
Human resource (HR) consulting, also referred to as human capital advisory or HRM consulting, consists of advisory and implementation activities related to the management of an organization’s human capital and the HR function. The scope of services ranges from overarching work on human capital strategy to the design and disposition of a compensation & benefits framework down to the transformation of the HR function.
The market for human resource consulting services is evaluated to be worth $31 billion, representing approximately 10% of the total global consulting market. The market for human resource consulting services consists of eight main disciplines:
- Human Capital Strategy
- Compensation & Benefits
- Organizational Change
- HR Function


What does an HR consultant do?
HR consultants are typically staffed on large transformations to make sure that the necessary people and human capital expertise is on board. More human resource consulting services are:
- Talent Management
- HR Analytics
- Learning & Development
- HR Technology

Human capital strategy includes a variety of strategic work in the HR domain, such as defining a corporate culture, organization design, setting up a people strategy that supports key verticals in the business, as well as the outline of HR-related strategies in the area of among others diversity, recruitment and talent management.
Compensation & benefits, a segment also known as total rewards, takes care of all aspects of employee compensation and benefits, from base and variable pay to bonus schemes and other secondary benefits, across the entire organization – from board level to employees on the workfloor. The discipline also includes pensions / retirement consulting, and advisory services for health and welfare.
Organizational change encloses the people side of change, aimed at successfully guiding and fixing changes in organizational structure, ways of working or cultural changes within an enterprise. Change management stands at the heart of the service area, spanning advisory expertise to tools and interventions, with leadership alignment, stakeholder management, change interventions and cultural management the main contribution.