When Should You Hire a Temporary HR Consultant?

Bryan Adelson
September 24, 2021

As a business owner, do you find yourself at a critical point for your organization where you need to ask the question “Is it time to hire an HR consultant?”.  An HR Consultant is an experienced HR professional who is external to your organization and will work directly with you to provide support in the areas traditionally handled by a company’s HR department. Now that we know what an HR Consultant is, it’s time to answer the original question. This blog outlines when is the right time to hire external human resources support. 

4 Instances in Which You Should Hire a Temporary HR Consultant

1. You Need Expert HR Support on Short Notice

“Please accept this resignation letter as my official 2-week notice” or “ I quit” are two phrases that an organization dreads to hear, especially if it’s coming from your sole HR resource. You are losing a key employee and have to find an alternative to getting the work done…and quickly.  What are you going to do without essential HR support?  

In this case,  hiring a temporary HR consultant is an effective solution in order to provide short-term, expert support for the HR function.  Generally, an HR consultant can quickly join the organization on short notice and bring their expertise with them to support your business!  Skilled HR consultants have a wide range of expertise and can support the organization with all aspects of your HR function.  

At Red Clover, our consultants leverage our collective years of experience to support every step of the employee lifecycle, ranging from recruitment to onboarding to training and development, and so much more. We are able to tackle those areas of focus by working with clients in either a short interim engagement over a span of 6 months or by providing weekly support from 2 – 8 hours of individualized HR service.

2. You are Making Changes to Management or Your Organization’s Structure

Change is never easy.  If your organization is struggling with change and you need an outside expert to weigh in, or you’re unsure about the planned outcomes then a temporary HR consultant can help.  The consultant works with business leaders of the organization to assist in finalizing the changes, serve as a sounding board and trusted advisor, and share their previous experience to walk leaders through potential outcomes. In addition, the consultant develops a communication plan so the organization can roll out the change to team members in a positive, supportive, and intentional way.

3. You Need to Recruit Top New Talent for Your Company

HR Consultants use their knowledge and skills to support the recruitment process for an organization.  In many cases, the consultant will work with the hiring teams to understand the current vacancies, refine the recruitment process, and take it from there to find your next great hires. Red Clover uses LinkedIn Corporate Recruiter to assist clients with recruiting top talent by providing them access to talented job hunters on the professional social media platform.

4. You are Having Issues with Employee Relations 

Are your HR staff currently struggling with managing employee relations? An HR consultant is an external resource who can come to your assistance.  They bring in a different perspective on the situation or can provide sound guidance on how to deal with certain situations.  

For instance, an HR consultant can be called in to assist an organization with workplace investigations that could potentially involve members of the HR staff or members of the leadership team.  The HR consultant does not have a direct relationship with anyone in the organization and can ensure the investigation is done properly, without any bias. 

How an Interim HR Consultant Can Help You

An interim HR consulting engagement is when an HR consultant takes over all aspects and responsibilities of the HR function for an organization. In most cases, an HR consultant can fulfill the job of a full-time FTE, in less time, resulting in cost savings for the organization.  In addition, engaging with an HR consultant provides payroll tax and benefits cost savings as opposed to an internal hirer.  

Red Clover consultants have years of hands-on, people management experience and are ready to work with you and your team as part of an interim HR consulting engagement.

Contact us to learn more!

Related Articles


The Results

Construction and Contracting

A commercial roofing contractor was in hyper growth mode. They had goals to increase their field workforce to expand their service area to additional states and geographical locations. If they were to grow their field workforce, they would also need to increase their administrative, operational and sales headcount to support the additional workload created by increased field work. Additionally, they were challenged in workforce retention and development, experiencing high turnover, and did not have a dedicated Human Resources professional to manage employee relations and compliance issues that come with trying to scale a business.

See The Full Case Study

For News and Events

Sign Up For News and Insights on HR, Change Management and Strategies.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.