7 - Human Resource Management & Human Performance

Human Resource Management Processes

• Four core processes that organize, manage and lead the project team

  • Plan Human Resource Management – identify & document roles, responsibilities, required skills, reporting relationships; create Staffing Management Plan.

  • Acquire Project Team – confirm availability and obtain the people required to perform project work.

  • Develop Project Team – improve individual competencies, team interactions, and overall environment to enhance performance.

  • Manage Project Team – track performance, provide feedback, resolve issues, enact changes to optimise results.

• Together these processes ensure the right people are available, capable, motivated, and retained for project success.

Plan Human Resource Management

• Purpose: produce a documented approach to staffing the project.

• Key Benefit

  • Establishes clear project roles & responsibilities, organisation charts, and the Staffing Management Plan (SMP).

  • Provides timetable for staff acquisition & release; identifies training, team-building, recognition & reward strategies; addresses compliance and safety.

• Output artefacts

  • RACI or RAM charts, role descriptions, competency matrices.

  • Organisation charts (functional, matrix, or composite).

  • Staffing Management Plan (see next section).

Staffing Management Plan (SMP)

Describes when and how human-resource requirements will be met. It is a live subsection of the overall Project Management Plan.

Typical Contents

• Staffing Acquisition

  • Source of people: internal transfers vs. external contracts/consultants.

  • Work arrangement: co-located vs. distributed/remote.

  • Cost per expertise level; budget alignment.

  • Extent of help from the corporate HR department.

• Timetable (Resource Calendars)

  • Start/finish windows for each role.

  • Drives “resource-levelling” decisions: add resources vs. extend schedule.

• Staff Release Plan

  • Method & timing for releasing staff to minimise idle cost and boost morale.

  • Must anticipate budget cuts or schedule changes that sabotage “optimal” release.

• Training Needs

  • Gap analysis of required vs. existing competencies; creation of training plan.

  • May sponsor professional certifications valuable to project/outcome.

• Recognition & Rewards

  • Clear criteria, scheduled distribution so appreciation is not forgotten.

  • Focus on behaviours within recipient’s control.

• Compliance Considerations

  • Government regulations, union contracts, corporate HR policies.

• Safety Policies

  • Procedures protecting staff from project-specific hazards.

• Continual updates: the SMP evolves as the project progresses and conditions change.

Acquire Project Team

• Confirms resource availability and assembles the team from internal and external sources.

• Five key decision factors

  • Availability – who & when.

  • Ability – competencies possessed.

  • Experience – successful past performance on similar work.

  • Interests – motivation to join this project.

  • Cost – direct labour or contract expense.

Acquisition Mechanisms

• Pre-assignment

  • Staff promised in proposals (key personnel) or named in the Project Charter.

  • Needed when unique expertise (e.g.
    specialised process knowledge) is critical.

• Negotiation

  • With functional managers for required talent & authority duration.

  • With other PMs for scarce resources.

  • With external vendors/contractors.

• Outsourcing / Contracting

  • Used when in-house staff are insufficient.

  • Must weigh against the organisation’s core competencies – retain what is strategic.

Virtual Teams

• Definition: team members work toward shared goals with little/no face-to-face contact, enabled by e-mail, video-conferencing, collaboration tools.

• Opportunities enabled

  • Tap geographically dispersed employees.

  • Access specialised experts anywhere.

  • Include home-office or mobility-limited staff.

  • Mix shifts/hours to achieve 24×7 progress.

  • Reduce travel costs; pursue projects previously shelved.

• Management adaptations required

  • Enhanced communications planning.

  • Explicit expectations & protocols for resolving conflict.

  • Inclusive decision-making and fair credit-sharing.

  • Recognise that “this is not business as usual.”

Develop Project Team

Improves capability, interpersonal trust, morale, and cohesion to drive project performance.

Objectives

1. Skill growth: Improve knowledge/skills to lower cost, shorten schedule, raise quality.

2. Trust & agreement: Elevate morale, lower conflict, reinforce teamwork.

3. Dynamic team culture: Boost productivity, spirit, cooperation; enable cross-training & mentoring.

Tools & Techniques

• General (Interpersonal) Management Skills – leadership, communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, influence.

• Training – formal or informal learning experiences.

  • Modalities: classroom, online, computer-based, on-the-job, mentoring, coaching.

• Team-building activities, recognition events, co-location/war-rooms, stakeholder engagement.

Training Programme Model

• Objective: Only trained & qualified personnel perform work.

• Actions

  • Identify training & qualification gaps.

  • Deliver required training (technical & operational).

  • Maintain records; verify competency before assignment.

Training Methods

• Required reading, computer-based modules, classroom instruction, practical demos, on-the-job coaching.

• Training Opportunities

  • Periodic (e.g. annual refreshers).

  • “Just-in-time” / tailgate briefings.

  • Re-training after significant changes.

Competency Maintenance

• Continuous job-performance evaluation.

• Periodic retraining / requalification cycles.

• Annual performance review covers:

  • Roles & responsibilities.

  • Training status & required reading.

  • Training effectiveness assessments.

Human Performance & Error Management (Safety Lens)

Although not always included in traditional HRM chapters, the lecture explicitly bridges to Human Performance Improvement (HPI)—critical in regulated or high-risk environments.

Facts about Human Error

• Exists in every industry; major contributor to events.

• Costly, detrimental to safety, hinders productivity.

• Root cause usually lies in organisational weaknesses, not lack of skill/knowledge.

Why an HPI Approach?

• Rough event breakdown:

  • 80\% of occurrences involve Human Error.

  • 30\% attributed to individual acts.

  • 70\% stem from latent organisational weaknesses.

  • 20\% attributed to equipment failures.

• Therefore, focus on system & organisational design, not just individuals.

Five Principles of Human Performance

1. People are fallible; even the best make mistakes.

2. Error-likely situations are predictable, manageable, preventable.

3. Behaviour is shaped by organisational processes & values.

4. High performance arises from encouragement & reinforcement by leaders, peers, subordinates.

5. Adverse events can be avoided by understanding why mistakes occur and applying lessons learned.

Risk Perception – When People Fear Less

• Feel personal control over the risk.

• Perceive benefit from the activity.

• Live with and understand the hazard.

• Risk is routine, not novel.

• Trust the people/organisation creating the risk.

• Unaware of the hazard.

Hazardous Attitudes (Cognitive Traps)

• Pride – “Don’t insult my intelligence.”

• Heroic – “I’ll get it done, hook or crook.”

• Invulnerable – “That can’t happen to me.”

• Fatalistic – “What’s the use?”

• Bald-Tire – “No flat in 60k miles yet.”

• Summit Fever – “We’re almost done.”

• Pollyanna – “Nothing bad will happen.”

Two Views of Human Error

Error Precursors

“Existing conditions that increase human-error rates.” Categories & examples:

• Task Demands – time pressure, unfamiliar tasks, high workload, simultaneous tasks, interpretation requirements, unclear goals or standards.

• Individual Capabilities – lack of knowledge, inexperience, impaired communication habits, illness/fatigue.

• Work Environment – distractions/interruptions, routine deviations, confusing controls, hidden system responses.

• Human Nature / Cognitive Biases – stress-limited attention, complacency, mindset, inaccurate risk perception, mental shortcuts, personality conflicts, limited short-term memory.

Diminishing Culpability & Organisational Response (Reason, 1997)

• As investigation moves from intentional violations to honest mistakes, individual blame decreases and company duty to act increases.

• Organisational actions:

  • Administrative controls (procedures, checklists, automation aids).

  • Training, coaching, staffing adjustments.

• Focus on system defences rather than punitive measures.

Ethical & Practical Implications

• HR planning must integrate safety, compliance, and human-performance principles—especially in regulated sectors (healthcare, construction, aerospace).

• Recognition/reward systems must avoid encouraging risk-taking or suppressing error reporting.

• Virtual teams require conscious equity & inclusion to maintain trust across distance.

• Ongoing competency maintenance safeguards against skill decay and latent organisational weaknesses.

Connections to Project Management Fundamentals

• HRM knowledge area supports Project Integration (ensuring right resources at right time) and Project Risk Management (human-error risk).

• Staffing constraints feed directly into Schedule Management (resource-levelling) and Cost Management (labour budgeting).

• Training & error-prevention align with Quality Management continuous-improvement cycles (Plan-Do-Check-Act).

Key Equations / Figures (for quick recall)

• Error contribution split: \text{Human\ Error} = 80\% = 30\% \text{ individual } + 70\% \text{ organisational}

• Equipment failures: 20\% of occurrences.

Study & Application Tips

• Map every project role to required competencies and error-critical tasks.

• Build a living staffing plan—update whenever scope, schedule or risk profile changes.

• Use pre-mortems to surface error precursors before launching high-risk activities.

• For virtual teams, over-communicate goals, decisions, and recognition.

• Treat human error as a diagnostic tool—look upstream at system factors.