Making a case for the value of resource management? Our industry experts dive into compelling reasons why resource management is so important.
More often than not, the importance of resource management is misunderstood.
It’s thought of, primarily, as a discipline responsible for assigning people to projects. But in reality, there’s a lot more to resource management - including optimizing organizational resources, capacity planning, and helping businesses achieve a competitive edge.
As Nicole Tiefensee, the Co-founder of Runn puts it:
Resource management is really about orchestrating your team in a way that boosts both your business and your workforce. It’s about achieving nimbleness, aligning with business values and goals, and fostering growth – both for the company and the individuals within it.
With that, let’s dig into how effective resource management enables business growth.
The more you humanize resource management, the more you can drive value from it.
Think of this human-first approach as the untapped token that lets you maximize the ROI of resource management. Some of its primary themes include:
In turn, this approach unlocks the full importance of resource management. Here’s a snapshot:
Efficient resource management focuses on making sure people with the right skillset, expertise, and interests are assigned to projects.
Matching these skills to project requirements, in turn, guarantees innovative deliverables.
Besides efficiently allocating resources, savvy resource managers also work on capacity planning. This ensures resources aren’t overbooked and have room to focus on the project — improving both employee productivity and project success rate.
Resource management also unlocks operational efficiency in a handful of ways.
For one, it ensures all employees are optimally utilized — never under- and most definitely never over-utilized so their performance is uncompromised.
Runn’s Founder and CEO, Tim Copeland adds:
Resource management [also] ensures you’re utilizing your resources effectively, to deliver the highest return on investment for your business, but without burning people out.
And two, when you humanize resource management, it contributes to operational efficiency by effective resource allocation.
Meaning: you assign jobs and projects based on individuals’ skills and interests. Not only does this guarantee better performance but also peak productivity and less resource wastage.
In Tim’s words:
The focus is much more on balancing the interests of the business with the interests of the people who work there now. Industry is realizing the two are inseparable if you want to achieve long-term success.
A third benefit of resource management is efficient hiring.
With an in-depth understanding of what skills your employee pool has and which ones your organization will need based on its goals, resource management ensures hiring the right talent.
This benefit is best achieved when resource management doesn’t work in a silo. Instead, it collaborates with the C-suite to learn present and future business objectives.
In turn, resource managers use the information to identify which skills the organization will need to meet these objectives. From there, resource management emphasizes hiring people with the needed skills and interests to achieve long-term business success.
➡️ Further reading: What Makes an Effective Workforce Planning Process
In addition to hiring individuals with skills that contribute to business growth, resource optimization also works on developing the current workforce to meet long-term challenges effectively.
This happens thanks to skills gap analysis, an essential part of resource management. It oversees identifying which skills need developing, and then aids employees in refining those skills.
Tim explains:
One of the major benefits of effective resource management is understanding what sort of skills are required to deliver work that’s coming down the pipeline. Being able to foresee that requirement for future skills and then training your people so that you’re able to meet that need.
The idea is simple: efficient resource management focuses on not only accommodating existing skills but also fostering growth and readiness for future endeavors.
➡️ Related: Empowering Your Workforce: A Guide to Workforce Development
When employees are optimally utilized, assigned work based on their expertise and interests, and given reskilling opportunities to continually grow, retention comes as a byproduct.
In fact, modern resource management also encourages employees to pitch themselves for projects/new roles, which further fuels employee retention.
Most of all, “It empowers organizations to engage in meaningful conversations with their employees about their career paths, leveraging openings in their schedules as opportunities for growth,” notes Resource Management Leader, Christine Robinson.
Resource management uses defined frameworks to allocate, track, and audit resources.
These structure processes make sure organizations are using resources according to internal policies while meeting regulatory requirements. In turn, this improves compliance.
What’s more, by keeping detailed records of resource usage, companies can be transparent and accountable to stakeholders, auditors, and regulators — fostering trust and mitigating risks of non-compliance.
Not a fan of hiring fast? Don’t see hiring for new skills as the solution? Resource management’s importance shines in this domain too as it works to right-size the workforce and maximize resource efficiency.
In the past, when money was cheap, people would just have recruited people with the skills they needed when that needed. But that’s reactive [now]. It can be costly and disruptive, Tim observes.
Efficient resource management, however, takes a cost-effective approach. This involves training your available resources to achieve business objectives.
Strategic, proactive businesses train the resources they have. It’s more cost-effective, and there’s less of a learning curve, adds Tim.
Resource management also furthers project profitability throughout the project lifecycle.
The first and most obvious way is allocating the right talent to relevant upcoming projects. Having the right expertise working on project tasks naturally maximizes profitability.
Next, resource management makes sure the individuals working on new projects can concentrate on them to drive optimal results. This reduces calendar and capacity clashes for employees — allowing them to dedicate undivided attention to important projects.
A third way that resource management aids profitability is by controlling project costs. This is possible by effectively managing project resources including material, equipment, and employee costs.
And finally, it ensures timely delivery. Resource managers play a vital role in scheduling tasks and activities so work progresses by its project schedule and reaches a pre-determined completion date. This also fuels client satisfaction, helping organizations drive repeat business.
Resource management also allows for better risk identification and mitigation. In turn, it reduces associated costs and potential project disruptions.
Essentially, this resource management perk kickstarts by identifying resource shortages early on to make time adjustments.
It also involves balancing workloads to prevent underutilization and employee burnout — assisting in reducing associated risks that could potentially derail or slow down projects.
To add, resource management also prepares resources to meet unexpected project challenges. At the same time, it facilitates contingency planning so there are backup business resources available in case of need.
Lastly, effective resource and project planning enables project progress tracking. This is yet another crucial step in proactively identifying and migrating project risks.
By creating a work environment that stresses employee productivity, growth and development, and satisfaction, you increase talent retention.
Moreover, hiring and developing a talented workforce is yet another way resource management gives businesses a competitive advantage.
But there’s more.
As role design changes, cross-functional skill sharing is growing. This involves not limiting individuals’ expertise to one department but to different roles.
Talking about strategic resource management, Nicole explains, “Cross-functional skill sharing has gained prominence, enabling expertise from one department to be utilized in another." This practice goes beyond mere distribution; it reflects a comprehensive approach.
High-performing organizations are demonstrating an elevated commitment to their people. They delve into individuals’ interests, identify developmental pathways, and craft an environment that transforms work hours into exciting and engaging experiences.
These experiences improve work culture and foster innovation, further boosting competitive advantage.
With everything — from project planning to resource allocation and risk mitigation — working in the background to ensure project success, customer satisfaction is guaranteed.
Think of it really: with proper resource allocation, you can:
In turn, all this ensures multiple projects in your pipeline are likely to wrap up on time without compromising the quality of the project deliverables.
Naturally, all this boosts customer satisfaction.
