Project Human Resource Management: Its Stages, Examples & More

Project Human Resource Management

In this blog, we’ll explore what Project Human Resource Management is, why it matters, how to run an HR project, and more. Have you ever been in the middle of a project and suddenly a key team member goes on leave? Or struggled to form a team with the right skill set for a project?

These scenarios can be all too familiar for project managers and significantly impact project success.

That’s where project human resource management comes in.

What Is Project Human Resource Management?

Project human resource management implies managing every human resource or stakeholder related to any ongoing project and ensuring that they work efficiently until the project delivery.

Its primary goal is to manage human resources in project management such that the project’s timeline, quality, and budget are not disturbed or affected.

In simpler words, project human resource management involves organizing, acquiring, motivating, and managing a company’s resources to effectively meet its expectations and goals. It also includes maximizing the productivity of the people working on a project and all stakeholders.

But why is project human resource management important?

Why Does Project Human Resource Management Matter?

Project human resource management is an essential aspect of any project, and it matters for several reasons. The success of a project depends on the ability of the project manager to lead and manage the human resources in project management effectively. After all, if the people working on a project are not appropriately managed, the project is bound to face delays, disruptions, and even failure.

Effective human resource management ensures that the right people are assigned to the right tasks with the necessary skills, experience, and expertise. This helps maximize the team’s productivity, minimize conflicts and misunderstandings, and meet the project deadline and objectives. It also helps to create a positive work environment that fosters teamwork and collaboration.

Moreover, project human resource management helps to identify and manage potential risks and issues that may arise during the project. This allows for timely resolution and prevents these risks from escalating into more significant problems that could impact the project’s success.

Human resource management is executed in stages to ensure the smooth delivery of the project. Here is how it goes.

4 Simple Steps to Perform an HR Project

4 Simple Steps to Perform an

Follow these simple steps to streamline your HR processes and run projects successfully.

1. Develop a Human Resource Plan

Creating a human resource plan is initiated in the early stages of a project. It involves identifying and documenting various roles, responsibilities, required skill sets, and reporting relationships. Creating staffing management plans and assigning roles to multiple people or groups is also an essential part of this process. The output of this process is a comprehensive human resources management plan that involves:

In essence, a human resources management plan offers guidance on staffing, management, forming teams, controlling all the stages of development, and finally, project release.

A well-planned human resources management plan conveys:

One of the key components of an HR plan is the staffing management plan. It describes how and when the project human resources are met. It can be formal, informal, broadly framed, or highly detailed, depending on the project’s needs. It also has information on staff acquisition, resource calendars, training needs, staff release, etc. Moreover, recognition or rewards after project completion, compliance with government policies, and safety assurance are also planned and decided in this stage of the human resource plan.

Another critical component is the project organization chart, a graphical display of the project team members and their professional relationships during the project lifecycle.

To manage the complex and strenuous project human resource management processes and their planning, various smart and intuitive software options are available. One such option is the ProProfs HR project management software. The tool is easy to use and configure and has many functionalities. This powerful aid can help project managers streamline human resource planning and manage their teams effectively.

For example, you can track all your job applications from a single dashboard. Also, you can prioritize applications with a simple drag-and-drop action.

Track all your job applications from single dashboard

A tool’s dashboard also allows for seamless collaboration with co-workers. Simply add a specific person in a comment, and they will be notified instantly. This feature promotes real-time communication and helps team members stay informed and engaged throughout the project’s lifecycle.

Employee training plan

Additionally, if you struggle to extract key information on project and team performance, a tool’s AI-powered project reports are all you need. A quick glance at these reports will lend you the visibility you want into how various HR projects are progressing.

AI-powered project progress and status reports

2. Acquire the Right Project Team

In this process, the manager confirms human resource availability and collects the entire human resource necessary for project development.

Project managers must keep several factors in mind while acquiring the project team. They must:

To acquire the project team successfully, the manager employs techniques such as Virtual Teams, Acquisition, Negotiation, and Pre-assignment. These techniques ensure that the project team is efficiently and effectively assembled to meet the project’s needs.

Once this process is complete, the manager receives several outputs such as:

These outputs are critical in managing the project team and ensuring the project is executed according to plan.

3. Build the Project Team

During this process, the competencies and interactions among the team members are established and enhanced to improve the project’s performance.

The objectives of developing a project team are:

To achieve these objectives, the project manager employs various team-building techniques such as enhancing interpersonal skills, organizing team activities, implementing rewards & recognition programs, establishing ground rules, and providing feedback to the team members.

4. Manage Project Team

This process covers the core managing aspects of project human resource management. So, it comprises providing feedback, tracking team, and individual performance, managing the changes, and optimizing the project performance.

During this stage, the manager should manage any evident or hidden conflicts, resolve the issues and observe the team’s behavior.

The various objectives of this process are:

Speaking of conflicts, let’s briefly look at how to handle conflicts while managing human resources.

Handling Conflicts While Managing Human Resources

When more than one person is involved in something, conflicts are bound to happen. This applies equally to human resource management in projects, as team clashes are inevitable in project progress. But this doesn’t mean conflicts will stay forever and can impact the project negatively.

Different types of conflicts can be handled differently depending on the situation and the desired outcome. Primarily, there are five ways to handle conflicts across the lifecycle of a project.

Let’s look closer at the modes of handling conflicts while managing human resources and planning various stages.

The major reasons for conflicts in an organization are schedules, technical resources, procedures, human resources, priorities, costs, and personalities. It’s best to keep all these factors in mind to ensure conflicts can be avoided in time and tackled adequately when needed.

Now let’s also look at some examples of HR project management to understand the workflow and process better.

HR Project Management Examples

Let’s break down the different types of HR management processes and explore simple HR project management examples.

Hiring New Employees for Different Roles

Here is how it goes.

And there you have it! Recruiting new members is a multi-stage that requires collaboration between the HR team and the hiring manager to find the best candidate for the job.

Optimizing Virtual Onboarding

Take a look at the process.

Hold Training & Development Programs

This is what the process looks like.

Drive Business Growth with Streamlined HR Processes

Project human resource management is a critical function that helps HR managers plan, execute, and monitor everyday HR initiatives. You can achieve better business outcomes by building strong working relationships, optimizing daily HR processes, and prioritizing key objectives. Also, with the help of project management, HR managers can ensure that their initiatives are delivered efficiently and effectively, resulting in a more engaged, productive, and diverse workforce.

Not only can this lead to significant cost savings, but it can also improve overall business efficiencies.
So leverage the best HR practices and onboard an efficient HR project management system to ace your projects and see your business thrive!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is the role of human resources in project management?

The human resource is of the utmost importance in project management as it is the sole driving factor in the process. Identifying the team members, talent and skill-sets, forming teams, assigning roles to them, and acquiring new talents or outsourcing – all these components are highly crucial for the project management and involve human resources. So, human resource is the heart and soul of project management.

Q. Why is human resource management so important during project execution?

Human resource management ensures:

Hence, during the project execution, careful management of human resources is a must!

Q. What are the common roles in a human resource project?

The most prominent roles in a human resource project are as follows:

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