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Key Takeaways:
– Project HR Management: Project human resource management covers everything from hiring, training, performance monitoring, and team-building exercises. Effective human resource control can lead to increases in employee happiness and productivity.
– Popular project management platforms like monday.com and ClickUp can be used to effectively manage employees and the projects they’re working on.
It should come as no surprise that most project teams — even those comprising seasoned employees — need guidance, support, encouragement, and coaching to succeed. However, not all leaders understand the importance of project human resource management and how employee management can be the difference between project success and failure. In this guide, we’ll explain why employee resource management is a vital part of project planning. You’ll learn about employee planning and hiring, mentoring, team-building, and why you should track employee performance metrics. We’ll also share a couple of project management platforms that can help set project team members up for success.
What Is Project Human Resource Management?
Project human resource management is the process of managing company resources and individuals on a project team. Project human resource management covers everything from hiring to training and organization to maximizing potential and tracking staff metrics. HR project management is a vital cog in a project’s machine, and without it, a project could be staffed with the wrong people, deadlines could be missed, and budgets could have scope creep problems.
Why Does Project Human Resource Management Matter?
As you can imagine, a project has many moving parts, and project managers or Scrum masters must be on top of everything. However, with so many project tasks and goals to track, budgets to manage, and clients to appease, it can be easy to lose track of the human aspect of projects. Without human resource management, a project’s success could be jeopardized. If staff members working on a project aren’t properly selected, given appropriate project roles, don’t understand their key responsibilities, and are poorly managed, a project could be delayed, employee morale can drop, trust can fail, and client expectations might not be met.
Fortunately, many project management methodologies, especially Agile methodologies like Scrum, champion open communication and encourage project managers to communicate effectively. Scheduled events like daily stand-ups, Sprint reviews, and retrospective meetings allow leaders to share project goals, optimize performance, and build teams. These meetings also allow managers to enhance an overall team environment, touch base with individuals, and go over progress reports. They’re also ideal for discussing project or training concerns and holding team activities that can increase team-member interaction. Development programs that can strengthen professional relationships can also be rolled out. So, as you can see, project HR management is more important than you might think. Without human resource planning, the most important part of any project, the team members, can be mismanaged and put into unfamiliar roles, underutilized, underappreciated, or might not know where they stand regarding performance and expectations.
How to Develop a Human Resource Management Plan
All the potential benefits of managing your human resources sound great; after all, who wouldn’t want to enhance project performance, develop team members, and oversee a project’s success? The big question, though, is how do you create a solid plan for human resources? Below, we’ll cover the four steps you’ll need to follow to get the most out of your project team.
1. Design A Human Resources Management Plan
Every project is different. The first step is to develop a staffing plan that fits the current project. Managers must define the team’s structure, project roles, and the responsibilities of those roles. Human resource availability must be checked, and the right people with adequate skill sets for the defined roles should be identified from within or hired. Backup employee options should also be identified. Next, the HR team and project managers should discuss what training might be needed to bring team members up to speed and how team member performance will be tracked. Regular meetings should be scheduled, and leadership activities and rewards that can be used to build the team throughout the project should also be discussed and planned. By the end of this process, you should have a strong staffing management plan that identifies key project roles and responsibilities. You should also know who will occupy the positions to complete project activities, the project resources needed, team training and encouragement methods, and how individual job performance will be tracked and measured.
2. Build a Team and Assign Roles and Responsibilities
Now that you have identified the team members for your upcoming project, it’s time to start team assembly. If you need to hire new permanent team members or freelancers (check out our guide on how to become a freelance project manager), get the ball rolling as soon as possible so that you don’t miss out on your top picks. RACI charts allow everyone to see who will be doing what and even who they should contact should problems arise. With the team assembled, it is time to assign roles and responsibilities. The easiest way to do this is to use a RACI chart. RACI charts, which are also known as responsibility assignment matrix charts, show key roles and position responsibilities. The charts are easy to read and update and are supported by many of the best project management software platforms. Once a project team has been given the green light, the company’s organizational structure should be updated to reflect new team members and their roles. Once every team role has been filled, the project manager — or Scrum Master — will be presented with an updated project management plan, new resource calendars, and updated organizational structures (see our guide on organizational structures) that show where each team member sits in the chain of command. These documents will help ensure the project gets off to a flying start.
3. Team Bonding and Development
Having a fully assembled project team is one thing, but it will be for naught if the group has communication or trust issues going into a project. It’s absolutely crucial that management does everything they can to encourage transparency and open communication before, during, and after a project. Whether you’re managing a team in person or remotely via tools like Slack (here’s our Slack review), team building must occur. Ideally, team meetings, like retrospectives, will be used to encourage communication, to make everyone feel comfortable, and for team bonding and developing project management skills. When a team feels comfortable and valued, you’ll likely see enhanced productivity. Using team-building meetings to recognize achievements (team and individual) and project wins is also essential, as this will build morale. Anything management can do to improve productivity and interpersonal skills should be done during these meetings. If you want project success, don’t underestimate the importance of team building and development meetings.
4. Team Management
The final step is team management. By this point, you’ll have identified your team, assigned individual roles, and built a friendly atmosphere that champions teamwork and development. That was the easy part, though. Now, project managers must manage their team throughout the project to ensure that team members are hitting the goals set during the project planning phase. During the project, the project management team should be tracking team member performance, team velocities, and overall project performance. The leadership team should also provide consistent feedback, look for conflicts and potential roadblocks, and sniff out undesirable behaviors and anti-patterns that could make the project falter. If a project manager is in tune with their team, they should be able to ward off most problems. However, there may be times when a manager needs to make changes to their team due to sickness, unrest, or underperformance. If the human resource and project management teams planned well initially, there shouldn’t be any problems replacing team members during the project. Overall, the idea during this stage of project employee management is to get the most out of your selected team and optimize project performance so that you can get the job across the finish line efficiently, on time, and under budget and please project stakeholders and clients.
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