What Does a Human Capital Consultant Do?

Running a small to medium-sized business (SMB) is difficult. You need to make sure your business operations are efficient, that you hire the right employees and that you focus on goals that propel your business forward. To do this with the most significant impact, you need a team of experienced individuals—or maybe a human capital consultant—who can help you with these. About 54% of SMBs manage human resources in-house, even if they don’t have a team of HR experts.¹ Instead, business owners pass off the responsibility to someone in operations or accounting or try to handle them on their own. To help you better prepare for your journey into the business world, here's what to know about what a human capital consultant does and why you may need one for your business.

What is a Human Capital Consultant?

Human capital encompasses a large section of business operations. It includes everything that has to do with managing your workforce and making the most out of your day-to-day efforts. A human capital consultant is someone who carries expertise in this field. They work with business owners, like you, to help maximize the economic value of your operations and provides you with integral support to help you maximize the return on investment of your workforce.

The Importance of Human Capital Consulting

With effective human capital management, you can maximize your resources, improve efficiency and optimize productivity throughout your workforce. It allows you to get more organized and make smarter business decisions without having to hire an entire in-house team to get there. Human capital consultants can help you streamline your operations so you can make the best decision for future growth and scalability.

What Does a Human Capital Consultant Do?

Human capital consultants provide SMBs with several services. They work hand-in-hand with business owners in order to find HR solutions for common HR challenges faced by small businesses. Some responsibilities of a human capital consultants may include the following:

Talent Acquisition

One of the biggest roles of a human capital consultant is to help with talent acquisition. This may include best practices on recruiting to help you make informed decision when choosing the right candidate for the role.

Onboarding and Training

Once you’ve chosen the new hire, a human capital consultant can help you with the onboarding best practices. Since employees who have an excellent onboarding experience are 2.6 times as likely to be satisfied with their workplace,² this is a crucial part of long-term retention. Plus, the better the onboarding experience, the more prepared the employee is to start. HR consultants can also help provide the tools for certain training and development depending on the role and industry.

Employee Oversight/Management

After the training, employee performance needs to be understood and managed accordingly. This is another facet that human capital consultants can help with. Depending on your needs, HR experts can help with pulse surveys and employee engagement surveys. They can also provide the tools so you can capture the employee’s performance reviews which helps with your open communication with your employees and to help facilit

Analytics

One of the most important duties of a human capital consultant is the reporting and analytics used to help suggest improvements in operations. This is often done using data compiled from your workforce and analyzed based on your goals. Then, HR experts can work with you on guidance regarding improvements that may help you achieve your goals.

Compliance and Risk Mitigation

Managing a team of employees requires upholding certain rules and requirements set out by federal, state, and or local agencies. Human capital consultants help you stay on top of ever-changing employment rules and requirements. They provide risk mitigation strategies that can help you mitigate certain HR risks.

Payroll Services

Many human capital consultants also provide additional payroll processing and accounting services to help you manage your workforce. This can save you an enormous amount of time and help streamline the payroll process, so you can pay your employees in a timely manner.

Benefits of Working with a Human Capital Consultant

Since a human capital consultant focuses on helping your workforce with HR services, they’re a worthwhile investment. Some of the biggest benefits of working with a human capital consultant may include the following:

Higher Employee Engagement

One of the most notable benefits of working with a human capital consultant is the increase in your employee engagement. Engaged employees tend to be more productive, happier and more likely to stay in their roles. They’re also more likely to be passionate about their role, which can fuel higher performance and more creativity. When employees aren’t engaged or are actively disengaged, it can lead to high costs. In fact, disengaged and actively disengaged employees can cost the U.S. economy roughly $450-550 billion per year.³ Working with an experienced human capital consultant can help you find ways to boost employee engagement within your organization.

Enhanced Employee Experience

Employee experience refers to how each member of your workforce internalizes their interactions within your company. It can include things like day-to-day duties, company culture, compensation and employee benefits. Enhanced levels of employee experience tend to translate to successful growth and development, while low employee experience is often associated with toxic work environments. Human capital consultants can help you with guidance on your policies and culture in a way that helps facilitates a positive experience.

Stronger Employee Retention

With higher employee engagement and better employee experience, you’ll notice stronger rates of retention over time. Since many employees are starting to consider benefits, experience and overall satisfaction with their job as strongly as compensation and salary, human capital consultants are well worth the investment. They can help you better identify pathways for internal growth opportunities while strengthening team building.

Improved Client Engagement

Happier, more productive employees who are passionate about their jobs are more likely to provide better client experience and engagement. Those who are happy or content with their jobs can deal better with clients and tend to do so with more positive energy, which shows clients that your company is dedicated to their satisfaction with your products or services. Happy clients lead to more referrals, stronger testimonials and overall company growth.

Enriched Company Culture

Company culture can be a difficult thing to define, especially for SMBs just starting out. However, strong company culture from the start is an essential part of the overall employee experience and your business’ image. Human capital consultants can help you define a company culture that helps to foster inclusivity and highlights your core values and mission.

Better Talent Acquisition

Hiring top talent is difficult for many SMBs. In fact, according to a recent survey, 84% of SMBs have a hard time finding people to interview and hire, and 73% of SMBs struggle to compete with big companies for top talent.⁴ Human capital consultants can help you attract, hire and retain top talent. This is essential for SMBs, especially when operating in a competitive market.

Increased Return on Investment

Outsourcing to a human capital consultant can be an investment and it may be more cost effective than hiring an internal HR team. Plus, thanks to their years of experience, HR consultants tend to offer more effective solutions faster. If you want to be a successful business, investing in the development of your workforce is a cost that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Many SMBs face a lot of challenges, but that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome them. To help you make the most out of your efforts, work with TriNet. TriNet offers HR consulting expertise to help you navigate the intricacies of HR responsibilities. TriNet can help you with your toughest HR needs and provide expert insight so you can comply with HR rules and requirements. Learn more about how TriNet can provide you with support for your HR challenges by working with our human capital consultants today.

This communication is for informational purposes only, is not legal, tax or accounting advice, and is not an offer to sell, buy or procure insurance.

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