HR consulting

By Julie Ahadi.

In a break to the norm, and to give ourselves a rest from barking on about digital, we thought it might be interesting to look at one of the major standout non-trends unearthed by our 2018 Australia Consulting Market report*: the flatlining and blink-and-you-may-miss-it performance of people (HR) firms. And it’s pretty dire.

Claiming just 1% of market share, it’s abundantly clear that traditional HR firms haven’t quite managed to acquire the agility needed to outmanoeuvre the Big Four and strategy firms—and anyone else with a killer instinct—to keep pace with the times and remain relevant.

Why? Well, both in Australia and around the world, HR consulting has seen relatively slow growth in recent years, as clients’ need for support in this area has either been piecemeal or generally just lower down the list than, well, pretty much anything else you can think of.

By Alison Huntington.

I recently interviewed a consultant who was telling me about a digital transformation programme he’d worked on with one of Britain’s police forces. As part of the programme, each front-line officer was given a tablet to replace the traditional policeman’s notebook. The technology would mean accurate digital records, fewer hours lost to paperwork, the ability to update cases on the go, and myriad other benefits. Except that it didn’t. The consultant went out on the beat one day and watched as an officer took out his tablet … and proceeded to use it as a clipboard to lean his paper notebook against while he jotted down his notes with an old-fashioned biro.

It’s just one of many examples that illustrate how the success of transformation depends on people, not just new technology. So what do HR clients—the people in charge of the people—make of the consultants trying to help them?

By Zoë Stumpf.

I’m a big fan of Germany. That’s probably just as it should be: My surname is German, as are (perhaps more importantly) some members of my family. It’s also hard not to have huge admiration for a country that keeps all its best wines purely for domestic consumption. However, my respect for German attitudes has grown even further on the back of research that we conducted recently for our DACH report on trends and growth in the German, Austrian, and Swiss consulting market.

The reason for my ever-growing enthusiasm for all things German is that it turns out that quite a number of senior German consultants feel that they need to lead the debate about the impact of robotics and AI on the future workforce. I know that this is the topic of many news stories the world over, with widespread concern about the potential disappearance of a number of white-collar jobs, and those of us with children trying to steer them towards future-proofed careers (apparently hairdressing is a safe bet).