Food for thought: Retaining talent and the importance of management training

Consultancies, like many other organisations, compete not only for clients but also for talent. A sign of the burgeoning strength of the recruitment market came recently from a consultant recruiter who reported that a candidate, faced with two offers, said she would choose the firm that offered the better development opportunities.

Practices make great efforts to attract good candidates, but effort has equally to go into retaining them. Consultants are daily faced with a choice: "Do I stay with this practice, or would I be better off somewhere else?"

They therefore assess their prospects. So what constitutes a good development prospectus for a consultancy practice? Here are some features gleaned from observing consultancy practices and consultants over many years:

• Personal development is addressed with seriousness of intent throughout the organisation - it is not something to which lip service only is given.
• There are clear allocations of responsibility to those involved, and they are trained to perform them well. Our research shows that man-management is not generally highly prized among consultant managers. Consultants themselves have also to take responsibility for their own personal development. (And, if you're interested, we run training on this).
• There are systems for assessing performance and development needs, and for planning and implementing training (on and off the job) to meet these. (There are particular challenges in designing these for consultancy practices, where individuals can be geographically dispersed and perhaps working alone on a variety of projects during the course of a year). Moreover, time is allocated for this work - it is not something that is downgraded by comparison with other activities to fit into "spare time"
• There are high expectations of consultants attending training programmes in terms of their preparedness beforehand and in applying their learning upon their return to work.

These are demanding requirements and few firms meet them easily in practice. But there is a simple test: would you prefer to work for a practice that followed these rules?

Calvert Markham