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Human capital - consulting

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ASR’s service offering in human capital is very much data driven – incorporating organisational information with employee attitudes and perceptions.

We offer a range of human capital services which help you understand your current and required workforce, where you stand in terms of human capital inventory and how human capital can be optimally managed. We design processes to collect human capital data and integrate this, wherever possible, with other organisational processes and the data these processes generate.

Terris Consulting, ASR's people consulting arm, focuses on two key areas: understanding employees' skills and knowledge, and individual performance management processes. Often these two areas are closely linked.

Our consulting assignments cover a spectrum from working with organizations which need to link training needs with effective training expenditure to organizations that want information about the type of people who need to be retained and/or recruited for the future. ASR helps organizations address the before and after issues of implementing job, people and training databases.

An essential component of most people management activities is information about skills, knowledge and attributes (together we call these capabilities or competencies). Workforce capability information drives processes such training, career management, succession planning, retention strategies and workforce planning. Mapping and managing human capital is becoming a critical process in most organizations. It is often a core driver in achieving competitive advantage.

We assist organizations to focus on:

what information should be researched about jobs and collected from employees
how information can be structured so that it acts as an integrator of processes, rather than having multiple databases that share data with difficulty
how information can be collected consistently and efficiently, and at all times maintaining data integrity
how people information is managed and presented for simple decision-making by a wide range of users
linking a range of people management processes through performance management systems.

We also design specific HR processes for clients, such as performance management and training needs identification.

A key component of most consulting assignments is management education and employee communication. All employees involved in a project are shown how components link together and how to understand and use the information about themselves and their jobs. We show decision-makers how to clarify HR processes and especially to understand the links between skill profiles, job descriptions and performance management. Each has a clear and different role to play in people management and too often they are confused. Having a fully trained and skilled workforce is only the first step of the journey. Employees need to have a clear understanding of job expectations and then clear goals and targets.

Examples of consulting assignments

Workforce database	Identifying skill and knowledge requirements of the organization; using these to describe jobs (job skill profile), collecting information on employee's current skills and levels; then matching the two sets of information - what we need with what we've got. Information was updated on a regular basis and the matching information was used to make management decisions about training priorities, retention hot-spots, and workforce deployment.
Training needs analysis	Building a very detailed organization-wide competency framework and data collection process for an organization that wanted to tightly manage and assign its training budget so that the right people got the right training at the right time. This very technical organization also needed to extend and improve the skills of local staff so that they could replace expatriate managers in the medium term. Conducting a training needs analysis to brief curriculum developers. The organization was dispersed nationally and research was conducted by telephone interviews and web-based survey. Ideal job profiles were developed along with critical training gaps.
Competency framework deployment	Designing a competency framework including assessment, pay and career structure around a nationally-endorsed competency standard for the printing industry.
Job profiling	Identifying skill sets that were required by key positions and presenting this information in such a way that current and potential job incumbents could collect feedback from a range of sources and identify their development needs. The profiles were also used in selection, career management and succession planning activities.
Performance management process	Designing and implementing refinements to an existing system so that much greater emphasis was placed on deliverables and ability (skills, knowledge and behaviors) to do the job. At the same time the amount of paperwork was reduced and a much clearer focus on corporate objectives was created.
Job grading linked to performance management	Designing a salary structure, remuneration policy, and a performance management process at a green fields site.

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