An ISO consulting firm helps companies build management systems and get ready for outside certification visits. Consultants juggle many small clients, write manuals and train staff, and the firm lives on repeat visits and referrals.
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Share your requirementsAn ISO consulting firm takes a client from a first gap review to a documented system, internal training, a trial review and the day the certification body visits. Each consultant may hold ten or more small clients at different stages, moving between a food unit, a school and a workshop in one week. The work is document heavy, deadline led and relationship driven, and a client who feels neglected tells others. Many firms rely on a founder with deep standards knowledge and a bench of newer consultants. See the professional services hub and the neighbouring quality consulting page for related ground.
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.
A single person holds a dozen clients at different stages, and the one who shouts loudest gets the next visit, not the one with the nearest certification date.
Manuals are adapted from an older job with names changed, and a client's own staff find procedures that do not match what they do.
New hires read the clauses on their own and meet a client within weeks, so the firm's name carries a first-year consultant's guesses.
Once the certificate arrives the consultant moves on, and the client forgets the system until the next visit finds it unused.
A price agreed for a project hides how many visits a slow client takes, and consultants cannot tell which clients are costing them time.
Day trips to nearby towns eat the working day, and claims are small and frequent, so they get filed late or lost.
Pay follows tenure, so a consultant who closes clients on schedule sees little difference from one who stalls.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Onboarding and Probation; Performance Management; Policies, Compliance and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
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 ISO consulting business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A single list showing every client, its stage and its next date, with a limit on active clients per consultant.
What this coversHideA single list showing every client, its stage and its next date, with a limit on active clients per consultant. The workforce planning work sets the limit.
A short programme on the standards you work with, how your firm documents, and a supervised first visit with a senior.
What this coversHideA short programme on the standards you work with, how your firm documents, and a supervised first visit with a senior.
Templates, a review step and a rule that each client's documents are written from what the client actually does, not copied across.
What this coversHideTemplates, a review step and a rule that each client's documents are written from what the client actually does, not copied across.
A meeting with the client team, a calendar of what must be repeated each year and a named contact in the firm.
What this coversHideA meeting with the client team, a calendar of what must be repeated each year and a named contact in the firm.
Visits, hours and travel noted per client, so fixed fees can be tested against real effort.
What this coversHideVisits, hours and travel noted per client, so fixed fees can be tested against real effort. Pay benchmarks can follow.
Pay and appraisal that count on-time certification and client feedback, not only years of service.
What this coversHidePay and appraisal that count on-time certification and client feedback, not only years of service.
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.
A first month that teaches the standards and the firm's way of documenting before a consultant meets a client alone.
A review cycle that counts on-time certification, client feedback and document quality together.
Templates and records for letters, role papers and client confidentiality that sit in one place.
Pay bands for lead and junior consultants set against nearby consulting firms.
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
Hour by hour, then week by week, for a recruit's first month at a module, inverter, pack or junction box line: safety and handling first, a practice bench, a buddy, a sign-off and a day-30 review.
7 min readRead article
Measures that show how reactor, console, lab and gantry staff are really doing, the ones that mislead or bury near misses, and a monthly sheet an in-charge can run in twenty minutes.
7 min readRead article
A practical contents list for an employee handbook in a growing Indian business: what to cover, what to leave to policies, and how to keep it usable and current.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
There is no fixed answer. It depends on how far along each client is and how much travel is involved. Count visits per client over a year, then set a limit your team agrees is workable.
Set a template, then require a short walk through the client's real process before writing. Add a review step where a second consultant reads for fit, not only for clause cover.
The standards you work with, how your firm documents and how a visit is run. Then a few supervised visits with a senior before they take a client of their own.
Hand over with a calendar of yearly tasks, name a contact and hold a short check-in before each repeat visit. It protects your referrals and the client's system.
Yes. A few levels with plain descriptions are enough, such as assistant, consultant and lead. They help in hiring, pay talks and deciding who may handle which client.
We would ask each consultant how many clients they hold, compare two manuals for copied text and learn what a new consultant is taught. A first-month programme with a client list per consultant is a natural start, and scope is agreed in writing for your sign-off.
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