The Future of Human Capital Consulting

Mar 11, 2025

Lesley Uren, Global CEO of Consulting for Korn Ferry, shares her expertise on the volatile landscape of human capital consulting. She discusses the ongoing challenges CEOs face with organization transformation and the pivotal role AI plays in shaping business models. Uren emphasizes the power of data integration in uncovering hidden talent and driving performance. Additionally, she addresses clients' pressing questions on skills and future work dynamics, advocating for a data-driven, human-centered approach to support successful transitions.

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Intro

00:00 • 2min

Navigating Human Capital Consulting

01:33 • 5min

Navigating the Challenges of Business Transformation

06:32 • 3min

Uncovering Hidden Talent and AI Integration

09:20 • 21min

Communicating Consulting Value

30:46 • 5min

Practical Metrics for Human Capital Impact

35:20 • 2min

Lesley Uren, Global CEO of Consulting for Korn Ferry, caught up with Emma Carroll, Source’s Head of Content, on the latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast to discuss where the hot spots and challenges in human capital consulting are today, and where clients’ needs are set to shift in this space.

Lesley shares her insight on the following matters and more:

Volatility in the market for human capital consulting is being driven by large macro factors that are impacting clients’ appetite to invest. This uncertainty is likely to persist, and consulting firms need to be able to pivot quickly to respond to clients’ changing business issues.

CEOs are facing a big challenge around maintaining business performance as they transform their organisations. AI is one of the big triggers here, as leaders start to rethink their business models, but there are other drivers too, including cost pressures.

Data, including the use of data to create insights, is set to be the biggest change in human capital consulting. We discuss the power of unlocking client data and combining that with a firm’s data to reveal hidden information about talent and drive better business performance.

The big questions from clients around AI include: How can we redesign our organisation? How will work be different? What kind of skills will we need? Where will we find those skills at scale? How can we galvanise our people behind this change? How will softer skills ensure this transition is successful?

The political temperature around DEI is impacting the type of support clients need in this area. We discuss what is changing and what is staying the same.

Firms will need to think differently about demonstrating value to clients. It’s about more than processing and sythesising data now: It’s about proving impact.

If you enjoyed this conversation, don’t miss our sister podcast, Business Leader’s Voice. In a recent episode , we talked to Sarah Ricketts, SVP for Procurement at Rolls-Royce, about transforming procurement with data, culture, and tech.