The 10 biggest human resources (HR) consulting companies in the world have handled major personnel decisions, salary strategies, and executive searches for the world’s biggest companies, among other HR-related concerns.
The human resources consulting industry began as an offshoot of management consulting, the practice of assisting organizations in their performance and operations. The companies involved in management consulting, which analyze problems within an organization and propose solutions to those dilemmas, increasingly saw human resource management as an important facet of their overall businesses. From there, human resources consulting emerged, and two special roles were developed: expert resource consulting and process/people consulting. The expert resource consultant can pinpoint human resources problems based on their past experience in the field and can even assist in the implementation of the solution. Meanwhile, the process/people consultant can search for methods that empower companies to solve their own human resources problems. For both types of consultants, human resources fields that they study include employee engagement, compensation, employee benefits, retirement, mergers and acquisitions, and talent mobility.
Speaking of compensation, some of these consulting firms had a hand in determining the salaries of current CEOs. for related reading, Insider Monkey has a list of the 11 highest paid CEOs in the world.
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Back to our current list, we based it on the results of Vault.com’s annual management and strategy consulting survey, under which 17,139 consultants were asked about which consulting firms are the best overall. The survey also includes rankings of the top human resources consulting companies in the world, as well as rankings for other consulting fields such as IT operations, finance, health, and a dozen more, based on votes from consultants. The company that got the most votes in the human resources category garnered 33.1% of the total votes, with the tenth-ranked entry having 12.2%. This signifies that even among the highly regarded human resources consulting firms, there is a significant difference in perception between the top company and other top-ranked companies. Therefore, for the purposes of this list, the companies’ rankings are based on the votes cast by these consultants.
We should note that the size and reputation of the companies surely figured into the voting process, so the rankings of the companies likely reflects, at least partially, the size and stature of each consulting firm in the human resources field.
The 10 biggest human resources (HR) consulting companies in the world include Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN); Aon Hewitt, owned by Aon plc (NYSE:AON); Bain & Co.; Boston Consulting Group; Deloitte; Hay Group, owned by Korn/Ferry International (NYSE:KFY); McKinsey & Co.; Mercer, owned by Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. (NYSE:MMC); PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Willis Towers Watson PLC (NASDAQ:WLTW).
Head to the next page to begin the countdown of the best firms for human resources consulting.
