A coaching or training practice sells the expertise of a few people. Associate facilitators, programme coordinators and client delivery all depend on clear terms, consistent quality and a team that can grow beyond the founder.
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Share your requirementsA business coaching or corporate training practice delivers workshops, programmes and one-to-one coaching for companies. A founder or a few senior trainers bring the reputation and the clients. Associate trainers and coaches are engaged by the day or programme, a coordinator handles dates, venues, materials and joining instructions, and a small sales or relationship team finds new clients. Programmes run in client offices, hotels and online, often at short notice and across cities. Quality depends on the person standing in front of the room, yet every trainer has a style, and clients want consistency. Income swings with budget cycles, with a rush in some quarters and long gaps in others. Associates work for several practices and can leave for a better rate. Related reading: HR for professional services. When the founder is the brand, growth stalls because every programme still needs the founder, and the team below has no clear path.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in business coaches and corporate trainers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Clients buy the founder, and associates deliver in his name, so quality gaps show and demand outruns his time.
They work for several practices, may share content freely and move when another firm pays more.
Who owns the slides, exercises and case studies is assumed, and disputes appear when someone leaves.
Two trainers run the same programme differently, and clients notice and compare.
Venues, materials, joining instructions, travel and invoices fall on one or two people, and errors cluster before a big programme.
Participants rate the day on mood and lunch, and the trainer learns nothing about whether it worked.
A quiet quarter leaves associates idle and staff worried, and the best go elsewhere.
Trainers fly out and deliver for days in a row, and fatigue shows in the room.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Career and Succession Management; Learning and Development; Policies, Compliance and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a business coaches and corporate trainers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Scope, fees, payment dates, confidentiality, use of content and conduct, reviewed by a qualified professional.
Scope, fees, payment dates, confidentiality, use of content and conduct, reviewed by a qualified professional. File it using the documentation process.
A clear note on who owns slides, tools and cases, who may reuse them and what happens on exit.
A clear note on who owns slides, tools and cases, who may reuse them and what happens on exit.
A facilitator guide, timings, key exercises and learning outcomes, so each trainer delivers the same core.
A facilitator guide, timings, key exercises and learning outcomes, so each trainer delivers the same core. See the learning process.
Observe, certify and brief a reliable set of trainers, with a trial delivery before any client programme.
Observe, certify and brief a reliable set of trainers, with a trial delivery before any client programme.
Pre and post checks, manager feedback after a month and a short review of outcomes.
Pre and post checks, manager feedback after a month and a short review of outcomes. See the performance process.
Roles for senior trainers, a coordinator ladder and a clear share of client relationships, so the practice can grow.
Roles for senior trainers, a coordinator ladder and a clear share of client relationships, so the practice can grow.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Associate agreements, content ownership notes and programme guides in one place.
Facilitator certification, delivery standards and coaching for associates.
Outcome-based measures of trainers and programmes beyond feedback forms.
Finding and trialling associates and coordinators who fit your delivery style.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
How an India head can sort a global parent's HR policies into apply, adapt or replace, write an India addendum with advisers, and keep headquarters on side.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Document programme guides, certify senior trainers, introduce them to clients gradually and give them a share of recognition. Change takes a year or two.
With a written agreement on fees, payment, confidentiality, content use and conduct. Take advice from a qualified professional on the nature of the relationship.
It depends on the agreement and who created it. Settle this in writing and take advice from a qualified professional on intellectual property.
A facilitator guide for each programme, a trial delivery with observation and periodic review. Allow style within a fixed core.
Plan the pipeline, keep retainer-style work with a few clients and tell associates early about gaps. Honesty keeps them from drifting away.
We would look at founder dependence, the associate agreement and how delivery is kept consistent. An associate agreement note with a programme guide format is a likely opener. Scope, timing and fee are set out in writing afterwards.
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