What is HR project management?
HR needs tools to help them hire, manage, and retain employees because the job market is unpredictable and technology is quickly changing how businesses operate. Without these tools, an organization will not succeed. An improved method of working that helps HR teams complete their assignments and plans in a well-organized and effective way is HR project management.
Let’s examine the benefits of project management in human resources, its implementation process, and what it looks like.
The term “HR project management” describes the application of project management techniques and concepts to HR issues in order to expedite tasks and meet project objectives. Furthermore, a variety of HR jobs have higher success rates and reduced risk when using formal project management methods and tools.
HR can benefit from strong project management skills in the following ways:
- Manage personnel, finances, and schedules
- Draw in fresh talent
- Interact with staff and stakeholders in an efficient manner
- Organize and carry out team-building and training programs
- Create or change management strategies
The agile HR method is one project management technique. Although this kind of thinking is mainly applied in software and project development, HR managers can utilize it to address a dynamic workplace where quick fixes are required.
Agile HR’s core principles involve structuring it to be more open to customer needs, flexible enough to change with the workforce, and quick and simple to adjust to new circumstances.
Examples of HR project management
There are five unique phases in project management:
- The beginning of a project: This involves establishing its fundamental objectives and determining whether or not it has the resources necessary to be finished.
- Planning: This includes setting a budget, allocating resources, and determining which tasks need to be completed when and in what order.
- Execution: Completing all duties involved in the project.
- Control: Keeping an eye on the team’s activities and timing how long it takes to finish jobs in order to estimate the size of upcoming projects.
- Close: Presenting the finished product and assessing each member of the team and their individual work.
Here are some examples of how these phases would be organized in the management of a standard HR project.
Project: Creating a brand-new careers website
Starting Point: What do you hope to accomplish with this new careers page? To inform potential hires about the company or the duties of a certain position on a daily basis? To lower attrition and boost the number and caliber of applications received? And what materials are you going to need to do this project?
Organizing: Divide this effort into manageable chunks, such as organizing the components of your new careers page, crafting fresh content or making videos for it, uploading it to the website, and deciding on a launch date. How long will these jobs take to finish, and who will do them?
Execution: Give relevant team members tasks to complete and start systematically working through them.
Control: The project manager is responsible for keeping an eye on the work of all team members, checking the final product, and serving as a point of contact in the event of any problems.
Close: The newly designed careers page is up. Every team member assesses their own performance, and the collective performance is examined to determine what worked well and what has to be done better the next time.
Project: Arranging an exercise for team building
Starting Point: What do you want the team-building exercise to accomplish? For brand-new team members to get along with the veterans? For everyone to have more effective communication skills? To grow confidence? To encourage the group to collaborate more efficiently?
Organizing: On which day will the event happen? Will it take place remotely, somewhere else, or on-site? Who is invited on the team? What materials (such as workbooks and stationery) will be required? What is the overall cost going to be?
Execution: Assign responsibilities to the appropriate HR team members, communicate with the relevant department managers, and begin planning the event. Plan the day’s schedule, make any necessary equipment creations or purchases, reserve a site and transportation (if needed).
Control: Prior to the event, make sure that everyone is doing their part and that everything is set up. Send a representative or two from HR to the event to see how the participants react.
Close: There is a team-building activity. Afterward, every team member assesses their own performance in terms of organizing and carrying out tasks, and the group can deliberate on important lessons learned. To find out if the original objectives were achieved, you can also distribute surveys to every employee who attended the event.
Project management’s advantages for HR
HR project management offers numerous potential benefits for the whole company.
- Remaining aligned and focused
Setting goals and leading a team to accomplish them successfully are the cornerstones of project management. Team members remain motivated and engaged when objectives are well-defined and split into smaller, more doable tasks because they are aware of the end results.
- Improved cooperation
It is unlikely that telling staff members to “work together” will inspire everyone to hold hands and skip in a circle. In this situation, a project manager and project management structure can be useful for promoting cooperation.
The team collaborates more easily and cohesively when every position within the project are well defined. You avoid misunderstandings about who is in charge of what. When working on initiatives that need cooperation from two or more departments, this becomes crucial. HR and IT would be involved in the introduction of a new careers page, for instance. HR and the marketing staff would both be required for a recruitment effort.
Sales and marketing are two departments that frequently work together on projects, whether it’s introducing a new product or attempting to hit sales goals, but there is frequently a gulf between these teams. However, successful collaboration between the marketing and sales divisions fosters expansion and improves overall company performance.
- Increasing output and efficiently handling workload
Gantt charts and a clear grasp of all activities assist in managing the workload of all project participants, and open and honest procedures allow for increased productivity and efficiency.
Project management techniques and methods can increase productivity throughout the entire company because HR teams frequently work on multiple important projects at once. For example, a European bank trained its HR staff in agile project delivery methods, which improved talent pool distribution and increased output by about 25%.
In addition, time management and monitoring systems can be used to measure team productivity, which can help project managers identify over or underperforming team members and more precisely estimate how long tasks will take in the future.
- Resource efficiency
HR project management gives you a clear picture of the objectives of any project and helps you decide when and where to use your limited resources, such as money and time. This aids HR teams in following a plan, staying within budget, and making the best use of their resources.
- Improving recruitment and onboarding
Successful project management will also benefit hiring and onboarding new staff. The implementation of agile project management concepts can result in better recruitment initiatives and a rise in both the quantity and caliber of job applications. It can also lead to ppropriately trained and better-prepared new hires, and more effective use of personnel inside the company. As a result, HR is better equipped to convince business executives of the immediate advantages of project management in HR for the bottom line.
- Taking a broad view
When dealing with disagreements or scarce resources, HR may better inform leadership about team goals and timely project updates by having a firm sense of timeframes and progress. HR specialists are able to communicate to the leadership team how project objectives line up with overarching company objectives.
How to incorporate aspects of project management into HR
Even if your team doesn’t implement the entire HR project management methodology, there are still some project management best practices that can help you operate more effectively. Let us investigate your capabilities!
- Establish the project’s scope before beginning.
The first thing to do is to determine how brief your project is. The following are some useful questions to consider:
- What is the project’s size?
- What are the objectives of the project?
- What tools are required to accomplish these objectives?
You can successfully complete the project by developing realistic deadlines and roadmaps using the answers to these questions.
Making a template for a project scope statement that you can use on every project might also be beneficial. This is how this could appear, as an example:
Name of project: Give a precise description of the initiative, such as “New careers page to boost the the number and caliber of candidates.”
Scope of project statement: Provide a brief summary of the project’s aims and objectives. These must to be quantifiable and doable in the time period you have suggested. For instance, “By March 2023, increase the number of applicants by 25% and the caliber of hires by 30%.”
Intro/background: Which pressing matters do you have to take care of? What is the suggested course of action? And when will the work start? As an example: “With a 1% conversion rate and an 8 second loading time, the careers website receives 100 applications on average each month. Furthermore, the hiring quality is currently 65%. The HR team made the decision to redesign the careers website in order to increase the number and caliber of applicants, strengthen the employer brand, and provide candidates with an overview of the competencies and behaviors required for a certain role. We were given the go-ahead to start this project on April 29, 2022. “
Business case: What benefits will the project bring to the company, and why is it necessary?
Deliverables: These are the results that make the project successful to finish. For instance, speeding up the careers page’s page load time or raising the percentage of visitors who finish their job application after arriving at the page.
- Think of your project as dynamic.
While having a strategy is crucial, you should also be prepared for unforeseen obstacles and changes in the situation that may force you to modify your initial plan. Because of this, it’s critical to view your project plan as an outline rather than a strict process that needs to be adhered to at all costs.
If there are any adjustments that should be made to your strategy, discuss them with the project team to make sure everyone is in agreement.
- Schedule frequent meetings to discuss the status of the project.
The team needs to give and receive information on progress throughout the various project phases in order to guarantee the success of HR project management. Make sure team members are aware of the questions they might need to answer and how to prepare for meetings.
This results in fruitful discussions when problems are recognized and resolved before they become more significant roadblocks.
- Assist team members in acquiring project management abilities.
Team members should be encouraged and assisted in acquiring and refining project management competencies, including planning, proactive problem solving, change management, and stakeholder management. These kinds of abilities make for capable team members that can handle a range of HR projects with ease.
- Give project management software a try.
Numerous applications, such as Trello, Asana, and Airtable, can be used to organize and navigate projects by giving team members access to information about who is responsible for what, an overview of duties, and task status updates.
Using a specialized tool from the beginning to the end of any project helps you keep organized and monitor progress.
- Carry out project assessments
It’s helpful to reflect on the project’s successes and failures once it’s over so you may learn from errors or oversights and do better the next time. Before the next project starts, you will have a list of suggested changes thanks to the project evaluation.
- Employ a project manager for HR
The next natural step is to hire a dedicated HR project manager if your department wants to implement an HR project management method after realizing its benefits. A project manager specializing in human resources will organize and supervise the execution of a wide range of HR initiatives in your company. You could be able to fill the position internally, or you might need to look outside the company for a candidate.
The planning, directing, and implementation of diverse HR projects pertaining to customer service, employee development, and HR management are the duties of an HR project manager.
Principal duties:
Directing the implementation of projects and activities related to HR
ensuring the timely, cost-effective, and scope-compliant completion of HR projects
Tracking, observing, and reporting on the status of projects and HR programs to guarantee their effective implementation
Competencies and skills:
- Project oversight
- Excellence in operations
- Management of change
- Networking
- HR management
- Focused on clients
- Data-oriented
- Analytics translation
- Architect of digital culture
- Strategy collaboration
Conclusion
You can use some of the components of the HR project management approach, such as scoping the project, holding project status meetings, and incorporating assessments into your workflow, even if you choose not to use the entire methodology. In addition to making work more effective and productive, HR project management raises the likelihood that any project will be completed successfully.
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