Consulting Services

Organizational Culture Assessment
As a manager, you lay the foundation for the organizational culture of your business or organization, setting the standard for values and attitudes in your workplace. However, it is often difficult to see and feel your organizational culture and assess its effect because the optics are bad, you’re so close to it. A clear understanding of your business culture is crucial in times of flux, as when you are altering your business plan, hiring new staff, having to downsize or making an investment decision.

We assist you in discovering the culture and creating a clear plan for how to use it to your advantage in strategic situations, and when looking toward a new business strategy. You don’t need more projects when hiring or changing plans, so this analysis is ideal before you face that transition. Matching the culture and the individual is an important part of assuring a great fit with new employees or new plans, just as a clear grasp of the culture enables you to guide your agency through other changes.

Supervisory Training
Your first-line supervisors spell the difference in your employees’ productivity, attendance and overall job satisfaction. This fact is lost on many managers, but is borne out by survey after survey proving that supervisors are the key to your organization’s success or failure. BHI offers a wide variety of courses, workshops, coaching and mentoring customized to your particular situation, your business and your supervisors’ needs. See our workshops (link) section to find more on how we can assist you.

Organizational Health Assessments
An organizational health assessment examines several areas of your organization and performs gap analyses to assess where you might best benefit from clarifying, training, defining, tightening systems or setting direction/planning. While our assessment looks at many standardized aspects of your business, the full scope of the assessment is driven by you, to assure proper coverage.

We generally assess your foundational statements and documents such as the mission statement, vision and core values. We look for clear linkage between your foundational elements and the annual work or business and capital improvement plan, policies and procedures. We look for strong supervisory direction and performance in order to assure employee satisfaction. We conduct employee group surveys or focus groups with the survey instruments that you endorse and help design.

We also assess your job descriptions, performance appraisal system and employee handbook against any previously set standards or internal policy and practice. We review your organizational chart and determine if stacking and lineage is optimized for efficiency.

We provide you with a complete report that includes findings and recommendations. A finalized organizational assessment typically leads to the need to tighten loose ends within the agency that will mitigate organizational vulnerabilities that could eventually lead to trouble and costly overhaul level changes.

Comprehensive Organizational Workup
In almost every case, businesses that have contracted for an organizational assessment [link] elect to follow up on the changes recommended in the assessment. The work-up puts actions to the findings of the assessment. It may, for example, formulate a plan for implementing structural adjustments, or for tightening policy or procedures. The work-up may involve consulting on organizational approach, coaching, training or a simple class that deals with a gap found in the assessment. The process is tailored for you. It is only as “comprehensive” as you need.

Recruiting and Retention
We often find that businesses need help on both ends of the employment process: finding the right staff and ensuring that they stay. Our job is to help you understand how these two aspects of your approach to human resources are interconnected. We assess your situation and provide clear guidance on how to become an “employer of choice,” one that the top talent wants to work for and doesn’t want to leave. Remember, maintaining an excellent staff is not a small commitment!

Employee Opinion and Surveys
Employee Opinion and Surveys – we can collect opinion, situational information, and other organizational information for you by conducting surveys and/or employee focus groups. This service allows you to poll and assess employee opinion in an objective manner, removing perception of bias. Results of opinion gathering can be expressed back to you in numerous ways to allow for clear understanding of what your employees are thinking and recommendations on how to maintain or change their perceptions.

Job Description Revision/Update
Job Description Revision/Update – if there is one document that is crucial to a broad range of employee related issues, it is the job description. A well-written job description creates the basis for employee selection, hiring, termination, performance management and discipline. It is a critical document when called upon to legally defend hiring or termination actions. Unfortunately, it is also one document that is often overlooked and often allowed to become obsolete in the ongoing grind and pace of the workplace.

After discussions with agency leadership, we work with your supervisors to clarify the positions/functions and assure job descriptions that will be accurate, function specific and useful once more. The key to our approach is making sure that once we are gone that your supervisors have clear knowledge and understanding of each of the positions that they manage. Everyone gains when the agency, supervisor and employee have clarity in this area.