Welcome to
Hummingbird Consulting

We offer pragmatic, bespoke reward and analytics support for businesses going through, or looking at, change. Wherever you are in the process, we will provide a fresh perspective to help you improve existing reward structures, design bespoke solutions from first principles, or anything in between.

What we offer

Grading Structures

A well-designed grading structure provides a foundation for all of your people programs, supports consistent and transparent reward structures and career development programs.

Reward Management

Understanding how your existing reward offerings compare in your local market(s) is invaluable when designing a new approach or addressing specific current challenges, for example in helping you to understand why you’re struggling to attract candidates or losing your best people to the competition.

Mergers & Acquisitions

We offer proven expertise in international due diligence for transactions (mergers, acquisitions, carve-outs, etc.), including grading, pay, benefits, incentive design, equity plan design, change of control provisions and other employment terms.

Organisation Design

As organisations grow and change, it can make sense to review team, department and company processes and structure, particularly the interface or overlap between teams, in order to increase effectiveness and save duplication.

Beyond Pay

What drives retention and keeps employees engaged with your business? It’s important you pay competitively to avoid losing talent for incremental cash improvement but, beyond that, it’s important to review your working environment, processes, communication, broader reward (including personal development) and how you recognise and engage people.

A fresh look through different eyes

Alternatively, you may just think your organisation would benefit from a review; a fresh look through different eyes. Whatever your starting point, we will work with you to understand the key drivers of your business, the constraints you face and what you want to achieve, and then work with you to design innovative and pragmatic solutions that underpin your strategy and culture. When we design programs, structures or solutions, our aim will always be to leave your internal teams with the tools and skills they need to maintain them going forward.

What we offer

Questions we can help you answer include:

Are our reward and people structures supporting our business strategy?
How can we identify areas of risk and opportunity, for example in an acquisition or organisation redesign?
Are our reward programs and communications clear and engaging?
Do we have the expertise to manage a merger or acquisition?
Do we need greater insight into our people costs and areas of risk?
Are we making the most of our reward spend?

Questions we can help you answer include:

Are our reward and people structures supporting our business strategy?
How can we identify areas of risk and opportunity, for example in an acquisition or organisation redesign?
Are our reward programs and communications clear and engaging?
Do we have the expertise to manage a merger or acquisition?
Do we need greater insight into our people costs and areas of risk?
Are we making the most of our reward spend?

Our Experience

Years of experience identifying and removing obstacles to success help us to design reward plans that discourage counterproductive behaviours and to understand how best to communicate reward strategies and ensure their impact is maximised.

Latest Perspectives

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Perspectives
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Recommendations

Vanessa is easy to work with and incredibly efficient. She quickly grasped our business and our Reward needs. She identified when to help build our in-house capabilities vs do work for us - which I really valued from a consultant! Vanessa used a smart and pragmatic method to help us create a new bespoke grading system (and salary bands). She has an ability to show complex data in a simple way which helped us gain buy in from our Executive team and importantly; adoption by the business. I would definitely work with her again and have recommend her to others.
Johanna Dickinson HR Director, KP Snacks
Vanessa offers pragmatic solutions to hierarchy and benchmarking work, well presented with the appropriate level of detail and cost effective. Vanessa’s work is well backed up with experience and recommendations and left Grapeshot in a strong position to go through acquisition in early to mid 2018.
Mark Ashworth VP/GM, International at Oracle Data Cloud
Having know Vanessa over the last 10 years or so, Vanessa provides a wealth of knowledge and experience in Reward strategies. Vanessa is able to provide guidance and advice on reward strategies for organisations to enable flexible compensation packages, valued by employees and aligned to organisation values. Vanessa has extensive knowledge on aligning reward packages following mergers and acquisitions providing guidance and professional advice on effective integration strategies. Vanessa is able to present and work with Remuneration Committees. Vanessa's pragmatic, insightful approach enables her to fully engage with all stakeholders and work effectively with organisations to deliver meaningful outcomes.
Vicki Sanderson Human Resources Director, The Manufacturing Technology Centre
Vanessa has been a great asset for CSR and has had significant impact on our reward strategies. Designing the grading structure, benchmarking and changing both Annual and Sales bonus schemes, working with myself and the Remuneration Committee on equity practises - she has delivered significant and effective change to the business. Vanessa had also been a major contributor to a series of business changes - mergers, carve out and acquisition - working with the deal teams through due diligence and integration planning. A thorough professional, Vanessa is knowledgeable and tenacious in delivering high quality solutions.
Elaine Rowe