Smart/hands is an ideal solution for businesses that need extra expertise in-house but want to direct the project outcomes themselves. We can find you the perfect resource – or team – to deliver in-house, with the right blend of skills and experience and the right personal attributes to fit your needs. We’ll manage the screening process on your behalf, clearly setting out the expectations and deliverables, and we’ll also look after the on-boarding process for you. Once they’re in place and delivering, we’ll check in with them regularly to ensure they have everything they need to complete the work in line with your needs.
Read on for more information about smart/hands…
From Expertise on Demand and Fractional Leadership to flexible bench arrangements, our smart/hands service supports an incredibly broad range of requirements.
From Expertise on Demand (EoD) through to a flexible bench arrangement and fractional leadership, we’ve deliberately created our smart/hands service so that it can meet the needs of an incredibly broad range of client requirements.
Expertise on Demand (“EoD”)
Our EoD option provides access to the sort of niche expertise that may be required to generate very specific outcomes, or that may be required for a short time only – for instance, filling a skills gap, temporarily increasing capacity, or parachuting in a brand-new skill (or cluster of skilled resources) for a one-off project. We have access to a broad range of subject matter experts, change specialists, programme and project managers, and technical specialists. EoD is an ideal choice in times of uncertainty, as it avoids the costly and time-consuming process of hiring in: you’ll be making the most of your specialist for a fixed term or for a specific project – and don’t forget, we’ll be undertaking the management of your expert on your behalf.
Flexible Bench
Having a flexible bench available on-demand gives you immediate and easy access to a wide skillset who can support you on any number of projects. The parameters are set entirely by you: tell us the type of skill, the number of days and the number of people you think you’ll need, then leave the rest to us. You can scale up or down as workloads require. And, of course, we will take care of any onboarding activities and ensure that our expert is familiar with your objectives, customer strategy, corporate culture, and ways of working.
Fractional Leadership
Our Fractional Leadership service offering gives you instant access to a subject matter expert who is guaranteed to deliver an immediate impact in the area you need. Perhaps you need a senior figure whilst you are recruiting a permanent hire for the role? Or perhaps you need a part-time expert who can ‘lead the charge’ on a major piece of transformation work, a new venture or product/service launch? Our C-suite level experts include CIO/CTO, Finance and Operations Directors, Programme Directors: all at the top of their game, and all who would be 100% focused on delivering the role you need with the outcomes specified by you. As ever, we will take care of any onboarding activities and ensure that our expert is familiar with your objectives, customer strategy, corporate culture, and ways of working.
Smart/hands provides you with high-quality Change, Transition and Transformation experts on-demand, who will respond to your organisation as it grows and develops. Recruiting C-suite professionals on a full-time basis can be very costly, time-consuming (and sometimes unnecessary) – and often slowing delivery on important programmes or areas of work. With Smart/hands, there is no need for delays or for unnecessary expense. We’ll work with you to identify the right skill set to get your tasks achieved, then identify the perfect person (or team) to support you. Our leadership professionals are practioners and planners, meaning they will understand the technicalities of the programmes they’ll lead. When their delivery is complete, they’ll hand over any knowledge or lessons learned to your team – leaving behind the sort of legacy you would expect from a true professional.
As of 6th April 2021, medium and large sized enterprises are now understandably concerned around the risks associated with IR35 (Off-Payroll Working Rules). With smart/tasking, that burden is removed. Working in collaboration with a specialist provider, we have developed an extremely comprehensive assessment tool that can support your role determinations which is backed by comprehensive insurance that protects the whole supply chain against future tax liability & costs. We can provide professional, knowledgeable support on all your assessments for as many hires as you need. We can also deploy and embed a client-branded version of our IR35 tool into your own business for ongoing use, and of course we will provide all the training, updates and systems maintenance that might be required.
How we work with clients is really determined by the size, scale and nature of your project or task. We can, however, guarantee you the following:
Hands for your tasks
Part of your extended team
When you want to manage the outcomes yourself, our smart/hands services will deliver the change, transformation, leadership specialists and expertise you need. Our flexible bench capabilities provide options to surge and respond to growth and changing demands, either for a range of skills or changing resource capacity.
Business enablers
Our EoD and Fractional Leadership services give you immediate access to the skills and expertise you need to execute change, transition, transformation and leadership requirements. Our specialist C-suite team can not only create the strategy, but also have practical experience to deliver the remaining 95%: the implementation and operational delivery – optimising costs, reducing headcount, and delivering greater agility and performance.
Delivery-focussed
Unlike some other consultancies, stewardship is inbuilt into everything we do. We talk regularly with our clients in order to ensure that everything is on track and that our specialists are delivering to the highest possible standards. We assess and re-assess risks throughout a project’s lifecycle, making any necessary adjustments along the way – this flexibility and adaptability means that projects always run to time and to the agreed budget. Crucially, it removes any element of risk from you, our client.
In other words, when you engage smart/tasking you can be completely confident of a smooth, successful transition or transformation, fully embedded into your business so that it continues delivering the results you wanted – no ifs, no buts, and no exceptions to the rule.
