A new area of business growth that is helping to transform the operation of Liberty IT has led to the increase of unique Consultancy roles within the organisation, with a further four currently being recruited.

The Consultancy team is helping the industry leader in digital innovation drive the most complex engagements for its parent company, Liberty Mutual, by solving its most strategic challenges, in doing so creating additional value, maximising growth and improving business capability and performance.

To support the capability buildout further, 45 employees in a variety of roles - including Software Engineers, Delivery Leads, Data Scientists, Technical Capabilities and Marketing & Communications - have been upskilled as part of the innovative Liberty IT Consultancy Programme in association with Deloitte over the last 24 months.

This has included a combination of learning interventions on Liberty IT preferred practices including Event Storming, Root Cause Problem Solving, Commercial Thinking and a Product DOJO with participants designing a product in a day from inception through delivery and encompasses design thinking, lead and agile techniques. Participants also get an opportunity to meet and hear from Senior Liberty Mutual Business and IT colleagues in Spotlight sessions, who share their experiences in running the Liberty Mutual business.

Finally, the participants work together in teams to solve for a real Liberty Mutual facing challenge – a safe space to practice the skills that they are learning on a real business problem. 

Sinead Shackley, Director of Evolve at Liberty IT who also leads the Consultancy Capability said: “Just four years ago, we started as a small team of four rolling out new capabilities, training and process improvement working with the teams and leaders in Liberty IT. This team had a very valuable set of skills that transcended business, product, delivery and engineering.

We saw a gap to offer an internal Consultancy service to Liberty Mutual to help our business build better solutions and solve problems. We tested out the idea by offering an internal consultant to work on agile transformation for our specialty market area and then another offer of a consultant for emerging technologies in our Auto space. Both were highly successful. These tests proved valid and confirmed there was a need for innovative, business minded but technical consultancy roles within our Emerging Business and Technology unit.

As we continue to evolve Liberty IT and our relationship with Liberty Mutual, our consultancy model has grown rapidly and is a key catalyst for change. We have recognised the need for these consultancy skills across the organisation to help identify the opportunities for the business, to be there right at the beginning of an idea and to help shape what that this could look like.”

“In growing this side of the business, we have also developed a LIT Consultancy Programme in partnership with Deloitte which was launched in September 2020. Not only do the participants learn career enhancing consultancy skills and techniques, but they also get to put them into action working on a real business problem,” Sinead continued.

“We have had a great response to the Consultancy Programme and due to this success, recently launched an advanced LIT Elevate Programme, also in partnership with Deloitte, to enable senior leaders to build consultancy skills on a more strategic level. Both programmes are an excellent way for our team members to continue in their own roles whilst they build and enhance consultancy skills that will help them develop and potentially provide future career opportunities across Liberty IT as well as assisting the business should the requirement arise.

We’ve been receiving really positive feedback from the managers of participants of the programme who’ve said their colleagues have elevated the whole team, helping to change the way they work for the better, which is just fantastic. The Consultancy Programme provides so many opportunities for growth, enabling us to get closer to and help our customer as well as investing in our teams and benefitting broader Liberty IT business, so it’s certainly an exciting time for the Consultancy group at Liberty IT as we continue to expand head count and reach,” Sinead concluded.

For further information on the Consultancy roles currently available at Liberty IT, go to www.liberty-it.co.uk/careers/opportunities