Every business operates a little differently, which is why competitors exist. There’s a fine line to straddle between maintaining compliance and falling victim to complacency. This is when HR business process consulting services can help to inform your organization’s design.
Perhaps you only need to make a few minor tweaks to recruitment and onboarding processes to become a healthier, happier option for employees. Or, maybe the issues causing cost and resource overruns are stemming from a more complex spider web of factors. Regardless, if you’re thinking of making any substantial refinements to the way you operate as a business, here are five essential reasons why consulting with an external body can pave the way towards greater success as a team.
Outsider Expertise
Working with an outsider is exactly that. It might be a bit unnerving to some operators, but this is why you should focus your attention on proven, effective, and highly reputable leaders in the HR sphere with a track record to back up their claims. Having an external, dedicated body well-versed in the essentials of modern HR best practices can help to address key pain points you might not have noticed from an internal perspective.
In addition, it enables for less of a bias based on what has worked for your company in the past, making it possible for your processes to benefit from a breath of fresh air, so to speak. And, given that the top HR consultancies have advised businesses of all shapes and sizes in a myriad of applications, this also means having access to invaluable insights from another team of professionals aside from your own.
Organizational Design Know-How
A good organizational design relies on several critical factors, most notably including pulse checks, feasibility studies, taking the temperature of your workplace, and carefully informed optimizations to enable a higher likelihood of success. It’s quite possible that many great ideas that could help to improve your processes and internal policies will come from an HR expert compared to executives or managers with many other responsibilities (of course, their input and active involvement remain ever important). This is because, as the term implies, an HR consultancy specializes in human resources, so they know what it takes to make appropriate, effective refinements to organizational designs.
Putting People First (that Means Everyone)
From your part-time maintenance staff all the way up to the head of the chain of command, everyone is of equal importance in the eyes of an HR consultant. There is no room for inequity, ethics issues, or other similar problems that can set back progressive development internally. HR business process consulting, as a result, ensures that your entire team is set up for success, has the onboarding and training needed to achieve realistic desired results, is not dictated to but rather listened to and actively supported instead.
This is quite literally the “human” aspect of human resources; you want to be able to compel individuals to stay, enjoy what they do on a daily basis, and never have doubts about coming forward with concerns or ideas. Even if your internal processes aren’t intentionally serving as an inhibitor in these ways, an HR consultancy can dig deeper and confirm what really needs to be improved on.
Data-Driven
HR relies heavily on leveraging real-time data points relevant to all departments, tasks, and processes associated with a business they intend to serve. This way, any advice or guidance offered is well-informed, can be taken at face value, and usually opens the door for the most suitable refinements possible. This is important if you wish to avoid making clouded judgement calls, not vet sufficient insights from your team members, or lack clarity when it comes to performance figures.
Risk-Aware
No organizational design strategy is much of a success if it violates established compliances and other guidelines that govern your operations. This can result in fines and other penalties, the revocation of licences, and other complications. HR business process consulting gets around these issues by ensuring they don’t happen at all; from the outset, those people-first approaches we mentioned earlier should also be fully compliant. When risk awareness plays a role in determining which optimizations to make as well as how and when, your organization and its design, along with the staff themselves, are infinitely better protected.
If you’re having trouble deciding how best to improve your internal processes and/or policies, reaching out to an experienced firm that caters to your business size and application is a highly proactive decision to make. By working together and through careful collaboration, both sides of the table can make life better while ensuring dream milestones can be made a reality. Regardless of whether you’re concerned about retention rates, process bloat, low morale or otherwise, rest assured that you’re calling in the pros.
Paola Accettola is the Principal and CEO of True North HR.