Within the PM community, there are two competing views about what the focus of Resource Management should be. One side believes that people are simply another resource on a project, just like equipment and supplies. The other side strongly disagrees.
While there are certainly questions of humanity and morality at play, I want to address why viewing people as plug and play line items isn’t a smart choice for your business. Put simply, it’s bad for productivity. You may have two employees with the job title of “Developer,” but that doesn’t tell you anything about their unique skill sets or which one could bring more value to a specific project.
Resource Management is all about people — getting the right people to the right work at the right time. That’s why skills and competency management is a critical part of resource management and optimizing your workforce.
The evolution of Resource Management into a people-centered discipline
In order to maximize efficiency—meaning employees that are engaged, not experiencing burnout, and putting their experience and skills to the best use—organizations must consciously create a culture that supports its workforce. The BACCS Model breaks down five must-haves for people working in an environment heavily-focused on projects and new initiatives:
- Belongingness – People need other people. Teams and other workgroups that are stable can fill this need at work.
- Autonomy – People want to be as self-directed as possible. They will abide by limits, but micromanagement is intolerable.
- Competence – Competence is a positive survival trait. Competence also directly contributes to an individual’s sense of self.
- Certainty – Certainty is a range. Some people are confident that Murphy’s law is real (yes, it will go wrong) and enjoy the battle.
- Safety – Safety doesn’t mean playing it safe. People want the freedom to take appropriate risks, present new ideas, and fail fast.
In the modern world, culture and technology go hand-in-hand. Culture takes intellectual and empathetic “muscle” to maintain, while technology takes organizational savvy to get right.
Why do we say organizational savvy? Because it’s more important for a system to be easy to use than for it to have every feature under the sun. Software should be designed to support people rather than control them.
People are more than their job titles
Resource Management systems are wonderful if they replace Excel, but that doesn’t go far enough. It’s not just about assigning someone to work; it’s about getting the right person to the right work at the right time. If we want enterprise-wide agility, we need easy and effortless MOVEMENT of the right people, anywhere and anytime.
I can almost guarantee that at some point, you’ve said to yourself, “I’m sure there’s someone in this company who knows the answer to this question or has a background in this area.” So why on earth would we lock information about an employee’s skills behind the HR firewall? Why do we need to go to LinkedIn in order to look up where a person has worked, what skills they have, and even see their references?
I recently came across a survey that said 75% of employees believe their organization consistently fails to recognize and take advantage of all the expertise they have to offer. And we wonder why we consistently see stats that tell us 63% of employees are disengaged? We only have to look at our own set of skills to know that a job title doesn’t even begin to encompass all of who we are and what we can contribute as individuals.
The way forward
Specific features within software can become the catalyst to completely change the way a subject is discussed within a company. If you asked management to support an effort to document everyone’s skills, but had no place to put the information or means to use the information to get more work done, it would never happen. With the right feature, a world of possibilities can emerge.
Resource Management software like Tempus Resource allows you to meet people where they already are. The key to HR workforce agility is a central resource catalog that tracks skills across the enterprise.
Skill forecasts allow you to tie upskilling, reskilling, and talent acquisition directly to the strategic project roadmap to ensure your company has exactly who and what it needs to execute strategy. And when it comes to your bottom line, it’s much more cost-effective to invest in a current employee than it is to hire a new one.
From centrally managing, defining, and governing your enterprise skill matrix inventory to improving engagement and data collection with end user management of their skills, Tempus Resource’s purpose-built platform is reshaping resource forecasting and capacity planning for the world’s leading companies. Contact us today or schedule a demo to learn more.
