Consultation is the second competency in the Business cluster. It is about working with stakeholders on business challenges and then keeping support for the solution alive.
The definition
The BASK defines Consultation as the KSAOs needed to work with organizational stakeholders in evaluating business challenges and identifying opportunities for the design, implementation and evaluation of change initiatives, and to build ongoing support for HR solutions that meet the changing needs of customers and the business.
Learn where that definition ends: building ongoing support is part of it. The definitions you must not confuse it with:
- Business Acumen: understand the organization's operations, functions and external environment and apply business tools and analyses.
- Analytical Aptitude: collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data and promote findings.
- Managing relationships and networks is Interpersonal cluster work, not Consultation.
The five sub-competencies
- Evaluating Business Challenges - diagnosing the challenge.
- Designing HR Solutions - constructing the program.
- Advising on HR Solutions - presenting options and a preferred course of action.
- Change Management - guiding the organization through the transition.
- Service Excellence - the customer-facing service HR provides, and sustaining support over time.
Common wrong sets: discovery, analysis, recommendation, implementation are the stages of the consulting process, not sub-competencies. Data Advocate, Data Gathering, Data Analysis and Evidence-Based Decision-Making are the four Analytical Aptitude sub-competencies. Business Awareness, Business Analysis and Strategic Alignment belong to Business Acumen.
Matching scenarios
- HR presents two restructuring options with trade-offs and a preferred course: Advising on HR Solutions.
- A sponsor asks HR to lead a company-wide shift to hybrid work using a recognized framework: Change Management. The BASK places the named change models under Consultation's key concepts for exactly this.
- HR builds ongoing support among internal customers and responds to their changing needs: Service Excellence.
Carry this in: diagnose, design, advise, guide the change, serve. The sub-competency is whichever stage the stem has arrived at.