A workforce management company runs people-related operations for its clients, and its own account teams carry the weight of that promise. Account teams carry the promise made to clients, so their load and the people placed at client sites come first.
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Share your requirementsA workforce management company helps employers manage large workforces: rostering, attendance tracking, workforce planning, vendor management or the operational side of people programmes. Its own people include account managers who own client relationships, operations coordinators who run daily processes, analysts who prepare reports and implementation staff who set up new clients. Each client has service levels, reporting deadlines and its own way of working, and the firm is judged on how steadily it delivers. Teams are often split by client, with some on the client's premises and others in a central office. Growth means taking on more clients without losing the quality of delivery. See also HR for professional services.
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.
Each holds several clients with different demands, and the loudest one gets attention while the quiet one drifts.
People placed at a client's premises take instructions from the client and drift from the firm's standards and career paths.
One coordinator knows how a client's process works, and their absence causes missed deliverables.
A big win brings an implementation that pulls the best people off existing accounts and service on them slips.
Analysts spend long hours assembling the same monthly reports, and errors creep in at each copy.
Account, operations and implementation staff each assume another team owns an issue, and clients are the ones who see the gap.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Organisation Design; HR Technology and Automation. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
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.
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.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a workforce management companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A maximum number of clients or contract value per account manager, and a named second person for each account.
What this coversHideA maximum number of clients or contract value per account manager, and a named second person for each account. The workforce planning work helps set the numbers.
Regular check-ins with a firm manager, the same appraisal and training as office staff and a route to move between clients.
What this coversHideRegular check-ins with a firm manager, the same appraisal and training as office staff and a route to move between clients. The employee engagement process covers it.
A run-book per client covering steps, contacts, deadlines and exceptions, so work does not rest on one person.
What this coversHideA run-book per client covering steps, contacts, deadlines and exceptions, so work does not rest on one person.
A dedicated implementation team or time-boxed allocation so a new client does not drain the existing ones.
What this coversHideA dedicated implementation team or time-boxed allocation so a new client does not drain the existing ones. The HR transformation and change management work shares the approach.
Template reports generated from the data source on a schedule, with checks, so analysts can spend time on insight.
What this coversHideTemplate reports generated from the data source on a schedule, with checks, so analysts can spend time on insight. See reports automation.
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.
Account and operations capacity planned against client numbers and implementation pipeline.
Clear ownership between account, operations and implementation teams.
Keeping client-embedded staff connected to the firm and its standards.
Scheduled reports that remove repetitive manual preparation.
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
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 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
Automating a broken process makes it faster and harder to fix. How to choose what goes first, and which tasks should stay manual.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
It depends on the size and demands of each client. Use your own record of when service slips to set a limit and name a backup.
Keep a regular check-in with a firm manager, give the same development and appraisal as office staff and agree with the client who directs what.
Use a dedicated team or time-boxed allocation and track existing service levels during the project. Do not draw on the same people without a plan.
Write the client's process down, have a second person shadow and rotate duties periodically.
If the same report is prepared every month by hand, yes. Start with the one that costs the most time and has caused errors.
Our first discussion would cover how many clients and how much contract value each account manager carries, which accounts depend on one coordinator, and how often anyone from the firm speaks with embedded staff. Account load limits with a named backup could be the first piece of work. We then write the scope down and agree it with you.
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