| | By Mick James
As the downturn
rumbles along, people
are increasingly
realising that it’s no
longer enough just to
batten down the hatches.
Consultancies in
particular need to take
advantage of the
opportunities on
offer—and to start
thinking about the more
long-term changes that
may be coming in the way
they do business.
As Simon Constance of
HR consultants Orion
puts it, “it hasn’t been
the end of the world.
Change throws up the
opportunity to support
clients who’ve had to
rethink their entire
operating model or deal
with change.”
He’s also been
pleasantly surprised by
clients remaining
committed to projects
that are clearly
improving costs or
performance.
“People are saying,
‘If you can improve
costs or performance in
18 months, I’ll buy it,
and find the cash from
somewhere’,” he says.
“Some very big
organisations are even
continuing to stay
engaged with capital
intensive projects—but
they need to shorten the
payback from three years
to 19 months.”
What has been
interesting and
encouraging though are
signs of clients buying
consultancy in a much
smarter way,
particularly in Orion’s
area of specialisation.
“There’s a demand for
the HR function to
deliver an impact as the
result of any change,”
says Constance. “We’ve
seen the setting up of a
lot of shared services
functions and that was a
simple cost reduction
play. Now they’ve
started to value it as a
creative tool, to take | |
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| | all that data they have
through the HR function
and start to do things
that make a difference
to the business—for
example lowering absence
levels, taking the cost
out but not the
resource.”
Constance says he was
expecting people to stop
buying from Orion’s
capacity practice but
instead they are
continuing to invest in
HR skills, such as
workforce planning.
“People are saying ‘I
don’t want to go through
a business
transformation, but can
you take the people I’ve
got and upgrade their
skills in six to eight
month?’ You’re seeing a
lot in the press now
about how people are
avoiding redundancies,
there’s a lot of HR
innovation.”
But Constance is also
noticing a change in the
way people are buying
consultancy, moving way
from buying big teams
and instead using their
own spare capacity
supplemented with very
specific consultancy
skills.
“It’s a challenge to
the industry and more
widespread than people
acknowledge,” he says.
“Big change projects are
typically run by someone
who used to be in a big
consultancy firm. They
need to run a big
project but only need
five or 10 outside
resources for a team of
50. But they know
exactly what they want
and are prepared to pay
decent money for it.”
This has meant that
Orion has had to engage
in a far more open and
granular way with
clients, which can leave
them feeling “quite
naked.”
“We’ve been asked to
unpack our intellectual
property (IP) in very | |
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| | particular ways, and put
all of our ‘crown
jewels’ on the table,”
he says. “But clients
aren’t going to run off
with your IP—they’re
never going to do an HR
transformation again.”
Nor is he worried
about them doing it
alone.
“There’s no
substitute for
experience,” he says.
“The client can
understand your tools,
they can engage with
them but they are not
seeing all the rabbit
holes, because they
don’t do this every
day.”
This trend, Constance
thinks, plays to the
strength of the
specialist consultancy.
“It gives us a much
clearer proposition as a
specialist; we’re not
bidding to do 10 things
of which we’re good at
seven,” he says. “Lots
of people are good at
change—we differentiate
ourselves by being good
at HR.”
The value of the
knowledge transfer will
often be that clients
can take the lessons
learned into other
departments, which would
threaten a more
generalist consultancy.
But Orion is very clear
about where its heart
lies.
“At a personal level
our passion is for HR,
it’s based on a belief
in the power of HR
rather than wanting the
chance to transform a
back office function,”
says Constance. “Again
and again we are seeing
HR being active in step
change—you’ve got to
believe when you’re
going at it with that
passion that you’re
going to be able to put
HR departments back in
the thick of it.” | |
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