PM & HR: Strangers or Buddies
HR is often perceived by employees as a conservative and purely supportive or administrative function within a company. Even in organizations, where HR has a strong governing role and acts as a business partner on the top level, on the bottom level these HR roles might be invisible. Why it happens despite the standing focus on diverse modern concepts and models, like employee experience, Dave Ulrich’s model of HR roles, Deloitte’s the High-Impact HR Operating Model and many alike, which are aimed to transform HR function and shift it to an advanced strategic level?
There are a lot of studies and researches related to HR transformation and expected capabilities of HR specialists to support this process. One of the common outcomes of these studies is that HR professionals have to gain new competencies and expand their focus areas for upskilling. From my hands-on experience in different HR-areas, starting from a certain level of tasks, project management skills are becoming very important and required for HR-experts.
HR incorporates a plenty of areas where a rational and thoughtful application of the project management methodology can speedup, systematize, organize and simplify a realization of HR programs and initiatives. I would classify typical HR-activities where utilization of project management methodology yields tangible benefits as:
- responsive projects;
- value-added projects;
- digitalization.
Responsive projects are reactions of the HR function to the business strategy of a company, aimed to support achievements of concrete business targets. For example, if a company’s strategic business target is an expansion to new market-segments, a reflection of this target on the HR side most probably will be programs and projects in the following areas:
- competency management (assessment of available competencies within a company, defining gaps between available and future required knowledge/ skills/ competencies, defining development and recruitment strategies to close these gaps, etc.),
- learning and development (whom and how to develop and upskill),
- recruiting (whom and how to attract, select and integrate),
- audit of internal processes and available infrastructure to define and estimate needs to scale/ optimize/ rebuild/ automate existing HR processes and setup new ones, etc.
Value-added projects are proactive mind-changing initiatives suggested and driven by HR, which are derived from and tightly linked to the vision of a company and aimed to create an internal working environment and corporate culture in the ‘things to grow’-mode. Often this category of projects lays in the areas of employee experience, agile learning organization, leadership development, employee engagement, change management, and others. These projects require mid- and long-term focus and commitment of a company’s top management, significant investments, and standing HR-processes revision. Sometimes it is difficult to justify the return-on-investment (ROI) for these projects, and their share in a company project portfolio is always a topic for discussion. Significant internal and/or external changes of business environments regularly make a stress-test for companies. However, a company, which pays enough attention to value-added HR projects, has higher chances to surmount obstacles and to catch opportunities. The current worldwide stress-test called COVID-19 clearly demonstrates that companies that paid attention to and invested in value-added HR projects, dispose of better prepared HR processes, employees, managers, and corporate culture to face and overcome the challenges.
Digitalization is another category, where the majority of HR projects are dealing with the automation of HR processes, and often they are derived from responsive and value-added HR projects. For the technical part of these projects, the HR function is to act as a project owner to ensure a proper bridge between HR and IT sides. Digitalization always embodies some changes and as a consequence, some resistance is likely to pop-up. Therefore, the importance of the non-technical side of a project should not be underestimated. For the non-technical aspects of digitalization, HR has a driver’s seat for HR projects and usually applies this role for the rest of digitalization projects in a company.
An implementation of a self-service portal is an example of this category of HR projects. The technical part of this project belongs to the processes area of HR and IT: revision of the current HR processes, alternatives of workflow’s rebuilding, alternatives of IT-solutions, cost-saving analysis, project plan, etc. The non-technical part spreads to and touches employees’ habits and values levels. This project will be successfully fulfilled, if a working system would be in place and the company staff would accept its necessity, adapt their behavior to use the system. Without paying attention to the non-technical part, the project will fail, even with a properly completed technical part of having a working system in place.
Because of the interconnectivity of all people-related topics within an organization in most cases, it might be difficult to separate these categories one from another. In practice, a strategic impetus from the top as well as a proactive mind-changing initiative supported by the top expands to a variety of sub-projects and sub-initiatives covering all types of HR projects. Besides that, some common essential elements can be found in all three categories. These are issues linked to organizational culture, challenges of behaviour change, and natural human resistance to change, that have to be taken into account for any HR project. A balanced portfolio of HR projects with the proper monitoring, the consequential realization, ‘lessons learned’ analysis of sub-projects, and HR professionals with the robust project management mindset ensure a successful move into the desired direction of HR transformation.
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