WHAT DOES A HUMAN RESOURCES PROJECT MANAGER DO?

Published: Aug 01, 2025 - The Human Resources Project Manager leads and oversees the full lifecycle of HR projects, from definition and discovery through execution and implementation. This role collaborates cross-functionally with HR, IT, and business stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions, while tracking milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, and performance metrics to ensure successful project delivery. The manager also facilitates project meetings, proactively resolves challenges, and communicates progress, risks, and results through tailored reports and presentations for diverse audiences.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Human Resources Project Manager

1. Human Resources Project Manager Duties

  • Program Partnership: Partner closely with initiative program managers in the area of program expertise to support execution plans to meet deliverables critical to the transformation initiative.
  • Performance Monitoring: Support the monitoring of the performance of multiple programs of work.
  • PMO Standards: Support the implementation of common PMO standards, reporting, and closure processes across programs.
  • Operational Support: Provide on-the-ground support to the initiative director and program manager to help execute the planning, directing, and coordination of day-to-day activities of running the transformation initiative or portfolio of programs.
  • Change Management: Support the design and execution of change management programs.
  • Process Improvement: Identify opportunities to improve efficiencies and drive continuous improvement.
  • Reporting Creation: Create reporting materials to enable stakeholders to understand the program schedule and key milestones.
  • Risk Monitoring: Monitor and track the execution of transformation programs within the initiative and escalate program risks impacting project delivery to the initiative director and appropriate stakeholders.
  • Process Compliance: Support adherence to program processes, procedures, methods, and standards for program delivery and leverage across the programs.
  • Issue Resolution: Support the identification and resolution of issues, including those outside established projects of work.
  • Stakeholder Collaboration: Collaborate with program managers to deliver action deliverables from reviews of each program’s defined scope, target state, and success criteria to ensure it fully addresses the letter and the spirit of the regulatory feedback, broader supervisory expectations, underlying issues, and root causes, and is embedded in a broader strategic vision.

2. Human Resources Project Manager Responsibilities

  • Project Planning: Facilitate all phases of project planning and execution for multiple simultaneous projects.
  • Systems Integration: Lead smooth integration of new systems, tools and capabilities across the organization.
  • Meeting Leadership: Lead project meetings, consult with subject matter experts and process owners to identify gaps in the current state and develop improvement opportunities.
  • Stakeholder Guidance: Provide leadership, expertise and technical or operational guidance to stakeholders and field teams.
  • Change Influence: Influence change to improve results, organizational effectiveness, systems, quality and services.
  • Change Partnership: Partner with stakeholders to drive change management and adoption of project outcomes.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate across functions to obtain buy-in from all impacted parties.
  • Change Management: Lead change management to ensure adoption of changes required by a project or initiative.
  • Impact Analysis: Conduct impact analyses, change management assessments, and determine change readiness.

3. Human Resources Project Manager Functions

  • Training Support: Provide input, document requirements and support the design and delivery of training programs.
  • Risk Mitigation: Identify, analyze and prepare risk mitigation activities.
  • Change Deliverables: Create actionable deliverables for the five change management levers, including communications plan, sponsor roadmap, coaching plan, training plan and resistance management plan.
  • Audience Engagement: Support and engage key audiences, including senior leaders, managers and front-line personnel.
  • Success Metrics: Define and measure success metrics and monitor change progress.
  • Project Planning: Develop and administer project plans and budgets in the Smart-sheets tool, identify project goals, strategy, staffing, scheduling, risks and mitigation plans, allocation of available resources and communication.
  • Business Cases: Prepare business cases for assigned projects and participate in planning and prioritizing meetings.
  • Project Reporting: Lead project reporting and documentation, deliver status reports and analysis for management on an ongoing basis, track and resolve issues and escalate to management.
  • Scope Coordination: Coordinate with management to ensure project scope and schedule are adhered to, and ensure proposed changes are aligned with objectives and are conducted in accordance with agreed-upon project change processes.

4. Human Resources Project Manager Details and Accountabilities

  • HR Projects: Facilitate and drive the end-to-end HR project lifecycle, including project definition, discovery, execution and launch activities.
  • Cross-Functional Work: Partner effectively and closely with cross-functional teams, including HR and IT teams, to deliver new HR solutions and capabilities.
  • Performance Tracking: Develop milestones and measurements to evaluate project performance, effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction.
  • Resource Forecasting: Facilitate the forecasting of project requirements, including people and resource expenses, and communicate expected variances to actuals throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Schedule Management: Develop project schedules and timelines, identify and track dependencies and provide visibility into the team’s progress in delivering projects predictably and with quality.
  • Status Reporting: Develop effective reporting and presentations related to project status and progress, risks and issues, and timelines for a variety of audiences, including business leaders and HR team members.
  • Meeting Management: Facilitate project meetings and working sessions, bringing together the right cross-functional team members to monitor project progress and keep each other accountable on commitments and deliverables based on the schedule.
  • Problem Solving: Proactively identify recommendations and solutions to resolve project challenges, consider alternatives and resolve issues.

5. Human Resources Project Manager Additional Details

  • HR Guidance: Provide constructive insight and guidance on the HR components of the project.
  • Action Planning: Identify key action items, timelines and resources, and assess potential risk factors.
  • Documentation Skills: Document the project plan and deliverables, business case and action items using various tools such as PowerPoint, Excel and Microsoft Teams.
  • Team Coordination: Proactively liaise with and follow up with individual HR team members who will execute the HR components of the project.
  • Goal Communication: Ensure that goals and timelines are communicated up front, deadlines are met, and potential obstacles are identified and addressed in a timely manner.
  • Task Planning: Create a task plan template for use by each functional HR area (e.g., Benefits, Compensation, Staffing), outlining all key major deliverables and target due dates for each.
  • Progress Review: Review progress with the project team and Project Director on a regular basis and escalate any potential delays to the appropriate individual.
  • Policy Development: Contribute to the creation and modification of HR policies and procedures.

6. Human Resources Project Manager Role Purpose

  • Business Knowledge: Acquire and apply advanced knowledge of the business, its products and processes.
  • Project Monitoring: Monitor project execution to deliver incremental business value.
  • Management Insight: Provide insight to management on issues related to NY, NJ, Tampa, Jacksonville and Irving projects.
  • Critical Path Management: Understand each project's critical path activities and proactively manage those to the project's benefit.
  • Collaboration Skills: Collaborate on creative alternatives to project challenges and collaborate to drive adoption and challenge standards.
  • Relationship Management: Maintain relationships with HR, HRSS and GFT team members.
  • Presentation Skills: Demonstrate strong presentation skills and the ability to coordinate activities globally.
  • Security Support: Support the HR Information and Security Team specifically on the implementation of the new HR Partner Workday security model.
  • Operational Support: Provide operational support in increased maintenance of security assignments.
  • Workday Delegation: Support implementation of new Workday delegation functionality, create educational materials and collect feedback to enhance delegation functionality.
  • Tag Management: Support employee tag management in Workday, including design, implementation and maintenance of new employee tags.
  • Position Management: Support position management in Workday by rolling out an initiative to clean up thousands of unfilled open positions.
  • HR Education: Provide support to educate HR and the business on the concept of position management.

7. Human Resources Project Manager General Responsibilities

  • Policy Management: Be in charge of defining and updating HR policies and processes for the Singapore entity, including the handbook and organisation charts.
  • Handbook Supervision: Supervise the updating of the employee handbook for Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Greater China and Japan.
  • HR Systems Update: Participate in updating HR management systems (e.g., SuccessFactors).
  • Team Development: Be in charge of team building development and budget for the HR team in Singapore.
  • Internal Communication: Collaborate on internal communication in liaison with the marketing team, including newsletters, events (online and on-premise), HR project updates and government announcements, including COVID updates.
  • WFH Management: Manage and deploy WFH management.
  • Salary Updates: Participate in salary grid updates with recruiters.
  • Compensation Analysis: Participate in group-level compensation and benefit analysis and improvement.
  • Salary Benchmarking: Be in charge of checking gaps with team members and salary surveys for Singapore.
  • Medical Coverage: Benchmark, negotiate and deploy medical coverage regularly.

8. Human Resources Project Manager Key Accountabilities

  • Stakeholder Relations: Establish and maintain a relationship with the business and key partners to understand their business needs, ensure alignment on objectives and ensure ongoing buy-in across all project activities.
  • Change Support: Work closely with change management leaders and corporate stakeholders to ensure appropriate change management activities are defined and included in all project plans.
  • Process Design: Design the processes and documentation in preparation for the restructuring.
  • Project Plans: Create project plans, including timelines and milestones.
  • Project Control: Manage ongoing project plans, budgets, resources and external experts, including lawyers.
  • Reporting: Develop and deliver progress reports, proposals, requirements documentation and presentations.
  • Project Strategy: Formulate and continually reassess the appropriate project management approach and project management skillset and resourcing mix across the division, HR resources and Kantar COEs.
  • Communication Plans: Develop communication plans and strategies.

9. Human Resources Project Manager Responsibilities and Key Tasks

  • Expectation Setting: Effectively set and communicate project expectations to team members and stakeholders.
  • Scope Management: Proactively manage and communicate ongoing changes in project scope, identify potential crises and devise contingency plans.
  • Team Leadership: Coach, mentor, motivate and lead project team members.
  • Team Influence: Influence the project team to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work.
  • Stakeholder Identification: Identify all stakeholders, both direct and indirect, and determine the level of involvement needed for project success.
  • Meeting Facilitation: Facilitate meetings and drive project issues through to resolution.
  • Stakeholder Support: Support senior stakeholders in selection pools and criteria.
  • Legislation Advice: Advise stakeholders on legislation and complex or challenging elements.
  • Transition Management: Ensure comprehensive and seamless project post-implementation transition.

10. Human Resources Project Manager Duties and Roles

  • Cross-Functional Management: Manage cross-functional project teams mainly within HR, ensuring project teams have sufficient planning, resources and tracking to meet objectives in a complex environment with a high number of projects interacting together.
  • Project Accountability: Accountable for the full scope of the project, including recommendations on team members and resources needed, a detailed timeline with critical path and risk analysis, a detailed financial tool and presentations for each stage gate, a change management plan to execute and raising concerns and risks to appropriate stakeholders.
  • Progress Reporting: Organize, report and communicate the progress of projects to HR management and other business stakeholders.
  • Risk Monitoring: Monitor projects across HR teams to track interdependencies and impacts across HR and the business and flag any risks with resourcing and timing.
  • Process Improvement: Identify and propose best practices and improvements to the project management process within HR.
  • Global Collaboration: Interact with some global Danone organizations, including learning, total rewards, employee services and talent.
  • Strategic Planning: Support the annual strategic planning process for the HR function.
  • Business Initiatives: Lead initiatives that address key business priorities and translate them into actionable plans.
  • Project Analysis: Perform project analysis, manage risks, identify and influence necessary course corrections, solve problems creatively and communicate program status and activities.
  • Project Management: Provide project management for large, cross-functional HR projects.
  • Change Management: Lead efforts to develop change management and communication plans.
  • Operational Oversight: Oversee key operational activities such as managing agenda creation, meeting facilitation, and follow-up actions for various management and project team meetings.
  • Program Scaling: Identify opportunities to improve and scale HR programs and processes.
Relevant Information
What Does An HR Project Manager Do?