Changing a consulting organization toward higher profitability and growth
Over the years, we have had the privilege of closely examining countless agencies and consultancies to understand how they manage talent and ensure that their project teams deliver the best possible results for their clients. For companies where value is created through the work that consultancy representatives do for customers, talent represents nearly all the intellectual property the company possesses. Therefore, the types of teams they build make all the difference in their performance.
From a talent management perspective, we have learned that many of the recurring challenges within these companies stem from a lack of understanding of both business management and talent management. After all, performance hinges on how well you acquire top talent, how effectively you sell their services, and how harmoniously you integrate these two areas. Organizations often structure themselves with a clear specialization in these areas from the start, rather than overlapping expertise across different roles. For example, those who build and manage talent pools do not actively participate in customer interactions, and vice versa. Creating separate sales, business, and talent verticals leads to a lack of understanding and agility in responding to market demand and hinders deep dialogue between client-facing and talent-facing sides, making it difficult to develop creative solutions.
Sharing Our Learnings by Creating the Talent Ops Toolkit for Consultancies
So far, we have not found a comprehensive repository of toolkits designed to address talent-related matters from a business perspective. While you can find bits and pieces here and there, a more complete archive of tools tackling these issues holistically remains elusive (we highly appreciate any tips for useful content, so please let us know!). When searching for suitable tools and best practices, we often found solutions that either didn't fit well with our customers' businesses or were created as trendy technological fixes for minor pain points. For example, using AI to address a process that seems problematic but turns out to be trivial for most, leading to unnecessary fixes and new issues such as increased costs, changes in routine, or transparency problems, rather than providing a permanent solution.
Example Case: Fixing Issues with Real Business Impact
Problem: Utilization of design competencies within a consultancy was significantly lower than other areas, resulting in the designer segment producing a loss and causing employee dissatisfaction.
Root Cause: While having different designers on the team was critical for creating pitches and projects for customers, we found that most of the work could be done by a key team of external designers on time & material contracts, rather than having several designers on payroll as a fixed cost.
Solution:
- Create an extensively considered key team of "gun-for-hire" designers for project deliveries.
- Shift the focus of internal design competence to a "competence lead" role, participating in account building and ensuring design work meets required standards.
Aspects to Consider When Driving This Change
- How the company includes the new organization as part of its vision in the design field.
- Ensuring all participants are aware of project profitability, hiring practices, and maintaining contact with external talent even when no active project is ongoing.
- Establishing clear processes for introducing new team members to projects.
- Developing strategies for knowledge transfer between employees and external talent who typically work with multiple organizations and clients.
At HelloWork, we aim to help companies by sharing our learnings, tools, and practices that have proven useful for businesses. This is why we are creating our own Talent Ops toolkit for organizations that want to enhance their talent management practices and foster collaboration across different functions within the organization.
Who the Talent Ops Toolkit is For
- Agencies and consultancies focused on time & material business models.
- Organizations with a headcount of 50 to 1000 billable persons.
- Companies with solution-oriented sales, rather than staffing-focused sales.
(HelloWork has primarily worked with European technology-oriented companies, but we have not found any reason why our models wouldn't work for other areas, such as creative agencies and more productized businesses as well).
Join the Beta Toolkit – Achieve Better Performance and Faster Growth Starting in August!
Have a one-hour session with our experts to learn how the Talent Ops toolkit can help you improve both your top line and bottom line within the first few weeks. We are inviting a few companies to access the toolkit before its official release later this year.
Schedule a meeting with us from below!
