Acumen Expertise
The services offered by Acumen go beyond traditional business consulting and are informed by the fields of industrial and organizational psychology and behavior economics. By applying the principles of behavioral science, Acumen can work with you to increase employee morale, bolster productivity, improve the culture of your workplace, develop the leadership capacity of your workforce, recruit the most talented candidates for employment, expand the potential of your workforce, train employees, provide continuing education opportunities, refine your policies and procedures, enact and manage change, and ensure that your marketing materials, policies, procedures, and vision are optimized for your client base and workforce.
Diversity Review
Beyond EEOC compliance, Acumen can conduct a comprehensive review of your business or organization to determine how effectively your policies, procedures, and operations reflect best practices in diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion.
You will receive a detailed analysis which indicates how your business is performing in areas such as employee perception, community relations, leadership attitudes, recruitment and hiring procedures, cultural competence, policy and procedural efficacy, and environmental inclusion design. You will also receive guidance about next steps for making your business or organization more inclusive for your clients and employees.
Leadership Development
Traditional leadership development often fails because an emphasis is placed on doing differently. Acumen engages an experiential, hands-on approach based on principles of behavioral science to emphasize being different and thinking differently.
Of course, while services extend beyond diversity and inclusion, Acumen specializes in developing leadership that is culturally adept and inclusive. All employees and clients will benefit from leadership which recognizes the importance of owning personal responsibility in ensuring a workplace climate which values the diversity of its clients, customers, and employees.
Performance Coaching
Performance coaching is a tool used by most high-performing businesses and organizations that focuses on real, on-the-job feedback as opposed to conference room or classroom training. Acumen employs a model of coaching that utilizes a no-risk approach to facilitating learning and growth for employees at all levels.
While we can provide performance coaching to your employees, we can also empower your leadership team and human resource personnel with the skills, resources, and experience to serve as performance coaches for your organization. This model of leadership development allows for sustainable growth and performance beyond your partnership with Acumen.
Communications Review
Communications Review
The written materials associated with your business or organization reflect on the professionalism and the character of your establishment. Whether in advertisements and promotional materials, mission statements and employee handbooks, websites and social media, or in public presentations, the written material associated with your organization communicates more to the audience than the writer may realize.
Acumen can review your communications to ensure that your text is professional, appropriate for the reading and comprehension level of your audience, and free of embarrassing errors. Beyond traditional editing services, though, Acumen can analyze your materials through the lens of psychology and behavioral science to ensure that your words have the maximum impact without the unintended consequences of confusing, disappointing, or even offending readers.
Change Management
Change and innovation initiatives can present organizations with unforeseen challenges and costs. Transitions are often met with resistance, expensive miscalculations, and other "organizational growing pains" which slow the momentum of operations or disrupt the cultural climate of your business or organization. Whether you are restructuring, implementing new policies, adopting a new initiative, or expanding the scope of your services, Acumen can help you define your vision, anticipate and avoid obstacles, prepare and train your workforce, maximize time while minimizing expenses, and maintain momentum during transitions.
As much as 80% of initiatives aimed at improving or changing the cultural climate of an organization have no positive impact or actually achieve the opposite of the intended objective. Acumen specializes in inclusion, diversity, and multiculturalism and is dedicated to helping your business or organization manage change at every step and through every challenge.
Recruitment & Hiring
At the core of every successful organization is a dedicated and talented workforce. One of the most substantial expenses many employers ever incur is the cost of hiring new employees. Between direct costs (time from leadership for application review and interviews, advertising, testing, and training) and indirect costs (loss of productivity, diminished confidence among employees, loss of collaboration and team atmosphere, and overtime for coverage). hiring a new employee can cost you thousands of dollars.
Acumen can overhaul your recruitment and hiring protocols to include reliable and validated research-based best practices for recruiting and identifying the most talented, driven, and dedicated candidates from the applicant pool. With affordable, ethical, and standardized tools, Acumen can help your business or organization reduce turnover rates, absenteeism, and ethics violations while diversifying the talent, skill sets, and perspectives of your workforce.
Material Editing & Review
The written materials associated with your business or organization reflect on the professionalism and the character of your establishment. Whether in advertisements and promotional materials, mission statements and employee handbooks, websites and social media, or in public presentations, the written material associated with your organization communicates more to the audience than the writer may realize.
Acumen can review your communications to ensure that your text is professional, appropriate for the reading and comprehension level of your audience, and free of embarrassing errors. Beyond traditional editing services, though, Acumen can analyze your materials through the lens of psychology and behavioral science to ensure that your words have the maximum impact without the unintended consequences of confusing, disappointing, or even offending readers.
Continuing Education
Many industries and businesses require that their employees engage in continuing education and professional development to ensure that their workforce continues to grow, innovate, and adapt to America's rapidly-changing cultural, professional, and technological climate. Acumen can provide quality workshops which enrich and empower your staff.
Acumen can provide realistic, engaging, down-to-earth training tailored to the needs and learning styles of your employee base; or, we can work with your instructors and facilitators to develop your own curriculum.
Initiatives & Interventions
A specialty of Acumen Consulting is to create interventions or initiatives to bring about the organizational, cultural, or procedural changes you want to happen in your workplace.
Acumen will help you analyze, evaluate, and predict exactly what changes you need to make to meet your goals and how exactly to get there with the fewest obstacles. Need to rebrand? Looking to change your recruitment strategies? Modernizing your workplace culture with reluctant employees? Expanding your operations? Broadening your client base? Recovering from a public relations or ethical crisis?
We can help you arrive at exactly where you want to go and see you through all the stages of development in that goal.