A management consulting firm sells consultant time to client engagements. Partners win the work, managers run it and analysts do the digging, and profit depends on how well people are deployed and kept.
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Share your requirementsA management consulting firm in India usually has a few partners or principals, a layer of project managers and a larger group of consultants and analysts. Work comes as engagements of a few weeks to many months at client premises or remotely. Each engagement needs a team of a certain mix, and the people between engagements sit on the bench. Timesheets feed invoices and utilisation. Travel is frequent and expenses are claimed on return. Growth depends on whether juniors get exposure fast enough to become managers. See also the management and business consulting hub and the professional services sector page.
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.
Between engagements, consultants wait for allocation. Long gaps hurt margin and morale, and the partners hardly see them until a new proposal lands.
Allocation follows personal preference. Some consultants get every good engagement, while others sit on weak ones with no development.
Hours entered on Friday for the week are rough. Invoices and utilisation numbers rest on them, and managers argue over the gaps.
Consultants spend Monday to Thursday at client sites and claim expenses late. Policies on class of travel and allowance are not applied evenly.
What separates a consultant from a senior consultant is vague, so promotion rounds produce disappointment and exits.
Many join planning to study again or move to a client's strategy team, so exits at the two to three year mark are expected and costly.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; HR Analytics and Management Reporting; Career and Succession Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
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.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
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.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a management consulting business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Clear skills for analyst, consultant, senior consultant and manager, with examples of work at each level.
What this coversHideClear skills for analyst, consultant, senior consultant and manager, with examples of work at each level. The competency work builds it.
Partners and managers review upcoming engagements, bench time and development needs together, so staffing is not left to chance.
What this coversHidePartners and managers review upcoming engagements, bench time and development needs together, so staffing is not left to chance.
A few lines each day against an engagement code, with a weekly manager check.
What this coversHideA few lines each day against an engagement code, with a weekly manager check. Utilisation then reflects the real week. See reporting and analytics.
Class of travel, allowances, claim timing and what happens when a client pays.
What this coversHideClass of travel, allowances, claim timing and what happens when a client pays. Applied the same way for partners and analysts.
A short, written talk between the manager and each team member, so appraisals do not rest on memory.
What this coversHideA short, written talk between the manager and each team member, so appraisals do not rest on memory.
Spot the managers who could become principals and give them a path to business development.
What this coversHideSpot the managers who could become principals and give them a path to business development. See succession planning.
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.
Grade definitions and skills lists that make promotion and staffing decisions easier to explain.
A weekly view of utilisation, bench time and exits by team and engagement.
Campus and lateral hiring plans for analysts and managers that follow the sales pipeline.
A route for strong managers to become principals, with business development skills added along the way.
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 flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead article
Six numbers, one page, same format each month. What they are, how to define them so they mean the same thing twice, and what each one tells you.
8 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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Review upcoming work every fortnight, use bench time for proposals, research and training, and plan hiring against the sales pipeline. Look at how long people wait and why, then fix the biggest cause.
A small group of partners and managers meeting regularly, using a shared view of skills and availability. It keeps allocation fair, and gives each consultant a chance at a range of work.
Short daily entries against agreed engagement codes, checked weekly by the manager. Long, late entries are guesses, and guessed hours distort both invoices and the picture of how people are used.
Give them exposure early, a clear route to the next grade and a manager who coaches. Some will still leave for study or industry, so keep in touch with them as alumni.
Yes, a plain one. Settle class of travel, allowances and claim timing once and apply it to everyone. It avoids small arguments each trip and stops the feeling that partners play by other rules.
We would list who is on the bench, compare timesheets with what managers say people did and ask consultants what separates their grade from the next. A competency grid and a fortnightly allocation meeting are good first jobs. Scope is written down for your approval.
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