Human Resource Department as an Internal Consultant
Human Resource Department as an Internal Consultant
Human resource becomes an important part in a company nowadays. Human capital is the most valuable asset in a firm. Good employees bring lots of creative idea to companies. The way to increase human capital is the big challenge that human resource people face. Also, human resource department has to make a good method to encourage co-workers. Usually HR department do a good job. Nevertheless, sometime HR department meets some difficult problems that they can’t solve it. Companies usually look for outsourcing, for example, an external human resource consultant, to get rid of these kinds of difficult problems. Even through an external consultant solves the difficult part, organizations have to pay much more money for an external consultant and the HR people in the company might start to depend on the “good outsourcing” when they meet problems next time. It also costs lots of time for an external consultant to join a firm and maybe that consultant would not really understand what your company really need. Here is another better method then looking for an external consultant, to make human resource department as an internal consultant.
What is a consultant? The term consultant often raises an image of highly paid business consultants from large firms bring senior managers to help small firms to solve some problems which they can not solve. Also, there are some lofty opinions of consulting:
A consultant’s job is to focus on the larger system and to help smaller units and individuals take a system perspective (Golembiewski 1978).
Internal consultants are those who work in one part of an organization to help another part (Meislin 1997).
The consultant is in the business of helping others succeed, and, although consultants want to succeed in the process, their success is clearly dependent on others (Bellman 1992).
The internal consultant is one who enables change (Ray 1997).
We can get some ideas that what is an internal consultant from above sentences. Essentially, a consultant uses expertise, influence, and experience to give advice to a company and make this company improve. How about an internal consultant? An internal consultant is a consultant in the company, in other words, this company hires a consultant, or trains an employee in this company become a consultant, to work in this company. What is the different between an internal consultant and a general employee in human resource department? That is the word consultant means. A consultant can give advice directly to an executive officer to improve work, processes, or even company culture but a general employee in human resource department can’t.
What is the role of internal human resource consultant? Helm Lehmann, an author, also a former OD manager said, “I tend to advocate. I am an active player, and I provide leadership for interventions. I am not just a process consultant. Typically, I will suggest how the organization can improve by using tools or models to work through the presenting issues. My bias is to be in advocacy roles. I have a different set of skills from others in the organization, and it is my responsibility to use those skills to help my clients achieve business results. I have to influence, lead, direct, and demonstrate relevance to help achieve their goals. If they had that expertise, they wouldn’t need me.” Because of the business demands of today’s competitive, internal consultants have more and more opportunities to take leadership roles in a company. These business demands make internal consultants can take a much stronger role in advocating new directions, or interventions to support business strategies. As one internal consultant suggests, “The senior team members are the organization’s drivers, but they need someone to read the map. When they are turning left, we need to be able to say go back and turn right.” It shows the important of internal consultants.
Because of the challenges from outside, like globalization, rapidly changing technology, the drive for growth, internal consultants must do something change to get rid of these challenges. To succeed in the 21st century, Beverly Scott gave some suggestions for internal consultant, they must
Know the business. Tie consulting interventions to real business issues and ensure that they add value.
It’s important to internal consultants to know the business. They have to know not only the demands from company but also company culture. If they can’t join into the real business, they might get trouble into theories and actual.
Identify performance gaps or