Understanding The Role Of Strategy Consulting Firms In Enhancing Business Growth

Business organizations often face the need to seek expert advice and guidance in matters that might be beyond their level of expertise. In most such cases, the companies choose to hire the services of professional strategy consultants offering their services within a specific niche. These strategy consultants are highly skilled and experienced management experts, who can offer reliable advice about the strategic measures that an organization might be considering taking. They also help in providing the right direction for the companies to grow by providing a proper roadmap for the companies to implement the strategies they consider will be most effective.

In addition to hiring the services of financial and marketing strategy consultants, an increasing number of business organizations are now opting for HR strategy consultants as well. Discussed below are the three key roles that these professionals play in enhancing the business growth of their clients.

They Encourage Informed Decision Making

One of the key responsibilities of HR professionals is to make a wide range of decisions on a daily basis. These decisions impact not only the overall working of the organization but may also influence the performance efficiency and satisfaction level of the members of the workforce. The strategy consultants help in ensuring that HR professionals are able to make these everyday decisions in an informed manner. They design a customized framework that helps to clearly define the way of thinking of HR professionals and streamlining the process of decision-making. This requires the strategic consultants to actively participate in the HR team meetings of their client organizations. They are thus able to establish the requirements of the consultancy project, prepare a proposal and perform the research, analysis, and assessment of the various growth options. The consultants provide an unbiased perspective of the various HR decisions, enhancing their effectiveness.

They Inspire The HR Teams To Do An Introspection

The strategy consultants help their client HR teams to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities that can help promote growth and success. The help the HR professionals to gain a comprehensive understanding of the various factors that inspire the members of the workforce to give optimum performance. At the same time, they enable HR professionals to learn about the impact of their various policies and decisions on the motivation levels of the employees. This makes it possible for the HR teams to reflect on the things that they might have been doing wrong and the best ways to rectify these mistakes for better organizational growth.

Suggest The Best Strategies And Methods To Boost Business Growth

The HR strategy consultants help n bridging the gap between the current capabilities of their client organization and the available market opportunities. They do so by making suggestions about the best strategies and methods that can help boost business growth. The strategy execution consulting firms even provide a roadmap to help the HR teams with effective implementation of these strategies. In addition, the professional strategy consultants also help the client organizations to understand the risk factors and profitability margins associated with different growth options. They work consistently to help identify the issues hampering business growth and provide the best solutions for the same.

Effective Tips That Can Help Managers Build A Positive Company Culture

Organizations are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of having a positive company culture for driving growth. Positively strong company culture helps in building a team of self-motivated and dedicated professionals capable of taking a business to new heights of success.  In fact, the top recruitment firms in India consider positive company culture as a key aspect for attracting top talent. However, building such a culture is not a simple exercise or one that can be accomplished in a rush. While there is no magic formula for creating a positive company culture, it can be established by following the below-discussed effective tips.

 

Be Clear About How The Workforce Should Feel

The first step in the direction of establishing a positive company culture is for the managers to have a clear understanding of how they want their teams to feel. This might require them to interact extensively with the individual team members to understand their perception of positive work culture. They can them assemble the right individuals and the best strategies to help realize this vision.

 

Establish The Ground Rules At The Very Start

Most business organization operate in a target-based environment, which makes it essential for business organizations to establish some basic work rules for the teams to operate. The organizations should establish well-defined boundaries with respect to the expected behavior and outlook of the team members. These boundaries combined with the value systems of the business form the core of the company culture. The leading recruitment firms in India are of the opinion that these rules should be more than a list of agreed tasks posted on the company walls. Rather they should be the codes that every individual member of the workforce believes in and follows.

 

Setting The Right Vision

Having established the ground rules, the next step for the managers is to set a common vision and purpose that their teams work to achieve in a collective manner. This helps in creating the right environment for peer-to-peer communication and coordination which form the basis of positive company culture. In addition, it helps in enhancing the team working capabilities and skills of the members of the workforce.

Define Individual Roles And Accountabilities Of Every Team Member

The managers need to clearly define the role of every individual member of the team to avoid any confusion. It is also important to establish the accountability of every individual with respect to their level of skill and experience. This is essential to ensure that every individual member of the team has realistic and appropriate expectations with respect to his/her responsibility and accountability. They are thus able to optimize their performance accordingly and contribute towards the success of the team.

 

Be Sure To Align The Goals And Achievements

The managers should be able to work out the correct goals and targets for individual team members. The experts from the retained executive search firms in India also advice the managers to provide the requisite support and training to help the team members achieve these goals and target. This is especially true in the case of new recruits, who might have no previous experience of working with the managers or the organization.

Thoughts That Need To Be Promoted For Better Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is one of the key challenges faced by business organizations today with respect to ensuring better growth and profitability. While most companies focus on having a solid employee engagement strategy in place, they do not take any other measures in this respect. However, professionals from leading employee engagement consulting firms are of the opinion that organizations need to use other methods for enhancing engagement. One simple method of ensuring the same is to promote the below-discussed thoughts and ideas that can help to naturally improve engagement.

Being Confident Is Good, But So Is Being Doubtful

Most employees are encouraged to be confident as it is considered to be critical for their professional growth and success. However, it is equally important to have some bit of skepticism and doubt to avoid the risk of being too over-confident. It is important for the managers to listen to any doubts that employees might have about any project or policy and take action to resolve the same without being judgemental.

Thinking About Their Own Health And Happiness Is Not Wrong

Managers need to make sure that the employees are not reprimanded for putting themselves first. While it is okay to put others before self on some occasions, employees should be dissuaded from doing so at the cost of neglecting themselves. This is essential to ensure that the employees are able to present themselves in the best light and are not considered to be sub-optimal by their peers and superiors.

Learn The Skill Of Being Respectfully Authentic

When it comes to offering feedback or even conveying a difficult message, it is important for the employees to do it in a respectfully authentic manner. Being outrightly blunt, passively aggressive or even nice and respectful without actually meaning the things being said to avoid conflict, should not be encouraged. Having the ability to convey one’s true feelings in a respectful manner can pave the way for better engagement and growth of the employees.

Learn From Mistakes And Move On

Making mistakes is an integral part of human nature, but it is important for employees to learn from their mistakes and move on. The employees should be encouraged to avoid wallowing in defeat and rather to use their energies to move forward and find more productive solutions for problems. Rather than dwelling on their failures, the employees should be motivated to focus on future challenges and what needs to be done to overcome the same.

Recognizing And Rewarding Employees Who Work Smart

Rather than pushing the employees to the max, it is better to recognize and reward employees who work smart. According to professionals offering people management consultant India services, managers should motivate employees to get a task done in an efficient manner, without worrying too much about how they do it. Rewarding any such efforts by the employees appropriately can help encourage engagement.

Determination More Than Skill Is Often The Key To Success

Raw talent may not always be enough to get the desired results, but when it is combined with sheer determination, success surely cannot be eluded. Hence, managers should motivate employees to develop a deep-seated determination to learn new skills and succeed.

Understanding The Challenges Of Women Leadership Development And Solutions For The Same

Over the past several years the focus of the business community is on minimizing the gender equality within organizations. The fact that a handful of Indian women have already made a mark in history by redefining corporate leadership, business landscape, and even the political arena has further fuelled this idea. However, for every successful woman, there are tens and thousands of others, who are not even given the opportunity to showcase their skills as a potential leader. In fact, the organization development consultants in India are of the opinion that the absence of a level playing field for most women in business organizations is a cause of major concern.

Getting To Know The Challenge

India is currently placed at the 87^th position in the Global Gender Gap Index and has only 27% of its female population as a part of its massive workforce, which is one of the lowest in the world. The good thing is that of this 27 %, as much as 11% of women are placed in top management roles within the major private, multinational and even state-owned organizations. Despite this, various researches have proved that the overall participation of women in senior leadership roles within the workforce is quite dismal. The most common factors that have been responsible for this limiting placement of females at the senior position are discussed below.

Societal Norms And Traditions : Women in India are expected to give topmost preference to their husband and their kids irrespective of the level of professional success they might have achieved. This often leads them to quit their jobs after marriage or the birth of a child. Hence business organizations generally feel uncertain about employing females in top management positions irrespective of them being more skilled and competent.

Bias About Capabilities Of Women Leaders : Companies providing leadership consulting services are of the opinion that most organizations are biased about hiring women for leadership roles. They feel that the top management within such an organization tend to have a more orthodox view about women having the capabilities and the competence to fulfil their responsibilities as a business leader. They doubt the ability of the women to make strong business decisions and take calculated risks to ensure the growth of the organization as a whole.

Ego Issues Of Junior Managers And Other Male Employees : Most organizations limit the growth of their female employees to prevent any ego issues in other male members working at similar positions. Moreover, being a male-dominated society, a majority of men in India are still averse to the idea of working under and taking orders from a female. Hence, business organisation take the safe way out by promoting male employees even if they are less competent.

Finding The Right Solution

The problem of gender disparity is a complex one and finding the right solution is not that easy. It is important to first eliminate the causes of this disparity and includes creating awareness within the society about women being as capable and as competent as their male counterparts. In addition, organizations need to adopt a skill-based growth system making it easier to promote females with the right expertise and skillset.

Getting Familiar With The Basic Facts Of Leadership Hiring

It is not uncommon for people to use the term leadership hiring quite commonly for recruitment drives aimed at finding the right candidates for almost any management role. However, most such recruiters fail to understand the fact that the term is indicative of hiring activities focused specifically on recruiting middle management professionals. In some cases, the term may be used while recruiting top management professionals as well but it is never used while hiring for junior management positions. In fact, executive search consultants are of the opinion that leadership hiring is significantly different from any other type of recruitment.

Understanding The Term Leadership Hiring

When it comes to defining leadership hiring, the business community, in general, describes it as a process of hiring professionals, who can be considered responsible enough to take care of the people under their charge. However, the perspective of such professionals may vary from one organization to another. While some organizations may consider seniority to be a key trait for leadership hiring others may give greater preference to their skills and expertise. It is essential for recruitment professionals to understand the unique perspectives of their individual clients with respect to leadership hiring to provide them with the best candidates.

Factors That Affect Successful Leadership Hiring

There is no best process or strategy to ensure maximum success in leadership hiring. This is mainly due to the fact that different agencies operating in this niche use different strategies to identify, engage, assess and hire the best leadership talent for their clients. However, there are several factors that can affect the success of a leadership hiring process, and the most important of these are listed below.

• Proprietary procedures that are based on market dynamics and human behavior

• The extent of the use of technology and optimizations strategies

• Building and managing long-term relationships with clients and candidates

Being aware of these key factors can help people responsible for leadership recruitment to hire the best people to ensure maximum client satisfaction.

Leadership Hiring Best Practices To Be Followed

Having gained a comprehensive understanding of what matters the most while hiring for leadership positions is simply not enough. The top executive search firms also need to follow the below listed best practices for leadership hiring.

1. Gain an in-depth understanding of the role as well as the client organization’s culture, leadership, business requirements, and non-negotiable skills, etc.

2. The recruitment professionals should take advantage of their sourcing and networking skills for identifying and engaging with high-quality candidates that fit the client expectations of a suitable professional to the maximum.

3. Learn about the factors that are likely to motivate a candidate to take up the available job position and whether or not these will be acceptable to the hiring organizations.

4. Handle all compensation issues with great sensitivity, care, and scrutiny and ensure proper verification of all figures and documenting all conversations with the candidates to avoid any misunderstandings with candidates at a later stage.

5. Finally, it is the responsibility of the recruiters to coordinate communication between the clients and the candidates through effective engagement during the personal interaction sessions that generally form the final phase of recruiting.