By Mike Kennedy
There is ongoing concern that consultants are leaving the consulting profession for industry roles. Consulting magazine recently conducted some research to lend insight to this concerning trend. Consulting 's study examined key drivers of staff attrition and retention in the consulting industry. The study provides evidence that voluntary attrition (consultants leaving of their own accord) is now higher than before the recession. This is staggering and highlights the need for firms to better understand how people are driven in order to forecast the most likely defectors and pre-empt attrition to retain their top performers.
Analytics can provide critical insight into solving this difficult problem of losing consultants to industry. What follows are two actionable and cost saving recommendations to consider:
Understand and Measure Your Consultants' Key Drivers
The first step is to collect data from your consultants themselves. Many firms make the mistake of battling attrition by increasing the training spend per consultant assuming all consultants will consider training and learning deeply compelling. Talent Analytics' own data on consultants shows this not to be true. Instead, consulting firms can
quickly identify whether or not their consultants enjoy learning and solving complex problems and would therefore be inclined to see more training as a benefit or as an inconvenience.
For example, I compared the talent analytics data of two sets of consultants in our own database and found the following:
• Healthcare consultants were intrinsically driven to be customer-centric and help people;
• Risk management consultants were strong believers in advancement and results.
• Neither group was heavily driven to learn.
Knowing these analytics begs the question—would offering more training opportunities be the best strategy to retain these consultants?
Forecast & Pre-Empt Top Performer Defection
Using a rapid data collection process, firms can quickly and easily visualize drivers by role or by practice, to identify patterns and trends. Analytics could identify whether similarly driven consultants are leaving. Spotting trends and patterns in consultants' drivers, in aggregate, allows consulting firms to forecast likely defectors, customize incentives accordingly and begin the process of preempting attrition.
Conclusion—Analytics Can Help Consulting firms Forecast & Pre-empt Top Performer Defection
By taking an analytics-driven approach to retention, consulting firms will have a better understanding of the way
consultants are driven andcan adjust retention strategies with the goal of forecasting and preempting likely
defectors.
Mike Kennedy is a Technical Evangelist at Talent Analytics, Corp. He can be reached via mike@talentanalytics.com.
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