few tools available on Planless for HR project management:
Tracking Employee Performance: Planless provides a tool where HR project managers can concentrate on assessing employee skills, set goals for performance, and track improvements over time.
Team Management: Since people are the most important resource in an establishment, Planless preserves this ideal by providing a tool that looks out for members of the team. A manager is able to input the skills and level of expertise of individuals into the system automatically assigns tasks to the best talents available based on the information presented in the interest of the organization. The tool ensures that information on a project is centralized with each task file shared to a common Google Drive, Box or Dropbox.
Stay on Top of Workflows: The automation in Planless keeps you ahead on workflows by simplifying it to reduce errors and saving you time by solving more important problems.
Whether you are recruiting new hands, managing the ones already on board or supporting your team to becoming better, Planless helps you plan less and deliver more.