When we say “Human resources”, you say … ?
Recruiting?
New hire onboarding?
Or, maybe, team building?
Actually, apart from these 3 tasks, the HR department is in charge of managing the entire employee life cycle — from recruiting to firing. Plus, they encourage a positive work environment and take care of employees’ well-being.
But, the title says “HR project management”? What does HR have to do with project management?
We‘ve got the answer!
Read on to find out how HR and project management interact and how to develop and run an HR project without a hitch.
In this article:
What is HR project management?
HR project management is an area of project management that deals with the integration of project management practices into HR projects.
In other words, the skills and techniques used in project management are applied to HR projects to help HR professionals:
- Organize their projects,
- Streamline workflows, and
- Align with company goals.
When they’re familiar with project management ABCs, HR departments can enhance:
- Team management — By using PM procedures, HR teams can organize better and improve their productivity, which, in turn, boosts the team’s performance.
- Resource management — By learning about project management, HR teams can get a better understanding of how budget, people, and time are spent and improve their resource allocation.
- Employee experience management — PM skills come in handy when organizing onboarding or handling requests as they help HR teams handle all employee-related matters in a clearer, more transparent way.
Key aspects of HR project management
When HR and project management join forces, their synergy drives a positive change in the functioning of HR departments. Here are some of the key aspects of HR project management:
- Open communication — Open communication channels enable company stakeholders, managers, and team leaders to connect and share regular updates on the progress of all HR projects.
- Realistic planning and good organization — HR projects require clear project objectives, a well-defined project scope, realistic timelines, and properly allocated resources.
- Room for negotiation — Collaboration is, no doubt, fundamental for project success, but you can’t expect to resolve conflicts if you don’t negotiate. When conflicts arise, negotiations help all parties get their focus back on project goals and find the middle ground.
- Stakeholder engagement — Project stakeholders should always be involved in decision-making and project progress so that the outcome of an HR project is in line with their interests as well.
- Employee engagement — Satisfied and motivated employees are the first responsibility of the HR department. Therefore, to get your HR project to success, you have to make sure your people understand their tasks and are on the right track.
- Strategic thinking — HR projects need to be in tune with the company’s goals and objectives. Whether your projects are internal or carried out in cooperation with other departments, make sure you stick to your company’s policies.
- Change management — When a company introduces changes, the HR team is typically on the front line. They need to find the best way to implement new tools or procedures and provide support in the transition period.
- Risk management — Though HR projects can also face risks, it’s important to identify them before they impact the project. The HR team should discuss where potential risks could take place and find a strategy to mitigate them.
- Monitoring and evaluation — Tracking your HR project’s progress is crucial for understanding how tasks are completed and resources are spent. Monitoring helps you spot bottlenecks and prevent problems from getting bigger. Once the project is done, you should also find some time to identify what went well and what didn’t so that you can improve next time.
Manage your HR projects with Plaky
HR project management examples
Just like any other project, HR projects go through 5 project management phases:
- Initiation,
- Planning,
- Execution,
- Monitoring and control, and
- Closure.
To get a clear picture of how HR teams run their projects, let’s go through the following examples.
#1 Recruiting new candidates for the company’s IT team
Recruiting new employees is the #1 task for all HR departments. This process includes finding, screening, interviewing, and selecting the candidates who are the best fit for the open position.
Here’s an overview of all the phases and tasks an HR team has to go through during the recruitment process.
| PHASE | TASKS |
|---|---|
| Initiation | 1. Initiate the search for new employees 2. Specify why you need them and define the position 3. Get approval from project stakeholders 4. Choose HR project management software |
| Planning | 1. Define project goals and scope 2. Develop a project schedule 3. Plan the project budget 4. Plan resources 5. Develop a communication plan 6. Develop a risk management plan |
| Execution | 1. Assign tasks and responsibilities (crafting the job ad, promoting the job openings, talent search, application screening, shortlisting, interviewing, etc.) 2. Manage the HR team 3. Manage communication and engagement 4. Hold regular status meetings |
| Monitoring and control | 1. Determine the KPIs 2. Monitor the selection process 3. Monitor risks 4. Monitor costs and quality |
| Closure | 1. Complete the paperwork 2. Welcome the new employees 3. Create a project closeout report 4. Capture lessons learned/ Evaluate the recruitment process |
In case you want to keep track of the entire process without missing a single thing, you should definitely opt for reliable project management software.
Luckily, Plaky offers an easy-to-use recruitment template for:
- Planning talent acquisition,
- Managing the candidate pipeline, and
- Streamlining the recruitment process.
#2 New employee onboarding
Organizing an onboarding process for newcomers also requires detailed planning and a tailored approach — since new employees won’t usually have the same job positions.
The onboarding actually starts with the pre-onboarding phase, which includes sending a welcome letter and a job offer to the chosen candidate and completing all the necessary paperwork.
Here are the tasks you should complete during this HR project.
| PHASE | TASKS |
|---|---|
| Initiation | 1. Initiate the pre-onboarding protocol 2. Initiate role-specific training 3. Prepare the documentation 4. Talk to stakeholders 5. Choose HR project management software |
| Planning | 1. Define the project goals 2. Set up accounts 3. Create the onboarding schedule 4. Plan resources 5. Prepare a welcome package |
| Execution | 1. Hold an introductory meeting with the HR team 2. Schedule an introductory meeting with the manager/ team lead 3. Organize an office tour 4. Assign first task(s) 5. Organize work buddy meetings 6. Schedule regular check-ins |
| Monitoring and Control | 1. Determine the performance KPIs 2. Hold regular check-ins 3. Monitor costs and quality |
| Closure | 1. Collect feedback from managers/ team leads 2. Get feedback from candidates 3. Capture lessons learned |
Want to nail your onboarding process? Plaky’s employee onboarding template can help you:
- Plan and manage the onboarding process,
- Share relevant documents and files,
- Delegate tasks, and
- Track project performance.
Get our employee onboarding template
#3 Employee transfer
Responding to all kinds of requests is a never-ending task for HR teams — all to make employees happy and motivated.
Here’s how you organize an employee transfer as an HR project.
| PHASE | TASKS |
|---|---|
| Initiation | 1. Document the request in your chosen HR project management software 2. Identify the need for a transfer 3. Inform the employee’s manager 4. Establish contact with the department the employee would like to be transferred to |
| Planning | 1. Set project goals 2. Establish the criteria for the transfer 3. Organize a meeting between the current manager and the employee 4. Organize a meeting with the future manager 5. Estimate the need for additional training 6. Set up a transfer plan (deadlines, new role, responsibilities) 7. Inform stakeholders about the transfer 8. Secure all necessary approvals |
| Execution | 1. Prepare all the necessary paperwork 2. Organize the transfer and relevant resources 3. Schedule onboarding 4. Schedule training (if necessary) |
| Monitoring and control | 1. Define the performance KPIs 2. Hold regular check-ins 3. Monitor expenses and quality |
| Closure | 1. Collect feedback from managers/team leads of the new department 2. Get feedback about the new role from the employee 3. Capture lessons learned |
You can easily manage all HR requests with the help of Plaky. Use our ready-made HR requests template to:
- Record all requests,
- Assign HR specialists,
- Get an overview of the requests’ statuses,
- Share critical information, and more.
How to run your HR project in 5 simple steps
Since your HR project plan is the cornerstone of your entire project, it’s best to develop it in HR project management software so that you can break tasks into manageable phases and ensure focus and alignment for your entire HR team.
Let’s take a soft-skills training program as an example of an HR project and develop a project plan using our tool, Plaky.
#1 Determine goals and get project approval
Before you even start defining S.M.A.R.T. goals for your training project, you should determine training needs first. The simplest way to do this is to create a self-assessment soft-skills test for employees.
Once you have the results, analyze them and define your training goals, making sure they align with your company goals and objectives.
As you already know, for the project to be official, you need to develop a project proposal and a business case.
Finally, you need to get stakeholder approval to start the project. When you (fingers crossed) get it, you can move on to the planning phase.
#2 Plan your HR project
Creating a good project plan involves many steps, but the first is to define the training scope, i.e., what the training will and won’t include. You should also prepare a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) — a diagram that breaks down the entire project’s scope into bite-sized chunks.
Another thing you have to do here is estimate the project costs and get budget approval, of course. What follows is determining a timeline for your training. Then you can plan and distribute project resources in the best possible way.
The planning step also includes creating a communication plan and defining channels for communication. In the end, make sure you develop a risk management plan too and think about the potential solutions.
#3 Assign roles and manage responsibilities
Make sure everyone in your HR team knows what their responsibilities are and use software to distribute their tasks.
As the training project progresses, it’s also important to set up regular check-ins with your team so that everyone is on the same page.
Use check-ins to get updates on task statuses as this will help you manage the entire process and communication. What’s more, you’ll gather valuable information that you can then share with project stakeholders and keep them engaged.
💡Plaky Pro Tip
The Agile approach, also known as the adaptive approach, is praised by many HR professionals given that regular daily meetings are used to reflect and adapt to potential changes. To learn more, check out the articles below:
#4 Keep track of progress in real time
But having a solid project plan is just not enough — monitoring and controlling are what will keep your project and plan on the right track.
To keep a close eye on the project, you need to determine KPIs, e.g., training attendance rate, training completion rate, learner satisfaction, and job performance impact.
You’ll also need to develop a post-training report format so that you can create a report on each session you’ve monitored.
At the same time, don’t forget to monitor risks, costs, and quality. If you notice any roadbumps, you still have time to make necessary adjustments.
#5 Evaluate your project’s success
Finally, once your training project is done, you should evaluate its success and whether it has reached the established goals.
To do this, you need to send out surveys to attendees and ask them for feedback. Analyzing the results will help you do 2 more tasks — creating a project closeout report and capturing lessons learned.
Once you have these, you can reflect on the training’s impact and use the evaluation results to improve your future HR projects.
Benefits of project management in HR
Some of the key benefits of project management in HR are:
- Improved resource allocation — By establishing clear roles and responsibilities in their projects, HR teams can improve resource allocation. Better yet, by tracking how resources (staff, budget, and tools) are used, the HR department can identify issues and make necessary improvements.
- Better change management — Changes in work organization require a systematic approach and a transition period. However, careful planning of each step and ongoing monitoring can help you maintain the required level of employee productivity during the bridging period.
- Increased efficiency — By adopting project management procedures, HR departments can also better organize tasks, prioritize them, and track their progress, which leads to increased efficiency and performance.
- Better risk management — Regular tracking and monitoring allow HR teams to spot bottlenecks in their project timeline on time and address them properly.
- Enhanced alignment with the company strategy — HR departments can use project management techniques to align their activities and projects with the overall company strategy, policies, and regulations.
- High-quality onboarding and training experience — When onboarding and training processes are well planned and systematic, it makes the experience much better and leads to greater employee satisfaction.
💡Plaky Pro Tip
HR departments have faced many challenges in recent years. Check out the top HR statistics and trends for 2025 in the article below:
Shape up your HR project management with Plaky
If your HR team is into providing the best employee experience, you should definitely consider “hiring” Plaky first.
Apart from offering ready-made templates and supporting you with developing your entire HR project plan, you can rely on Plaky to organize all sorts of HR processes — from hiring and onboarding to employee well-being and career development.
You can also use Plaky to:
- Build a custom board to develop a foolproof job candidate pipeline,
- Organize and keep all employee information and files in one dedicated, centralized, and above all — safe place, and
- Facilitate communication and collaboration within the HR department or with other departments without using any external tools.
Through comments, @mentions, and replies available within each task, Plaky allows you to send task-related messages to your team members or to your colleagues from other departments just by tagging them.
With Plaky, you can also easily organize employees’ performance reviews within a single dedicated board. Along with other employee information, you can link to all performance reviews, from self-evaluation to annual performance review, using Plaky’s Link custom field.
Better yet, you can also improve your HR team’s efficiency with Plaky’s newest feature — board automations (available on the Pro and Enterprise plan).
You can bring automations into play when you want to update item fields, move items to different groups, or manage who’s subscribed. These intelligent rules can transform your work as they help you:
- Eliminate repetitive tasks — Save precious time by automating tedious tasks, like notifying specific colleagues about the received job applications or changing subscribers when interview dates are updated.
- Concentrate on high-priority tasks — Just as you delegate tasks to your colleagues, you can delegate tasks to automations. While automations handle the routine tasks, you can focus on your high-priority tasks.
- Reduce errors — Use automations to minimize human error and avoid jeopardizing the entire success of your project.
- Maintain consistency in your projects — Keep your processes consistent across the board and always know what your next step is.
Plan and manage your HR projects with ease. Start your free 14-day Plaky trial today!
