If you’re a start-up or a small business without the means to hire full-time HR employees, or are a larger business in need of tailored advice, an HR consultant could be exactly what you need to drive your business in the right direction. In this article, our HR consultants explain the various areas of HR in which they commonly assist, and how their help could benefit your business.
So, what services does an HR consultant provide? HR consultants provide a wide range of services including people strategies, efficiency planning, attraction and retention, employee health and wellbeing, and culture and values development, among others.
Read on to learn more about what HR consults do and the services that they provide.
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HR consultants provide a wide range of services for small and large businesses alike, including professional consulting, education, training, and solutions. An HR consultant will perform diverse tasks such as research, analysis, planning and counselling with the aim of advising management on HR structures, policies and procedures. They may also provide HR outsourcing services as required.
Below are a number of services that an HR consultant may provide.
| People strategies | Developing an effective people strategy will impact the entire life cycle of an employee. This includes hiring, productivity, skills development, succession planning, and retention. An HR consultant will help you to develop an effective people strategy tailored to your organisation. |
| Workforce efficiency and planning | By improving efficiency a business can reduce its costs and improve its competitiveness. An HR consultant will work with you to review your existing efficiency planning and identify areas that could be improved to enable your business to run smoothly and in a more cost-effective manner. |
| Performance and reward management | Establishing reward practices which are aligned with other HR practices and the goals of your organisation can provide key foundations for attracting, retaining and motivating employees.
Learn more about what makes a good reward strategy in our recent blog. |
| Attraction and retention | Attraction and retention of talent is critical to the success of every organisation. An HR consultant can provide your business with tailored support in attracting and retaining talent, from helping you to understand your requirements to running the hiring process, offering support with interviews and negotiations, producing onboarding and exit procedures, and more.
Read our recent blog, What is attraction and retention of employees? to learn more about attraction and retention, and why it’s crucial to the success of your business. |
| Transformational change | Transformational change is often associated with significant revision of business strategy, which may require modifying internal structures and processing new changes. An HR consultant can help you to navigate complex changes through six key stages;
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| Employee relations | An HR consultant works to strengthen the employer-employee relationship by identifying and resolving workplace issues, measuring employee satisfaction and morale, and providing support and input to the company’s performance management system. |
| Line management people skills | An HR consultant can provide bespoke training that will support new or existing line managers with the skills and competencies they need to effectively manage people. |
| Interim HR management | HR consultants can offer a wealth of experience in ensuring stability and efficiency during transition periods. |
| Culture and values development | Culture is the character and personality of your organisation. An HR consultant will support you in developing or improving your company culture through employee engagement workshops and surveys to identify the values most important to both management and employees. |
| Employee engagement | The importance of employee engagement cannot be overstated – employee engagement strategies have been proven to reduce staff turnover, improve productivity and efficiency, retain customers at a higher rate, and make more profits. HR consultants can help you to develop an effective employee engagement strategy that retains both your key talent and your customers. |
| Employee health and wellbeing | Employee health and wellbeing is an area many businesses recognise as being crucial, but don’t know how to improve it. An HR consultant can help improve your employee’s health and wellbeing in five key areas;
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| Talent and success planning | Talent management is the process of identifying and developing key individuals in a business that possess important knowledge, skills and abilities that allow you to maintain or develop a competitive advantage. HR consultants will;
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HR consultants are typically not internal to the business; they usually work as contractors or as external consultants. They can also be hired as an HR outsourcing service as required.
This means that you are not hiring an employee, but a talented individual that works as an extension of your team to help improve HR relations. Often, organisations find that an HR consultant is more cost-effective than offering full-time employment to an HR specialist or manager.
Some HR consultants will offer specific HR services in line with their own skills and experiences, however, larger HR consultancy firms may offer a full-service solution tailored to the individual needs of your business.
Even if you have an internal HR team, an HR consultant can offer a wealth of insight and experience to positively improve your HR relations. Benefits include:
Centric HR is one of the few HR consulting companies in the UK that can help and advise with all different types of human resource requirements. We offer HR consultancy services throughout the UK and have experts in different areas to assist any business, large or small by maximising the efficiency of their HR operations.
Learn more online, or get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help your business.
