What is Project Human Resource Management?
Project Human Resource Management is a strategy that involves the use of a Project Manager (PM) and Project HR professionals to handle all of the human resource needs of a project.
As one of the key elements of a successful project, the use of a PRM can have a large impact on the overall success of the project. In the long term, there is no better way to measure and control the cost of human resources than the use of a project manager (PM).
By engaging in project Human Resource Management (PRM), companies can benefit from a larger scale HR management. Project Human Resource Management comprises the processes that organise and manage the project crew. The project team comprises persons given tasks and duties for completing the project.
Why is Project Human Resource Management significant?
Project Human Resource Management is essential because of its increasing relevance to modern work practices, changing organisational requirements and the use of technology to support performance management.
As the pace of change has increased, organisations can no longer manage business processes and projects as they did in the past – using the familiar approaches of task management, control, quality, cost, and so on. Rather than managing tasks, people are now the focus of the work – they are the resources – and they must be able to demonstrate their value to the organisation to secure continued employment.
This means that work performance needs to be measured and rewarded more systematically, based on people and not just the tasks. Moreover, the use of technology in the project world has changed the relationship of work to performance management. Many projects are now managed as part of day-to-day activity, so they must be managed in isolation and in conjunction with other departments and programmes.
The need to demonstrate progress, both in the project itself and in the overall strategy, means that projects must be managed in a different way to the way they were managed in the past, where the project was not the primary focus of the overall organisation. This creates a challenge for the project manager, who must ensure that performance management systems are effective and workable within the project environment so that they can be used to inform projects, provide feedback to individuals, and deliver rewards.
Project Human Resource Management is also significant because of the changes in the skill mix that are required in a project organisation. It is no longer possible to manage projects with only managers and engineers, because of the complexity of the projects being undertaken. Instead, in today’s project world, project managers are required to use an extensive skill base, which has the potential to increase the overall effectiveness of the project organisation.
It has always been known that people were the key drivers of projects, and technology has advanced that role even further. Still, in this changing world, achieving successful project outcomes with only engineers, project managers, and line managers is no longer possible. Projects also require a far wider skills mix, with people in various disciplines from technology to finance, people, and design.
Human Resource Management is also moving to a very different position in the modern organisation. For the past three or four decades, Human Resource Management has focused on managing people in their role as employees. In the last ten years, the focus has moved to managing people as individuals within their roles, rather than focusing on the role of people in an organisation. This focus on individuals also underlines the importance of personal commitment, communication, and performance management to individual projects.
Managers, directors, and other executives all have a very significant role to play in ensuring that all projects deliver what the organisation needs. They must also ensure that they are fully committed to the process. This means that they must lead by example, and lead by example, they do. This means that individual managers, and the leaders of organisations, are increasingly seen as the key drivers of change in organisations, rather than as the focus of change and the management of projects. In other words, project management has moved from a management activity to organisational development activity, as organisations become more focused on people as a resource rather than employees.
Why choose Project Human Resource Management?
The Project Human Resource Management solution offers you the best of both worlds – complete HR management and a powerful project management tool.
It is designed to enable a complete project lifecycle management of projects and programs of any size or complexity, regardless of their location. This will make your projects easy to manage and maintain. It is a complete HR management tool with a project management component.
The solution is also fully integrated with all popular project management tools so you can view, update and manage your projects using the familiar interface of the most popular project management tools.
What makes the solution so popular?
Project Human Resource Management has been created to be the only HR solution that covers the entire human resource lifecycle management and enables it to work effectively on a project basis. This solution is a completely web-based system so that there are no downloads, patches or additional software to be installed or removed.
Using the system from your browser, you can create and manage your HR projects and programs without having to install any additional software. There is no need to learn new technology, as everything can be accessed via a simple web interface.
The Project Human Resource Management processes include the following:
1 Human Resource Planning — Identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships and creating the staffing management plan.
2 Acquire Project Team — Obtaining the human resources needed to complete the project.
3 Develop Project Team — Improving the competencies and interaction of team members to enhance project performance.
4 Manage Project Team — Tracking team member performance, providing feedback, resolving issues, and coordinating changes to enhance project performance.
These processes interact with each other and with processes in the other Knowledge Areas as well. Each procedure can include work from one or more persons or groups based on the project’s needs. Each procedure occurs at least once in every project and occurs in one or more phases if the project is divided into phases. Although the processes are given here as discrete pieces with well-defined interfaces, in practice, they may overlap and interact in ways not detailed here.
Examples of interactions that require additional planning include the following situations:
• After initial team members create a work breakdown structure, additional team members may need to be acquired
• As additional project team members are acquired, their experience level could increase or decrease project risk, be creating the need for additional risk planning
• When activity durations are estimated before all project team members are known, the actual competency levels of the acquired team members can cause the activity durations and schedule to change.