Managing the Human Resource Project
We obtain strategic results by aligning HR mission, vision and values. The following overview highlights a macro approach to project management. Seeking a stretch assignment, such as ownership of a major corporate HR initiative, we lead our organization by example. Strategic project management affords an exciting and challenging opportunity to direct our futures and show case our talents. The VP of HR announces to the team that we must transition from a decentralized function to a centralized function within six months placing you in charge. The set timeframe required to realize budget improvement for immediate bottom line results. The cost savings will be unprecedented for the dozens of locations countrywide. Senior management set the expectation, on time ? on budget, ensuring precise project implementation. You take pride in your ability as an accomplished HR generalist to deliver results and get projects done. Success comes, in part, from your tactical / transactional ability to prioritize assignments and communicate the necessary timeline to managers. By the execution of project leadership skills, you will add measurable strategic value to your organization and your own skill-set. A project assignment budgeted in the five, six or seven-figure range will require skills and HR competencies including: - communications
- documentation
- execution and accountability
- formal controls
Strategic HR leadership necessitates project management skills that require you see the big picture. Your approach may be similar to the strategic creation of your HR mission, vision and values. Likewise, the values of a project assignment become the blueprint upon which you make project planning decisions. HR Influence Your scope of influence requires proficient skills in project plan and design. This may include a draft plan to senior management detailing how you will accomplish this task. In addition, you may be required to design assessment tools where they may not exist, or evaluate and communicate risk up line to your organization. Measurements including corporate resources, budget assumptions, timeline and accountability are typically established. These metrics develop into key result areas as they relate to time, cost and objective. Your span of influence will require you to work effectively across department lines. You may be asked to understand and effectively operate with "politics" and "organizational constraints" from project start to completion. How well you manage these variables will determine your project success. Your ability to influence and lead the project assignment may grow in stages. The personality type you display, cool and confident or nervous and frazzled, will set the project tone. Your mentoring and motivating team members will determine how this project approaches its potential. Rapport building will lead to trust, ultimately enabling a broad reach and results across department lines as needed. Your HR project influence then goes beyond mentoring to enable empowerment of team members to accomplish their mission. Corporations without a team-based environment may experience more "forming and storming" before getting the project off the ground. Sponsoring senior management demonstrates its vision by the appropriate modeling of leadership. This then becomes a subset of project delegation. False starts and difficulty meeting preliminary deadlines may indicate early lack of alignment. While complex, often intimidating and frequently overwhelming in the earliest stages, HR professionals who build a step-by-step plan in collaboration with internal and external resources can demonstrate project management as a tool for internal consulting at the highest level of their organization. © John T. Mooney 2003 All Rights Reserved About The Author Focused exclusively on EMPLOYEE RELATIONS, HR COMMUNICATIONS and RECRUITMENT PROJECTS contact John Mooney at (972) 355-7481 or email JMooney@ConsultiveSource.com or the company website www.ConsultiveSource.com. I utilize extensive hands-on industry competencies to solve your HR challenges. Supporting small, medium or large human resource projects with 20 years of human resource and operating experience, John Mooney has a results-oriented, focused approach to the human resource needs.
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How to Deal With Salespeople
If you are an executive, you may sometimes feel like a open jelly sandwich at a picnic. Every crazy critter in the world wants to bite into your budget. Here's how to protect your time and preserve your sanity.
Burger on a Bun Decision Making
When approaching any decision, it's important for individuals to maintain the healthy state of openness called for by WYSINWYG (what you see is never what you get). Remember that there is always more going on than simply meets the eye. Calling on all the skills, strengths and resources that are accessible, though not immediately apparent will produce vastly better results. Secondly, individuals should strive for balance in both their data gathering and their decision-making. Many factors can influence a final decision, not the least of which is emotion. Strong emotion easily clouds the process and can result in extreme solutions. Sometimes extreme measures will be called for, but generally they are not. Decisions that weigh both objective and subjective data and strike an effective balance are likely to succeed. Finally: keep it simple. Begin with what you know. Reduce the complex to the direct. Set clear goals and implement straightforward plans. Whether making decisions as an individual or as a team, the three principles provide the foundation for creating effective solutions.
Preparing a Budget
Ok, you say, I know I need a budget, but how do I prepare one? The most common budget period is one year, but this can vary depending on whether or not your business has seasonal or cyclical fluctuations. For example if you run a Christmas decorations shop, or a costume shop your business is going to peak during certain times of the year.
Truth or Consequences: How to Give Employee Feedback
In the bestseller, Good to Great, Jim Collins discovered that, "the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality."
Budgets!
Budgets! There I've said it. For some the most hated and feared word in business. But it doesn't have to be that way. As a matter of fact, a well thought out and constructed budget can be the small business owners best friend. After all, a budget is just a laid out plan to produce profits and profits is what we are all after.
What Every Manager Should Know About How to Become An Effective Executive
In his book, The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker pointed out that the effective executive is the person who focuses on making a contribution.
How Your Feelings and Those of Your Employees Can Make The Difference
How we feel is really more important than what we know. This is because how we feel plays a bigger role in our behavior than knowing what we should or should not do. For instance, we "know" smoking is bad for us. We see research that tell us auto accident injuries and deaths can be greatly reduced by using seat belts. We "know" that brushing our teeth after each meal fights tooth decay. Despite these facts that we "know", many of us smoke, don't use seat belts, and fail to brush after eating. We have other needs and feelings that are stronger and take the place of our "knowing" what we should do.
ISO 9001, What Next?
The overriding goal of ISO-14000. (History 1995)
Innovation Management: What Problem Is Being Solved?
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
Reprimanding Marginal Employees
THE MARGINAL PERFORMER: Every manager must, from time to time, deal with a marginal performer - an employee whose work, for the most part, is satisfactory, but who regularly fails in some specific area or areas to maintain a satisfactory level of performance. The work of the marginal performer can be classified as substandard in some cases but not so poor as to warrant immediate termination.
Getting Software Developed for Your Business
At some point, your business is going to need to have some software development. Maybe your business is small, but existing software doesn't fit your needs. Maybe your company is larger, with significant technology resources already, but you need an outside perspective. Whatever the reason, it can be difficult to choose an software developer, especially if you aren't a technical person.
Talent Recruitment Challenges of High Technology Companies
As a result of the dot com meltdown and the decline of the NASDAQ in 2001, many organizations had no alternatives but to lay off many talented IT professionals. Currently, the pool of available talent in the labour market is large. Over the long haul, the impact of shifting population demographics on the labour pool will be staggering. As the baby boom generation continues to age, we can expect acute labour shortages similar to the ones we experienced in the high technology sector during the dot com boom. While there is still a surplus of talent in the market, it is important for organizations to take proactive steps to attract the brightest and the best and thereby fuel their organization's growth. The days of placing ads in the newspaper and receiving a flood of resumes from qualified applications are drawing to a close. Companies that want to ensure that they have a steady stream of applicants will have to think outside the box to broaden their repertoire of talent recruitment strategies.
Selective Job Cuts Often Benefits Firm More Than Broad Layoffs Over Long Term
It is difficult to pick up a newspaper or listen to a business news broadcast without being greeted with the announcement of another massive corporate layoff or cutback. The economy catches a chill and, as a result, the corporate world catches a profits "cold." Before long the pink slips begin to fly. We have come to accept this as the inevitable employment cycle. Is it any wonder that employees feel so little loyalty toward their employers?
The Truth?
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde
Help Your Employees Prepare for a Performance Appraisal
PREPARING EMPLOYEES FOR THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL INTERVIEWS: Remind employees to give some thought to the purpose of performance appraisal: it is a means to learn from the past, plan for the future, and improve effectiveness and work satisfaction. The performance appraisal discussion is an opportunity to motivate, recognize, and reward your employee. It is a time for you and your employee to share perceptions about the employee's accomplishments during the performance period. It is meant to be a culmination of all previous communications made during the performance period.
Communicating Effectively In The Workplace: Four Vital Steps
Ineffective communication is a major, yet avoidable, obstacle to business productivity. And yes, it
can be avoided. Given the will, the bleakest of situations can be turned around for the better.
Communicating When A Crisis Strikes
How would you handle communication if your business or practice got into a crisis situation?
How To Decrease Downtime and Increase Productivity
All maintenance activities of the workforce must be documented, this includes breakdown repairs, callouts, preventive maintenance, replacement maintenance, overhauls, and Testing & Inspection work. Maintenance work by production line employees must be included, whether or not the employee is listed as in maintenance. These activities can then be mined for maintenance information "gold".
The ?Better People? Fallacy
It's easy enough to convince your own staff that better people will prevail, even against the odds. It's what they want to hear. And surely in a marketing war quality is a factor as well as quantity.
Creativity Management and Time Pressure
There is a pervasive belief that time pressure stimulates creativity. This is both true and false.
|
