Management Consultants near you

It starts with the current state written down honestly: an accurate headcount by role, the real reporting lines rather than the chart, and a list of the decisions the business makes repeatedly. That list is the useful artefact, and most firms have never produced one.

The middle of the work tests each decision against three questions: who has the information, who bears the consequence, and who currently has to sign. Where those three point at different people, you have found a genuine design fault rather than a personality clash.

The design then follows the decisions, not the other way round. Options are usually presented as two or three whole structures with their trade-offs, because a structure assembled from the best bits of several options tends not to work.

Two of the general duties the Companies Act 2006 places on directors bear directly on consulting work: the duty to exercise independent judgement, and the duty to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence. Neither is discharged by pointing at a report somebody else wrote.

So the useful question for a board receiving a restructure proposal is not whether the adviser is credible. It is what the board itself tested, and what it would have needed to see to decide differently. Record the challenge and the rejected alternatives alongside the conclusion. A structure adopted with no such record is harder to explain to the executives who then have to run it, and harder to defend if it is questioned later.

This is also the practical argument for insisting on two or three whole options rather than one answer. A single recommendation leaves a board nothing to exercise judgement on, which is the one thing the statute asks it to do.

GOV.UK sets out that collective consultation rules apply when an employer proposes to make 20 or more employees redundant within any 90-day period at a single establishment. Below that threshold, individual consultation obligations still apply.

Where 20 to 99 redundancies are proposed, consultation must begin at least 30 days before the first dismissal takes effect, and the Redundancy Payments Service must be notified 30 days before the first redundancy. For 100 or more, both periods are 45 days. GOV.UK warns that failing to notify the service can lead to an unlimited fine.

Consultation does not have to end in agreement, but GOV.UK is explicit that it must be carried out with a view to reaching it, including ways of avoiding or reducing the redundancies. Build that time into the project plan before you announce anything.

Design phases are commonly fixed fee, because the scope is knowable: a defined set of interviews, a decision inventory and two or three structural options. Implementation support is more often a retainer or a day rate, since the pace depends on your own managers.

Ask what happens to the fee if the board chooses none of the options. A proposal that cannot answer that has assumed an outcome.

Keep the cost of the change itself separate from the consulting fee in your own planning. Redundancy payments, notice, recruitment for new roles and the productivity dip during consultation are usually the larger numbers.