Most HR leaders and professionals familiar with healthcare benefits or workers compensation medical claims know about the 80/20 rule – 20% of the claims drive 80% of the costs.
Well, the 80-20 rule also can be an effective guideline to identify the value-added tasks and processes in any project, according to Andreas Tremel, co-founder and CEO of InLoox, a cloud-based project management solution.
Just like for healthcare, the 80-20 rule when applied to project management notes that 20% of tasks produce 80% of results. At the same time, turning the rule on its head, 80% of tasks produce just 20% of results.
For HR, this means that when looking for new talent, it should concentrate on finding the 20% that will deliver 80% of results, i.e. those that will perform the best, Tremel notes.
“Quality should come before quantity,” he says.
Tremel explains that in today’s world of LinkedIn and other social media channels and opportunities, it may be tempting to collect as many potential candidates as possible, but it’s a mistake – filling a vacancy is time and money consuming.
“It’s not about having the greatest pool of talents,” he says. “Finding the right person for the right job is much more important.”
Coordination & delegation: A potent duo
Effective job delegation will give an organization a competitive edge, while underutilizing your talents or delegating them to the wrong job can lead even the most talented and motivated employee to underperform, Tremel says.
“Project managers know how vital effective resource allocation is, but it requires careful coordination to allocate the right ‘human resources’ to the right jobs,” he says. Leveraging project management tools with resource management features can help HR, recruiters and even frontline managers identify which person is right for which job depending on their skills, past project work and current work capacities.
“Identify where each person can make the biggest contribution to the organization, and where they can develop their skills the most,” Tremel says.
Data analysis drives project management success
‘Big Data’ is a major buzzword in business and HR today, and project management is no different. In project management’s case, it’s not about collecting personal information from employees, but about analyzing performance metrics and using it to increase efficiency and productivity. For HR, it means having a rich data pool available to measure employee performance accurately and turning data into concrete, “actionable,” information. This can in turn help HR create improved learning programs and make smarter future personnel decisions.
One method to improve productivity is to track work times and evaluate the output. Using a time tracker to track their work helps employees and HR identify time-consuming tasks, which can be optimized or eliminated if they do not add any value.
“It’s so very important to measure the success of workplace learning and the effects of new policies, to be able to extract ‘lessons learned,’” Tremel says, adding that a project management approach also offers great metrics when it comes to making a strong business case with C-suite executives.
