As Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Management continues to diversify and evolve it is difficult for OHS consultants/consultancies to constantly remain up to date and current across all industries. I believe it is vitally important for the image of OHS consulting as a whole that when a consultant/consultancy is presented with consulting opportunities that do not fall within their current capabilities that the consultant/consultancy refers the client to a more suited service provider.
This referral has a number of benefits; firstly the client receives a better service with regards to their initial issue, secondly the consultant/consultancy that made the initial contact does not risk damaging their image by working outside of their capabilities and delivering poor service and finally a positive image of consultants/consultancy is maintained or even improved.
Our consultancy recently faced a scenario where a client approached us about the provision of a service outside of our current capabilities. We referred another consultancy within our network whose capabilities matched the client’s needs. This referral resulted in the three benefits listed above. The direct benefit we received was that the OHS consultancy we referred repeated the process and directed a client to us whose needs were within our capabilities. The aforementioned scenario was a win for both clients and consultancy.
Referring clients to other OHS consultancies may not appear too appealing to the consultancy at first, however, with the underlying benefits of doing so apparent, I believe it is important to trust that the referred consultant/consultancy will do the same and create an ongoing win for client and consultancy and reinforce the value of having OHS consultants across all industries.
Posted By: Cathal Uniacke – cathal@custodiansafety.com.au