Relationships for the win!
As a people and culture consultancy, our approach is unashamedly and unreservedly based on relationships rather than transactions. We work with clients to create a thriving culture, manage change and drive results. While our services fall under three broad categories - consulting, HR leadership and workshops and facilitation - the one constant across all of our services, regardless of client, is our longstanding commitment to building and maintaining relationships. We’re looking for transformation rather than quick surface level fixes. Not only does this approach provide far-reaching, sustainable, long term benefits, it aligns to our values of working at a deeper level to understand and know people, rather than splash around at the shallow end of HR.
An expert in people and culture, our Founder Julia has worked with a whole raft of methodologies, tools and frameworks to help organisations create workplace cultures that allow their people to do their best work. One of the profiling tools that Julia rates highly is Gallup Strengths, as her top five strengths in particular resonate profoundly, personally and professionally, specifically that of Relator. Here’s what it means to be a Relator, straight from the source:
‘People exceptionally talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.’
Put simply, Julia likes to get to know people and is less interested in surface-level relationships or acquaintances. Clearly, a transactional approach of delivering HR and people and culture expertise was never going to cut it for Julia when establishing People and Growth Consulting.
While it’s not unusual for us to work with organisations on (relatively!) one-off change management projects, we highly value our retainer work with clients. This is where we effectively become their outsourced HR director to provide ongoing support against their strategic needs. Working with people on an ongoing basis, beyond our initial HR audit and review, allows us to get to know them, their business, their people on a much deeper level. This means we can design their people strategies and initiatives with a detailed understanding of how it will impact their organisation and team. Would you like an example of this in action?
One of our clients is a boutique professional services consulting firm. The importance of people to a consulting firm cannot be overstated. They’re essential. Client services simply can’t be exceptional without the absolute best team of people. If the team isn’t right, then the service offering will always be impaired. After working with this firm for a long time, we know the ins and outs of the business to the most minute detail - we love details! We know where they’ve had great success with their client pool and where they’ve had challenges. We know the key factors that make a top talent consultant successful within their work environment and culture, and we know the factors that can get in the way. This knowledge of their business, industry and team gave us the insights and perspectives to design a recruitment process and capability assessment to meet their unique, specific needs, which means they are able to deliver services to their clients with incredible talent that are doing their best work.
A thriving workplace culture is one where people feel valued, where processes and systems engage and support people. None of this happens by accident, but by design, and relationships based on deep understanding and connection is what enables consciously crafted design. For more information about our relationship-based approach, or to talk about how we could be of support, please reach out.