Speaking as someone who became part of the WLP story five years ago, there are many reasons why I believe becoming a WLP consultant is highly worth considering. First and foremost, we offer a name that has an excellent reputation. This has been achieved through extensive work in the East of England business community over the past 30 years, and as a consequence we have an established customer base. We have contacts with a large number of people and organisations who support and introduce business to our consultants. This includes accountancy practices, banks, local enterprise partnerships/local authorities, the Manufacturing Growth Programme, certification bodies and many other professionals. We do of course, also receive referrals from the businesses we work with. We are registered as a Recognised Practice with the Institute of Consulting (IC). Several of us have achieved and maintain Certified Management Consultant (CMC) status.
We have a distinctive corporate identity, and to support our marketing activities, we have a brochure for our services with flexible page entries and the ability to run focused marketing campaigns, and outsource our digital marketing, giving us a strong social media presence. To support the daily operational needs of both the business and consultants, we have corporate Office365. Our business management system is certified to ISO 9001:2015 by a UKAS accredited certification body and has been, continuously, for the last 20 years.
The core elements of our success are teamwork, networking, knowledge and assurance. We operate as a team giving preference to skills inside the group. We share skills and experience so that we all have a reliable source of help and extra work as workloads vary. We will support you in your growth as a consultant by adding new skills. We have 6 monthly reviews with consultants using the IC model for development. We provide training and CPD and access to group training when the time is right. We also operate quality assurance of our services providing guidance and review for all projects. This helps to ensure a continuing high standard of work to maintain and enhance our reputation in the marketplace. You will always have someone to talk to about any issue affecting work or lack of it. Also, the team can always substitute for you should you be unable to work through sickness or other reasons, plus we give guidance on setting up contracts to ensure you stay on the right side of legal requirements.
As you would expect, professionalism is at the heart of everything we do, we are an equal opportunities organisation and we naturally support the IC Code of Conduct and have our own set of guidelines for good long-term practice. We are highly ethical and are fair, open and honest with one another. It’s not only ‘lonely at the top’, it can also be lonely as a sole practitioner consultant – one thing I probably value as much as any other aspect of being part of WLP, is that it feels like you are part of a friendly team, all pulling in the same direction. Being an associate rather than an employee, you have all the benefits mentioned above, but you are completely free to work as little or as much as you want; no targets other than those which you set for yourself. Even if you’re just toying with the prospect of becoming a consultant, or if you’re a consultant who wants to be a part of a great team, call today on 01953 882141