The Role of the Internal Consultant - Management & Business ...

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Case Study 2The Internal Consultant: The Role in ActionThis case study reflects a summary of question posed to the manager and team members of anactive internal consultancy group within a large national grouping.What is the size of your organisation?26,000 + employeesHow many internal consultants do you have?14 – 8 full time and 6 part time within the HR consultancy; there is also an ODconsultancy with 4 people.What services do you offer?Full range of HR generalist support, facilitation, project management, OD support,research, process improvement, and large scale restructuringWhat were the aims for setting up the internal consultancy service?Consultancy came in to existence as part of a large organisational restructuring whichwas to provide a service model with 25% headcount savings. There was also a generalaim to set up a pool of professional HR people who could be assigned to panorganisationalpieces of work which have an impact on the wider organisation.How did you foster support for the change?The changes were communicated as part of the overall structural changes which tookplace simultaneously. There was support for the function from the HR director and thesenior HR team. We worked very hard on our service proposition: we identified thekey work-strands where we felt we could add value and set about promoting this withdivisional teams. We wanted to promote a professional image and so we spent a lot oftime designing the processes that would support the way we worked within theconsultancyDescribe the current structure of the internal consultancy service – how does this fit in withyour client needs?The Consultants report to the Consultancy Resources Manager who in turn reports tothe Controller of ROC (Recruitment, Operations and Consultancy). The ResourcesManager is responsible for allocation of work to the consultants based on skills,development opportunities and, more often than not, availability. The team works asteleworkers – a set-up which allows us to work in any part of the organisation. The33
consultants hot- desk when they come in to the central headquarters to attendmeetings, see clients etc.The service was originally perceived to be a resource to the divisional set up i.e. thestrategic divisional HR Partners would be responsible for commissioning work. Thisdoes happen, but in reality the team has in general provided support to a number ofHR-led initiatives, and increasingly on work streams arising from the key organisationalchange project outcomes. These have tended to be more pan-organisational, thandivisional-facing initiatives. This inevitably has caused some frustrations as the model hasevolved from its original offer, but the work we deliver is perceived to be adding valuerather than just being an ‘extra pair of hands’.Our clients can either be members of the HR leadership team or the HR partners.How was it decided who would carry out the role?The consultants were selected through interview process as part of the re-structure –all roles were advertised and competed for in the normal way.How did you prepare your clients and market the benefits of having an internal consultancyfunction?There was no specific launch of the consultancy – it came into existence as part of thewider changes and was communicated thus. It evolved from the restructure rather thanbeing a big bang because a number of the team were still supporting old roles throughthe transition. What we did, as described above, was to communicate a new way ofworking across the business without specifically naming it ‘consultancy’.What consultancy process(es) do you use and why?We use project scopes to help both ourselves and our clients understand what ourdeliverables are and to enable us to go back and re-scope when project ‘creep’ occurs.We always use evaluation forms to check we have delivered. If we are asked to deliveran OD intervention, facilitate a focus group, or run a teambuilding event, then we arelikely to use tools such as psychometrics.Some of the team use models such as Burke Litwin, others use Project managementsoftware – to be honest, others use the proverbial ‘back of a fag packet!’This all really depends on the type of work we’re being asked to do: so if we’re workingon a change management project, a restructuring or large-scale piece of work, we willhave a very formalised project plan. It is important to be clear – both from our point ofview and the view of the client, what the consultancy is being asked to deliver and whatthe success criteria might be.What are the challenges you have faced and how have you overcome them?The main challenge is the acceptance by our customers who know us already that weprovide more than just an additional pair of hands. We need to constantly ensure thatwe continue to operate as consultants and not get pulled into the everyday operational34
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Page 11 and 12: • Build the competence: Provide c
Page 13 and 14: Whilst most writing on consultancy
Page 15 and 16: The researchOver the past year and
Page 17 and 18: decision makers (often the clients)
Page 19 and 20: Client readiness and capabilityThe
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Page 42 and 43: Annex AChecklist of Consultant Comp
Page 44 and 45: Working as an agent of change Skill
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