WorkLife Consulting – Welcome
Welcome to WorkLife Consulting Ltd. We are a boutique consultancy based in London, UK, which operates nationally and internationally. WorkLife Consulting is led by Professor Almuth McDowall, and works with a range of associates, pairs up with other organisations, and acts as an external advisor depending on the nature of each assignment. Everything we do is bespoke, tailored to the needs of organisations, teams and individuals. We take care in scoping work which speaks to the needs and wants of each client and are courageous to challenge when work requirements need refinement and a reality check. Our work is rooted in the science of organisational psychology, which brings rigorous understand of how the human mind works and how we best function with each other to the world of work.
Our core areas of expertise are:
- Diversity and neurodiversity: putting genuine inclusion and people at the heart of corporate practice
- Worklife balance, hybrid and flexible working and occupational health: ensuring healthy and sustainable work practices and set ups
- Employee development, coaching and training: designing and implementing processes which help people and organisations flourish
- Organisational Development: supporting organisations through change, development and restructure, including strategy development
- End to end selection and retention processes: helping organisations make the most of and retain their human capital
- Business research and quality audits: using a range of tools and techniques to benchmark practice and policy.
Our Aims
WorkLife Consulting promotes the cross fertilisation between research that is rooted in psychological theories and current concerns in practice. Almuth is committed to the core essence of applied psychology: an evidence based and reflective approach, paired with a total commitment to ensure that work is a good place for everyone. Such an evidence-based and values-driven approach ensures that what we do has a sound basis, to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of what we do, and the alignment of tangible outcomes for organisations and employees alike. Put simply, we put the welfare of employees and the places they work in at the core of any activities or recommendations. We think about people as people, not just workers, and about organisations as living entities which want to thrive. To move organisational practice forward, we have to recognise that we need to take an integrated perspective to work by also recognising people’s personal needs and wants holistically.
Examples of past and present projects
Our bespoke approach to consultancy is tailored, context-sensitive and comes with a healthy dose of common sense, grounded in organisational realities. Much of our work is privileged, and hence can’t be shared in detail on this platform or social media. Your information will always be safe with us. High level examples include:
- Psychometric Assessment of senior managers to help the organisation understand their current talent pool, what was needed for the future and any skills gaps. This resulted in the design of a bespoke leadership training programme
- Helping organisations get ‘hybrid working’ right: working with senior leadership team to determine business requirements, engage with all staff in a bespoke consultation process and roll out of a best practice model
- Auditing organisational process, policies and procedures against best practice principles of neuroinclusion
- Design of a bespoke selection process and subsequent implementation, which resulted in a 100% reduction in staff turnover
- External quality audits of psychological services
- Co-created development of a toolkit to enhance end to end retention and exit procedures.
About Almuth McDowall
WorkLife Consulting Ltd. is owned by Almuth McDowall, BSc, MSc, PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS. Almuth sees herself as a science-practitioner who is committed to making the world of work a better place. Challenged by her then three-year-old daughter that she was “not really a doctor as she can’t mend broken arms”, Almuth explained “But I can help businesses to make their people happy!”. Her daughter thought this was actually a good thing to be doing. Almuth agrees.
Professional Profile and Qualifications
Almuth has a BSc in Psychology with German, MSc in Occupational Psychology and PhD in Organisational Psychology awarded in 2006. Almuth holds certificates in coaching, which feed both into her educational and practical work, is a Chartered Psychologist, and Registered Occupational Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council, HCPC. She is a Fellow of the International Society for Coaching Psychology, is current chair of the Association of Heads of Psychology Departments and has been Academic Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development.
Academic Profile
Almuth is Professor of Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, and headed up their Organisational Psychology Department for six years. She is now working in the Department of Psychological Sciences.
You can find Almuth’s list of publications by searching the Birkbeck online repository BIRON. She has published across major organisational psychology and HR journals, numerous practitioner and policy reports and well over 100 conference presentations. She is regularly invited as a keynote at academic and industry events.
In her academic work, she relishes the opportunity to design and implement courses and modules from scratch on her own or in close collaboration with others. Examples include the pioneering Professional Doctorate in Occupational Psychology. She is external examiner to the University of West England, and the University of Accra in Ghana.
Almuth loves her work with doctoral candidates many of whom forged academic careers in their own right, and stayed life-long friends including Professor Celine Rojon, Dr Yi-Ling Lai, Dr Nancy Doyle (Visiting Professor), and Dr Shafag Garayeva.
Academic work with impact to practice
In much of her work, Almuth brings together academic and consultancy expertise. Here are some examples of previous work:
- Our report for Neurodiversity in Business: this ‘best in class’ gap analysis documented how many neurodivergent employees still fear disclosing to employers, who in turn are not sure about what to do. We also document the beautiful range of neurodivergent strengths and the value which people add. Our report with PiPA on classical music and gendered issues: this points to a deeply engrained traditional work culture where good practice in terms of facilitating flexibility and ‘putting people first’ has a long way to go – although some positive signs of good practice https://neurodiversityinbusiness.org/research/
- Our work with Parents in Performing Arts (PiPA): the first of a kind worklife balance survey showed that there’s a caring penalty, where carers and parents miss out on payment and work opportunities, this is worse for women https://pipacampaign.org/uploads/ckeditor/BA-Final.pdf
- Our report with PiPA on classical music and gendered issues: this points to a deeply engrained traditional work culture where good practice in terms of facilitating flexibility and ‘putting people first’ has a long way to go – although some positive signs of good practice https://pipacampaign.org/research/a_bittersweet_symphony?referrer=/research.
- CIPD report on executive rewards: this report challenges current CEO reward practice – one of the best predictors of CEO salary is the past salary, regardless of how effective they were! The report calls for greater diversity on company’s boards, for more reflected CEO selection practice grounded in best science and for companies to become more accountable for their people metrics https://www.cipd.org/en/knowledge/reports/executive-behaviour-report/.