The role of a consultant

For me, 2025 was a year that had several unplanned events; leaving a managing director role with a mid-sized HSE consultancy to become an independent consultant was certainly the most unexpected and the most significant event. I didn’t start 2025 with this in mind, but that’s where I ended the year.

As I started to set up my own company, I began to reflect on the role of a consultant and particularly, why they exist. In my professional life, I've seen the impact of consultants in multiple businesses and engaged consultants to do work on many occasions, with very mixed results. I’ve seen some consultants try to ‘borrow your watch to tell you the time and then steal the watch’. Equally, I’ve seen other consultants provide real, long-term value to a business or team.

Using consultants should be a positive experience for both the client and the consultant, but it isn’t always the case. Typically, I’ve found that the negative experience is influenced strongly by two factors.

• The client doesn’t have a clear view of the expected outcome(s) (including relevant measures) that they want through engaging a consultant.

• The consultant ‘forgets’ the reasons why clients engage them – to help the business identify and implement improvement(s) and/or change(s) in a sustainable way….. and then leave.

In perhaps one of the worst examples of consultant engagement that I’ve experienced, the senior leaders in a business where I worked engaged a consultant to improve the quality practices that were in place across our site prior to an ISO certification process. When engaging the consultant, they didn’t define a clear outcome, no KPIs or other measures were put in place and no timeframe for completion was agreed. The consultant was given ‘free reign’ to review, assess and analyse any process wherever he felt they was a need for improvement. After about six months, the business had spent almost $80,000, with very little measurable improvements in our quality process or practices and an increasing level of frustration at the negative impact that the consultant was having across our business. The certification activity was delayed considerably.

Consultants should not be a long-term resourcing solution for a business. They should be used for specific, time-bound assignments that address a challenge/problem, improve a capability (organisational or individual) and/or optimise a process or practice, adding value to a business that can’t be delivered with their internal resources.

If the consultant is simply providing a client with ‘an extra pair of hands’ in a team, there are better (and cheaper!) ways of doing this!

For me, when I’m engaged as a consultant, it’s important that defined, measurable deliverables are agreed before I start the work – what am I required to deliver and by when? Having this clear and agreed at the beginning means my client gets exactly what they want…. and there’s no surprises!