Employee Management plays a crucial role in championing the employees as individuals and as a group and maximising the employee experience.

Senior Individuals in a company may form part of the local management team. IN some organisations employee management is the purview of the specialist People Management function, in others it is a shared responsibility across capable and willing senior team members across multiple functions.

Employee management can be seen as distinct from career management. Whereas career management focuses on a one to one relationship between employee and career champion (who strive to maintain a forward looking and positive atmosphere in their relations) employee management focuses on activities and initiatives which affect whole groups of individuals. As such it tends to be more impersonal

Employee management is concerned with processes and practices that affect the whole employee base. The following six are important to growing consultancies:

Promotion

The promotion process can be push or pull. The key difference between the two is where the onus lies for an employee’s career advancement. A push process is employee led and encourages the individual to take responsibility for their career. A pull process is management led and instead puts responsibility with the management team to identify and encourage people to advance.

Remuneration

As you scale your organisation, this highly sensitive areas become more and more visible to the employees and consequently you need to consider a number of elements. This includes: having clear processes; how to balance personal versus organisational responsibility for putting the case for individuals forward; how to incorporate client feedback channels; ensuring the performance appraisal processes influence remuneration decisions; ensuring that diversity and inclusion factors are positively understood; and how you plan to offset increased costs with your client base.

Reward and Recognition

From time to time and as part of employee engagement you will need to recognise and reward positive behaviour. This may focus on over and above performance for your clients or behaviour which is aligned with the values of the organisations and therefore to be encouraged. There are a variety of different rewards that you can and should consider. This includes formal company awards such as “Employee of the Month” or discretionary “spot” rewards given from empowered managers. Something as simple as a “shout-out” or a call from a senior manager to say well done may be very effective

Managing Absenteeism

Absenteeism is defined as a pattern of frequent or disruptive occasions of being unavailable for work at short notice. What makes absenteeism difficult for a consultancy is the fact that clients have high expectations and reliability is a necessary part of fulfilling those expectations. In addition, they are often a direct revenue loss to the consultancy. Add in the fact that clients often engage with consultants for hard-to-find skills means that absenteeism affects both consultancy and client in a way that it might not do, in a different type of organisation.

Wellbeing

Consultancy can be a pressure filled job. High expectations from clients, short turnarounds between assignments, pressure to deliver, integrate quickly with little learning time and the continual need to add value, all create a unique pressure proposition. Individuals and managers need to be on the lookout for signs or stress and once spotted, be ready for intervention.

Incentivisation

An incentive payment in a consultancy is a financial motivation offered to employees in recognition of exceptional performance, contributions, or achievements. The purpose of an incentive schemes is to motivate employees, reward them for their hard work, and recognize their value to the company. It is often used as a tool to retain top talent, encourage employees to work towards specific goals, and align their interests with those of the company.