A strategy consulting firm advises boards and leadership teams on growth, markets and big decisions. Work arrives in short, intense bursts, run by small teams of sharp analysts who need coaching to become engagement leads.
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Share your requirementsA strategy consulting firm, often a boutique with a handful of partners, takes on questions such as entering a new market, valuing a business line or planning a growth path. Engagements run for weeks, with a small team: a partner, an engagement lead and two or three analysts. The work is research, interviews, spreadsheets and slides, finished under steep deadlines before a board meeting. Quality depends on the engagement lead, who coaches juniors while also managing the client. Hiring is selective, pay is high for the market and expectations are higher. Read with 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.
Teams work late nights and weekends before a board meeting, then rest after. The pattern is accepted early on and resented later.
An analyst under a patient lead grows fast. Under a hurried one, they redo slides without understanding why. Quality of learning varies by team.
Reviews happen after an engagement, when the lessons are cold. Analysts wait for the partner to say how they did.
Rewards are tied to partner judgement, and people compare themselves with peers at larger firms with no clear way to check.
A partner's sector view or an analyst's model is not recorded, so the next engagement starts from scratch.
Many move to a client, a start-up or a degree. Without a plan for alumni and for those who stay, the firm loses reach.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Learning and Development; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
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.
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.
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.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a strategy consulting business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short, structured talk halfway through each engagement, noted by the lead.
What this coversHideA short, structured talk halfway through each engagement, noted by the lead. See the performance process.
Short sessions on giving feedback, setting tasks and reviewing work, using real engagements as cases.
What this coversHideShort sessions on giving feedback, setting tasks and reviewing work, using real engagements as cases. The manager development programme covers it.
A calendar showing intense weeks and recovery time, with limits on consecutive late weeks and a fair way to share them.
What this coversHideA calendar showing intense weeks and recovery time, with limits on consecutive late weeks and a fair way to share them.
A shared library of past models, research notes and interview guides, tagged by sector and updated after each engagement.
What this coversHideA shared library of past models, research notes and interview guides, tagged by sector and updated after each engagement.
A simple note on how pay moves with grade and performance.
What this coversHideA simple note on how pay moves with grade and performance. Rewards design turns this into a clear structure.
A first fortnight covering tools, templates, the firm's way of structuring problems and a buddy.
What this coversHideA first fortnight covering tools, templates, the firm's way of structuring problems and a buddy. See employee onboarding.
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 fortnight that gets a new analyst working on real engagement tasks, with templates and a buddy.
Mid-engagement feedback and fair year-end reviews that people can follow from evidence.
A clear logic for pay, bonus and promotion that partners can explain to analysts.
Coaching skills for engagement leads, so analysts learn faster and stay longer.
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.
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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.
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Plastics training dies when it waits for a free Saturday. Tie it to mould changes, purges and cold starts, use one-point lessons and a visible skill ladder, and protect it in peak months.
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How to design incentives for operators, setters and inspectors in fastener, gear, spring and valve units so that accepted lots, not piece counts, earn the bonus.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Set a fixed point in each engagement for a short, written talk, midway, and a closing one. Train leads on how to give feedback. Feedback given when the work is fresh teaches far more than a year-end rating.
Peaks are part of the work, but they can be planned. Show the calendar, limit how many weeks in a row, and give recovery time. People accept pressure better when it has an end and is shared fairly.
In plain words, with the grade ranges the firm uses, what moves someone up and how bonus is decided. Secrecy invites comparison with other firms, and gossip fills the gaps that you leave.
Start with a frank conversation, offer coaching support and set expectations. Pair them with a strong engagement lead. Measure through analyst feedback over a year, and make coaching part of how partners are judged.
Yes. Alumni become clients, referrers and sometimes returning hires. A yearly gathering, a short newsletter and a named contact keep the link alive at low cost.
We would ask analysts when they last had written feedback, count late weeks per team and learn what coaching engagement leads received. A mid-engagement feedback routine and a coaching session for leads are good first jobs. Scope is written for your approval.
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