Project Human Resource Management: Methods, Strategies, And Techniques

Identifying HRM methods, techniques, or tools

The four kind of HRM methods that could be used within the current work of project are:

• Planning methods– Each of the deliverables or systems within the development of the project needs to be planned. The HRM should be responsible for defining each of the methods in order to successfully deliver the project on time in an efficient manner. The purpose of planning is also to ensure that there is no such disarrangement of work deliverable and also ensure that the project is accomplished successfully.
• Methods of Cost Planning– Cost planning forms an integral part within a project. The HRM department should consider each of the factors that may affect the project. They should estimate each of the costs that might be incurred within the project. Hence, after the proper estimation of each of the required costs within the project, this plan should be passed by them (Jie 2014). This form of cost estimation based planning would mainly help in accommodating each of the features within the project within the appropriate budget and thus ensure a successful project.
• Evaluation Methods– During the partial or complete development of the project, there should be a continuous form of evaluation based on certain criteria’s. These criteria’s should be properly planned on a previous basis. Based on those criteria’s the project should be evaluated and thus any kind of fault or defect within the project must be reported to the project manager. The issue should be evaluated in that particular stage and thus the project should proceed further.
• Leadership Methods – The HRM department should elect proper leaders within the project development phases. Leadership quality is highly required within the project in order to ensure that each of the individual involved within the project would follow the orders of their seniors (Wo?niak 2014). The leadership quality would also ensure that the project would remain aligned during the entire development phases. The leaders would also ensure that the project is completed within the estimated budget and that the project does not go out of defined scope.

Project Scope – The scope of the project is based on implementing a new Advanced Diploma course based on ERP system. The project would ensure the hiring of a proper training team who would ensure the full development of the student based on learning the usage of such system. The marketing of the campaign about the training would also be considered as a part of the project.

(Fig 1: The Organisational Structure of the Project)

(Source: Created by author)

(Fig 2: The Work Breakdown Structure of the Project)

(Source: Created by author)

(Fig 3: Gantt chart of the Project)

(Source: Created by author)

Strategy Explanation for Managing Project Human Resources in some situations:

• Determination of Resource Requirements– The HR team should abide by the necessities of the assigned departments in order to detect the tools that could be used by employees. This would also have an impact over their ability of performing their roles (Hornstein 2015). An example of such strategy is that a certain audit over software and hardware could be undertaken in a joint manner for understanding the gaps within the tools and thus facilitate with more organized form of workforce.
• Assigning of Responsibilities– The HR department should be able to understand the qualities or talents within each individual. Thus they should assign responsibilities to such individuals who would be diligent in performing the given task. For example, the HR department should acknowledge the skills of an individual and thus assign a highly qualified employee to become the project manager of the concerned project (Bratton and Gold 2017). This would ensure that the project meets all the success criteria’s and is also accomplished within the proper deadline.
• Addressing of Skills Gap based on Learning and Development– The HR department should be able to access the skills within each of the employee. Based on facts gathered during the evaluation phase, the gap in the skills of an employee would be recognised and thus proper training would be provided accordingly. Based on the concerned project, one such example could be identified as – The HR department should understand the gap in skills of the new employees about the knowledge of ERP systems. Hence, they should implement the best trainers to impart training on their learning and development skills.
• Overcoming of Shortfalls in Performance– Each of the performance criteria’s should be accessed properly. Any kind of shortfalls within the performance of each individual should be properly evaluated and accessed properly. One such example that could be considered is – The HR department should access the growth of skills within each of the individual and their performances (Storey 2014). Any kind of shortfalls within their performance should be properly acknowledged and thus appropriate measures should be taken in order to improve their skills so that there would not be any kind of lack within their performance.
• Motivation of the Team– The HR department should also provide enough motivation to the team members so that they would be able to cooperate with the organisation and thus develop much better kind of outputs. For example, the HR’s within the organisation can organise seminars and thus produce presentations based on providing the employees with enough form of motivation (Nankervis et al. 2016). They can also improve the payment structure, work hours scheduling and other innovative things that could be helpful for motivating the employees and thus they could put more focus on the work.
• Resolution of Conflicts– Timely review of the progress of the project would be able to ensure that there would be no kind of conflicts within the development phase of the project. For example, a proper leadership quality within the project manager would help them in listening to the complaints of the employee (Ansoff et al. 2019). They should thus analyse the situation and provide effective solutions based on preventing the situation of conflict within the organisation.

One of the Root Cause Analysis that could affect the concerned project is based on System Implementation Training. Adequate training is highly required to know the basic criteria’s of the implementation and working procedures of the ERP system. The arrangement of proper and highly knowledgeable trainers who would impart training is highly required (Latino, Latino and Latino 2016). This would ensure that the employees would be motivated based on using of the system.

The factors that should be considered during measuring of the performance of an individual against agreed criteria are:

• Time Management– This can be considered as the most important factor when measuring the performance of an individual. It should be highly ensured that an individual would complete the assigned work within the proper deadline (Koopmans et al. 2014). It could also be measured as how the individual would manage their daily schedule of other works in comparison to a certain work.
• Quality of Work – The quality of work abilities is an important measuring criteria that would be needed to be accessed properly. There should be some set guidelines within each project. The quality of the produced work of an individual should be measured against the set criteria in order to ensure that the work has been done as per the set criteria.
• Appearance and Personal Habits –Both of these factors play a major role within an organisation. Each organisation has their own set of codes and conduct based, which are primarily been followed by employees (Laihonen, Jääskeläinen and Pekkola 2014). Personal habits of each of the employees should also be taken into consideration when measuring the performance of an individual within the work culture.

 The techniques based on management and improvement of the performance of an individual are:

• Use of SMART Goals– The abbreviation for SMART is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. Realistic nature within employees would provide them ownership and thus also encourage them in achieving their goals.
• Prioritizing on Employee Development– This technique can be ensured for employees to understand their goals on career based within an organisation. The organisation should also ensure that there is no gap in skills that might exist within the employees (Rothwell, Hohne and King 2018). Highly prioritizing on developing the skills of the employee would be of much benefit to the employee and organisation. It would also help in maintaining and improvement of the satisfaction levels of the employee.

It has always been considered as a good practice to review the entire progress of the project based on properly delivering the deliverables of the project and understanding the benefits of the overall business. The conduction of the post implementation performance review should be properly timed based on allowing final form of improvements for benefiting the project (Liou, Chuang and Tzeng 2014). Conducting this review would ensure that the project has been successfully been achieved and thus the client would be satisfied with the project.

This report is based on the impact of the training of ERP students on the students. This project is being developed by Acbi who is responsible for the launch of the project.

The Level 3 Project is based on Acbi who has been given the prime responsibility of expanding the premises of the college. The main output of the project would be to build new classrooms based on providing VET courses training and an Advanced Diploma training on ERP systems.

Creating project scope and organizational structure

The primary works within the development of the project is to impart these training courses, while hiring trainers and also market campaigns for the training project. The training is based on imparting high knowledge about the use of ERP systems in industries. This would help in increasing team morale as the students would be encouraged during the training and would like to work on such systems.

Conclusion

Based on the training project implementation, it could be discussed that there were no such cases on conflict during the training period. However, during the training period, the different areas in which motivation could be provided was teamwork, providing quality output and cooperate with other team members.

Based on such conclusions, it could be recommended that

• There could be more use of proper human resources within the project.
• The training period should be elongated and more advanced courses should be provided.
• Live and on-the-job training should be imparted in order to gain hands-on knowledge of working scenario within the industry.

The difference between inter-project and intra-project resource conflict is that – In inter-project conflict, the conflicts may occur within the assigned team members and project manager (Herbst 2017). However, in intra-project conflict, the situations of conflict might occur between different project teams base on various situations.

Examples of Inter and Intra Project Resource Conflict are:

• Task Prioritization– Conflicting situations might arise based on preferring one task over the other. The project would be responsible for assisting their team members for providing explanation based on significance of tasks.
• Role Clarity– Each of the tasks would need to be assigned to each members within the project team. The manager should be able enough to understand the expectations from their team members (Abrantes and Figueiredo 2015). Different kind of inter-project conflict can arise when expectations would not be met accordingly. This would lead to conflict between the team member and project manager.
• Communication Gap– High line of communication is highly essential to avoid any situation of conflict within the project (Havenvid, Håkansson and Linné, 2016). Lack of proper communication standard might lead to duplication of tasks.

Examples of Identification of Low Morale within Project Team

The low morale within the project team could be identified by the proper measures. These include:

• Interacting with team members on a regular basis would help in understanding of the gaps within the project team (Muller 2017). A proper level of communication should always be maintained in order to understand the complaints and problems of the employee.
• There should also be a proper check on the attendance of the employees. If any employee does not come to the organisation due to some problems, it is the utmost duty of the project manager or HR department to understand the cause of such issue and thus try to resolve it up to their limits.

References

Abrantes, R. and Figueiredo, J., 2015. Resource management process framework for dynamic NPD portfolios. International Journal of Project Management, 33(6), pp.1274-1288.

Ansoff, H.I., Kipley, D., Lewis, A.O., Helm-Stevens, R. and Ansoff, R., 2019. Implanting strategic management. Springer.

Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.

Havenvid, M.I., Håkansson, H. and Linné, Å., 2016. Managing renewal in fragmented business networks. IMP Journal, 10(1), pp.81-106.

Herbst, A.S., 2017. Capturing knowledge from lessons learned at the work package level in project engineering teams. Journal of Knowledge Management, 21(4), pp.765-778.

Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-298.

Jie, X., 2014. Research on the realization of human resource management system. In Advanced Materials Research (Vol. 926, pp. 3930-3933). Trans Tech Publications.

Koopmans, L., Bernaards, C.M., Hildebrandt, V.H., de Vet, H.C. and van der Beek, A.J., 2014. Measuring individual work performance: Identifying and selecting indicators. Work, 48(2), pp.229-238.

Laihonen, H., Jääskeläinen, A. and Pekkola, S., 2014. Measuring performance of a service system–from organizations to customer-perceived performance. Measuring Business Excellence, 18(3), pp.73-86.

Latino, R.J., Latino, K.C. and Latino, M.A., 2016. Root cause analysis: improving performance for bottom-line results. CRC press.

Liou, J.J., Chuang, Y.C. and Tzeng, G.H., 2014. A fuzzy integral-based model for supplier evaluation and improvement. Information Sciences, 266, pp.199-217.

Muller, I., 2017. A context specific framework approach to community based monitoring.

Nankervis, A.R., Baird, M., Coffey, J. and Shields, J., 2016. Human resource management: strategy and practice. Cengage AU.

Rothwell, W.J., Hohne, C.K. and King, S.B., 2018. Human performance improvement: Building practitioner performance. Routledge.

Storey, J., 2014. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.

Wo?niak, J., 2014. On e-recruitment and four ways of using its methods. In Proceedings of the 8th International Scientific Conference “Business and Management 2014.