29 Jul HR Project in MintHCM: A New Way to Manage Organizational Change (Development Direction)
Key Takeaways
- An HR Project could be a parent record gathering context around an organizational change initiative – its goal, timeline, and related positions and people.
- It would differ from an implementation project by having no fixed end point – the goal and team composition would change over time instead of closing after a single “delivery”.
- This is a MintHCM development direction, not a module available today – the described elements (transition plans, vacancy plans) are early working ideas, not a finalized specification.
In the previous article, we described how HR systems lack a place to track role transformation as an initiative over time. The HR Project is a concept MintHCM is considering as a response to that gap: a parent record that could gather context around an organizational change – its goal, timeline, and related positions and people. This is a development direction, not a module available today.
What could an HR Project be in MintHCM?
An HR Project could be a parent record under which all elements of a single change initiative would sit – from the goal, through the timeline, to related positions and people. Unlike today’s MintHCM modules, which describe the current state of an organization (who is employed, in what position, with which competencies), an HR Project would describe the process of moving from one state to another. According to the World Economic Forum, 39% of workers’ current skills are expected to change or become outdated between 2025 and 2030 (WEF Future of Jobs Report, 2025) – a pace that is hard to track without a dedicated place in the HR system.
What could an HR Project gather?
One of the ideas under consideration is that an HR Project would gather positions affected by the change, target positions, transition plans, vacancy plans, employees included in the project, and related meetings, tasks, documents, and notes. This is a set of distinctly HR-specific elements, not a generic project panel. The team is also considering a “success measure” field next to the project goal – an idea inspired by Scrum’s “definition of done”, though there is no internal agreement yet on whether this should be one field or two.
The early sketch also includes two supporting mechanisms:
- Transition plan – would show a single employee’s move from one position to another, with a competency-match indicator (e.g. “3 of 5”) and a list of missing competencies, optionally linked to training.
- Vacancy plans – would allow planning a hiring need before a specific candidate appears, based on a workforce gap, planned transitions, or overstaffing.
Both mechanisms are at the early working-idea stage, not a finalized specification. The scale of the need: WEF estimates that in a 100-person organization, 59 people would require training by 2030, and 63% of employers see skill gaps as the biggest barrier to transformation (WEF Future of Jobs Report, 2025 – Skills outlook) – figures that are hard to turn into an actual plan without a place in the HR system to track them.
How would an HR Project differ from an implementation project?
An HR Project would differ from a typical implementation project by having no fixed end point. An implementation project has a clear point A and point B – once the outcome is delivered, the project closes. An HR Project would have a goal and team composition that change over time, because an organizational change initiative rarely follows a plan set in stone from the start.
An HR Project would have no fixed end point – it would evolve alongside the organization it describes.
The MintHCM team deliberately rejected the idea of a universal, fully configurable project panel modeled on general-purpose project management tools (such as Redmine, which MintHCM already uses for tasks and schedules – see the Projects module). The HR Project is meant to stay strictly HR-focused, with positions, competencies, and transition plans as native elements rather than freely configurable fields.
What initiatives could an HR Project cover?
An HR Project would not be limited to AI-driven role transformation. The same entity could cover team relocation, headcount reduction, or building a new department – each of these initiatives shares a similar structure: a starting point, a target goal, and a timeline to get there. According to WEF, 50% of employers plan to transition staff from declining to growing roles between 2025 and 2030 (WEF Future of Jobs Report, 2025) – exactly the type of initiative an HR Project would help organize.
| HR Project (concept, MintHCM development direction) | Implementation project |
|---|---|
| Goal and team composition change over time | Clear point A and point B |
| Natively HR-specific elements (positions, competencies, transition plans) | Configurable tasks and stages of a general PM tool |
| Does not close after one “delivery” | Closes once the outcome is delivered |
| Covers AI transformation, relocation, reduction, department building | Covers one defined scope of work |
Frequently Asked Questions
Would an HR Project replace the Recruitment module in MintHCM? No – an HR Project would describe the entire change initiative, including any resulting vacancies, but recruiting specific candidates would still be handled by the existing Recruitment module.
Could a single HR Project cover multiple departments at once? This is still an open question at this conceptual stage. The concept assumes flexibility, but a multi-department scope has not yet been decided.
What is an employee’s “transition plan”? It’s an early sketch of a mechanism showing an employee’s move from position A to position B, with a competency-match indicator and a list of competencies to be developed.
How would “vacancy plans” differ from standard recruitment? Vacancy plans would allow planning a future hiring need before a specific candidate appears, based on a forecasted workforce gap – recruitment would only start once a vacancy is actually open.
Would missing competencies in a transition plan automatically trigger a training task? The MintHCM team currently leans toward keeping this a manual HR decision rather than automating it – even the concept’s own creators want to limit automation of this process.
Is the HR Project already available in MintHCM? No. This is a development direction, still at the conceptual stage – not a feature available in the current version of MintHCM.
Summary
An HR Project is a concept meant to give organizations a place to manage change – not just to describe the current state. Instead of recording only who is employed and in what position, an HR Project would track the process of moving from today’s state to a target one. The third article in this series will show what such a project could look like.
Sources
- World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 – https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/
- World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 – Skills outlook – https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/in-full/3-skills-outlook/