Critical Issues and Success Factors in HR projects: Processes
“If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Within recent decades business environment has been described as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), and companies had to shape their strategies and elaborate approaches to navigate through frequent, rapid, and sometimes confusing trends and changes in technology, social, and business culture. Drastic economical, political, technological, social, and climate challenges of the last years sharpen the chaotic component of the world and push businesses to deal with a brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible (BANI) environment. It dictates and drives immediate business responses to catch new opportunities and adjust a company’s strategy and objectives to secure its vitality. These changes speed up HR transformation and require HR-function to become more analytical, more agile, more digital, and more competent in handling different programs and initiatives.
In most cases, transformative HR initiatives and programs comprise diverse HR projects endeavoring to support the achievements of specific business objectives, to deliver value-add, and to reorganize, automate, and improve processes. As with any project, they are time-boxed and aimed at delivering results. Despite significant diversity in purpose, complexity, duration, available resources, budget, risks, and other constraints, there are some common critical issues to keep an eye on in any HR project.
Handling these fulcrums — stakeholders, processes, culture, and competencies — directly redound in project success or failure.
Processes belong to and ensure the core functionalities of HR. Process management in the context of HR projects has several aspects:
- the interconnection of processes across different HR areas, compound to a common system, and leverage points;
- the conjunction of HR processes with a business process system;
- processes and approaches to drive and handle HR initiatives, programs, and projects.
Interconnection of HR processes and leverage points
HR is made up of complex, intertwined processes and systems, which are highly integrated into and influenced by a company’s culture, strategy, and operational business objectives. Often the maturity of HR processes reflects the attitude and approaches to the organization of processes in a company or trails a step behind.
HR projects touch and in most cases directly concentrate on processes. An HR process is a collection of tasks, steps, or activities that are performed, usually in a specific order, and result in a provision of services. Multiple processes in different HR areas are interwoven, often organized in systems, and work together to achieve the same goal or goals. To get a reliable system processes should be as simple as possible, consistent, and documented. There is no need for long eloquent process descriptions, but a process map is very helpful to monitor duplications, missing and “grey” zones, and leverage points.
An effective working system has good vitality in tolerating accidental errors and manageable interventions. At the same time, any system has critical places where intentional actions can create a ripple effect that leads to lasting positive or negative change. Identifying such leverage points is a tricky task. It should be done by subject matter experts, who are familiar with the system’s features and understand how changes might impact inputs and outcomes of processes on a granular level. Because of the complexity and interconnectedness of HR processes, intentional, but crude or low-controlled interventions damage their stability and efficiency, which has an outsized impact on the functioning of the system as a whole. To avoid it, a regular audit of processes should be done to ensure system sustainability, adaptability, and efforts- and cost-effectiveness of the existing processes.
Often, an HR project started as a response to a strategic business initiative serves as a great impetus to the revision of HR processes and systems.
For example, an HR project aimed at supporting rapid business growth won’t be limited to one HR area and its processes, even if at the beginning only recruitment targets are set. After a kick-off meeting, it will be clear that the targets’ accomplishment requires a lot of supportive actions and sub-projects in adjacent areas. One of my headcount ramp-up projects ended up in the revision of the whole HR system, designing new and adjusting some existing processes in different HR areas, establishing a lot of conjunctions with business processes, and influencing on development of the corporate culture.
Conjunction with a business process system
An assessment of the influence of changes on internal HR processes and systems is to be an initial step in any HR project. It has to be done proactively and cover the complete range of processes in the directly affected and coterminous zones. Besides that, adjoining processes in other functional areas should also be considered. For example, those who survived an ERP migration most probably can recall a lot of complaints from a controlling department about strange data appearing in their reports.
In immature companies, a generally chaotic organization of processes often disguises the real impact of HR processes on other functions and their business processes, which might lead to an underestimation of their interconnectivity and sway on business results. On the contrary, in companies with a mature organization of processes, the system might be extremely complicated and bureaucratic to allow all-around assessments. In both cases, HR professionals have to deal with comprehensive and go-ahead estimations of internal HR and cross-functional interdependencies to prevent an increasing number of blocking stakeholders, growing project complexity, and deteriorating the quality of a project outcome. Unfortunately, such estimations are not always a strong suit in HR projects, which leads to a permanent search for workaround solutions to close emerging gaps. That spawns low-controlled overlapping and duplications of processes, fosters excrescent deleterious “a process for a process”-elements, and damages a system’s integrity, consistency, transparency, and stability.
Handling HR initiatives, programs, and projects
Drastic changes in reaction speed and agility of HR-function to meet requirements of business transformation result in a focus on project work. However, the principles of project management are underestimated or, to some extent, ignored in HR world. That might cause compelled rework, overrun budget and time, or overall outcome failure. As with any project, HR initiative or program should follow the common process of project management and, if necessary, tune its phases to corporate, legal, and regional requirements. A typical process of managing HR projects usually sequences two core stages embracing important phases.
The initial project stage is a compass, i.e. it sets a general project direction and its frames. It starts with clarification and analysis of needs. During this phase, plausible ideas are collected, analyzed, and clarified with a project sponsor. A vision of the outcome, requirements, and involved parties are typical results of this phase. It is followed by high-level estimates of benefits, risks, complexity, amount of work, costs, resources, and schedule. Depending on project specifics, other constraints can be also assessed. This phase is a basis for preparing decisions about the project realization, refining the list of requirements, allocation of resources, and budget assignment. Skipping any of the basic estimates or the whole phase guarantees a bulk of unpleasant surprises during the project execution. The approval phase completes the initial stage. During this process step, decisions about the project execution are taken, targets and acceptance criteria are set, and budget, time, and key resources are confirmed. A frivolous attitude to the importance of the initial stage puts in pledge enormous pressure on a project team during the execution stage and jeopardizes the success of a not yet-started project.
The clarification commences the execution stage and focuses on project objectives, scope, prioritization of tasks, stakeholders, available resources (people, time, money), risks, and constraints. Best practices assume that an appointed project manager arranges a project kick-off meeting to discuss these issues and agrees upon the project organization and execution with a sponsor, subject matter experts, a project team, and key decision makers.
During the planning phase, a project plan including technical and functional specifications, risks analysis, time and cost forecasts, work breakdown structure, time schedule with milestones, and a communication strategy should be developed. An excessively detailed and rigid plan as well as the opposite—an extremely sketchy plan does not provide the required guidance and support during the implementation. The detailing should be suitable to make founded decisions and see trees without losing the picture of the entire forest. The results of clarification and planning phases serve as a map with drafted trails through the project to achieve its targets and objectives. Starting an implementation journey, it is vital to have both a compass and a map.
One of the common mistakes in handling HR projects is a lack of searching for optimal leverage points in HR processes and systems or postponing it from the planning to the implementation phase. Another critical issue that should be taken into account during the planning phase is solving the dilemmas: keeping a functional simplicity vs. ignorance of a bounded complexity and moving beyond an acceptable level of complexity vs. unreasonable simplification. The thoughtful planning provides a comprehensive overview of the project landscape and allows rational navigation between alternatives, mitigation of potential risks, optimal allocation of resources, and overall uncertainty reduction that increase the chances of successful project completion.
The implementation is the most visible, dynamic, and time-consuming project phase. Rollout under permanent monitoring, controlling, and supervision of work progress are the principal components of this phase. At the same time, it highlights defects in handling HR projects done in the previous process steps. Some of them can be patched with a slight variation of the project outcome. Others might lead to the growing onion syndrome in a project, a sizable run-over budget, a significant increase in time, or project failure. Having a compass and a well-done map allows a project team confidently to solve and maneuver between the different pop-up problems during the implementation and overcome emerging challenges of the BANI environment. In the pursuit of agility, one of the frequent pitfalls during this phase is the launching of many simultaneous changes in various HR processes and systems without their proper piloting or at least revisiting the planning phase. That often creates chaos in a project and complicates its handling and the achievement of the set targets and objectives.
The execution stage is completed by obtaining acceptance of project results, archiving project documentation, releasing project resources and infrastructure, and analyzing the achieved outcome. Retrospectives are the most important component of the closure phase that focuses on lessons learned and room for improvements in processes, organization, and handling of HR projects. That elaborates a valuable basis for the successful realization of further HR initiatives and programs.
The prosperous launch of transformative HR programs is a challenging task that requires a deep understanding of process management and expert subject knowledge. Despite the functional specifics, any HR initiative is just one of the possible types of projects to which standard project management methodology and approaches should be applied. It helps to avoid a lot of traps in handling HR projects, prevents realization derailment, and accelerates the transition of the HR function to the new partnering level with the business.
References:
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Jeff Sutherland (2014). SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. ISBN: 9781847941107
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Tom DeMarco (2002). Slack: getting past burnout, busywork, and the myth of total efficiency. ISBN: 0-7679-0769-8
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Donella H. Meadows (1999). Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. The Sustainability Institute.
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Jamais Cascio (2020). Facing the Age of Chaos. www.medium.com
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Project Management Institute (2017, 2021). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). Sixth and Seventh Editions.
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Axelos. (2017). Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2®. Sixth Edition.
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