Internal Consultancy

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HR Professionals: from organisational servant to strategic partner.

The story so far
In HR, you've been er, enjoying the intense questioning and scrutiny your function has been under (for some years now) but lately the landscape has shifted and you've decided you don't want to go on luxuriating forever in the exquisite stress of it all...

Last week's episode
With the maturing of the HR outsourcing market, it is now entirely feasible to outsource basic HR processes. So, the transactional, administrative core of the HR function in organisations is eroding, and competent HR professionals are looking to enhance their capability and build partnering relationships with business heads. After the change, it is better that you are configured for a focus on direct business results, i.e. that you are thoroughly mainstreamed, rather than focused on some worthy set of intervening variables. The challenge then for all those in support functions is to become Internal Consultants to the business heads who themselves face a number of pressing business imperatives:

• In a world of perpetual change and transformation, they must create and sustain an organisation fit for change.
• Globalisation means that diversity, complexity and ambiguity must be embraced and skillfully addressed.
• Where growth is to come through merger and acquisition, post-merger integration of culture and processes is key.
• In a competitive, knowledge-economy job market they must attract, retain, and develop talented employees.

All of the above have consequences for the skill sets of Internal Consultants.

Coming up
We can help you develop the OD internal consulting skills that enable you to:

• Practice as an expert change agent, leading the way on planning and implementing change, using accelerated change technologies.
• Help your diverse organisation become a complex adaptive system (and not merely complex).
• Recommend best practice ways forward for building the organisation's architecture and culture.
• Become an expert in process improvement (both HR processes and the wider business processes).
• Work with line managers in getting the employee engagement so essential to high productivity.

What is the process?

• Getting the ‘entry and contracting' right is important for any consultant. For internal consultants, working in politicised environments, it's going to hurt if you get it wrong. With our help, you won't.
• We provide you with a range of diagnostic approaches. We further develop your ability to think systemically as you are working with your client, so that they too can think systemically and contribute to the design of the intervention, because they own the results of the diagnosis.
• We develop your ability not only to design interventions but also the deep knowledge of processes and methodologies required to respond in the moment as a jazz player, someone who knows the components of the music and can string the right notes together, enhancing your credibility with your client.
• We will provide you with frameworks, structures and processes that build formative evaluation in to your work from day one and a summative evaluation at the end.

What are the interventions the programme develops?
Too numerous to mention I'm afraid, but check out the various pages of this web site and you'll get a flavour of the development we can provide for internal consultants(after careful entry and contracting of course!).

Two brief examples of our work.

We ran a programme for the corporate HR team in a retail organisation of 35,000 employees, to develop them as OD consultants with a specific focus on culture change. We ran workshops on Facilitation to Effect Change, Consultancy Skills and Coaching and provided 1-to-1 coaching support over a period of 5 months. The team now feel much better equipped to be strategic business partners to their respective business heads and feel they provide a more value-add service.

OPDC ran a programme for a Leading Bank to develop core consultancy skills in their central HR function. Flexible modules over a 9-month period offered development in:

• Coaching
• Consultancy
• Balanced scorecard
• Relationship management
• Managing change

Following this intensive training and development programme participants felt more confident and skilled to step into the consultancy role to support their business heads.