What factors would you take into account when designing an HR strategy for a management consultancy?
Introduction
Management consultancy is a highly competitive business sector. This means that an individual business should have all the resources needed to operate efficiently at par with its competitors. However, if the firm wants to achieve competitive advantage it should be able to integrate all of its resources in order to achieve higher levels of value creation for its customers to achieve the advantage of service differentiation ( 1994). Moreover, management consultancy as a service delivery firm is also largely reliant on its human resources. This is because in service delivery the quality of service depends upon the level of motivation and satisfaction of employees relative to their employment and working conditions ( & 2000.) Thus, in order to provide a differentiated and quality service delivery, the management consultancy firm needs to implement human resource strategy in order to develop its full potential and optimize its resources towards the achievement of its goal to eventually gain a competitive advantage in the industry through service differentiation, which is largely dependent upon human resource management strategies.
Human Resource Strategy
Human resource strategy is the process of developing and coordinating the various elements of people management of the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives ( & 2003). In the management consultancy firm, human resource strategy involves the development of a human resource policy directed towards quality service delivery. As an objective, human resource strategy aims to develop and maintain a well-motivated, sufficiently and appropriately trained, and equitably rewarded workforce performing effectively towards the pursuance of the firm’s business goals ( & 2003).
Human Resources Strategy Considerations
Based on the resource-based perspective of (1998) provides that competitive advantage accrues to organisations from the implementation of skill, behaviour, value and qualification distinctions. This means that by ensuring that the human resource pool of the organisation comprise of people with diverse personalities and backgrounds, management of diversity could contribute to the strength of the organisation. The management consultancy firm should consider the factor of human resource pool diversity and manage diversity in a manner that strengthens the quality service delivery of the resource-based firm.
In designing the human resource strategy of the management consultancy, the resource-based perspective is the appropriate theoretical foundation because the company offers services involving personal interaction with clients and the differences in the personalities and backgrounds of the employees would coincide with the variances in the personalities of clients. This means that matching employees with different clients results to the development of an amiable and cooperative working relationship between the firm and the client. Moreover, the management consultancy offers expertise to clients. Since clients require different levels of expertise or fields of specialisation, having a human resource pool with diverse skills and expertise enables the firm to match the demands of its clients. The ability to match the demands of clients, results to satisfied customers and satisfied customers translates to a client pool that further translates into revenue generation and growth for the firm.
An initial factor to be considered in the human resource strategy of the management consultancy firm is the hiring and retention of diverse but qualified human resource pool. Selection and retention policies of the management consultancy may apply the criteria comprising the best practice in the industry. According to (1994), successful human resource strategies have universalistic characteristics so that there are existing best practices in every industry from which individual business firms can derive learning. However, in the implementation of the best practices, it would serve the best interest of the firm to do so in consideration of its particular business context and needs.
In the resource-based human resources strategy of the management consultancy, there is need to organise the human resource pool in a manner that caters to the tasks that need to be accomplished, the diversity of its human resource, and the clients that the firm services. In doing so, the organisation is able to target the specific demands of its clients. ( & 2000)
In terms of human resource organisation relative to the tasks that need to be accomplished, employees are organised into divisions focusing on finance, management or supervision, human resource management, and the consultancy teams. In doing so, the organisation is able to meet both its internal tasks such as financial management, human resource management, and supervisory tasks while meeting its external responsibilities to its customers through the various consultancy teams focusing on different areas of consultancy work.
With regard to the organisation of the human resource pool relative to the people employed by the firm, diversity in personalities and backgrounds should be management in such a way that this contributes to the delivery of quality of service. Strength emanates from diversity when different people are teamed together to complement each other’s personalities, skills and expertise so that every employee contributes optimally to the viability of the organisation. Optimum employee contribution matched by an equitable reward system would likely result to employee satisfaction reflected in the quality of service delivery. Doing so encompasses the issues of working environment and employment agreements.
Organising the employee pool according to the clients of the firm would likely meet the demands and requirements of clients because a consultancy team or individual consultants assigned to different clients based on their needs would offer two quality generating benefits. One is the ability of the firm to deliver exactly what the client expects in terms of skills and expertise. The other is the ability of the firm to focus on clients in order to deliver comprehensive service enabling the firm to develop mutually-beneficial long-term relationships with their clients. To exemplify this point, the management consultancy has as its clients, financial institutions, manufacturing firms and law firms. The management consultancy firm organises its human resource pool into three consultancy teams. The members of the consultancy teams assigned to these client groups should have the necessary background, skills and expertise in the industry where their clients thrive in order to deliver quality and appropriate service.
Conclusion
The management consultancy is highly dependent upon the contributions of its human resources in achieving its business objectives of achieving competitive advantage through service quality differentiation relative to its competitors. Apart from being highly resource-based, the management consultancy firm also offers services to a wide spectrum of clients implying the need for the firm to employ people with diverse personalities, skills and expertise for the firm to acquire a comprehensive understanding of their clients needs and utilise their expertise to offer acceptable advice and recommendations to clients. Due to these business characteristics of the management consultancy firm, the utilisation of the resource-based human resource perspective appropriately applies. This perspective advocates the strengths that organisations can derive from the strategic management of diversity in their organisations.
In the utilisation of the resource-based perspective as a theoretical framework, the management consultancy firm considers two general factors. One is the selection and retention of a human resource pool comprised of members with diverse personalities, backgrounds, skills and expertise using criteria derived from industry best practices but applied in the specific context of the firm. The other is the organisation of the resources pool as a means of managing diversity by channelling diversity to achieve complementary relations among employees and between consultancy teams and clients. By considering these resource-based factors, the firm expects to achieve employee satisfaction reflected in differentiated quality service resulting to customer satisfaction.
Bibliography
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