A much needed change to how we work together
By Bakau Consulting
How we offer our services is changing. Here’s what you need to know about how we’ll work together to bring equity, diversity and inclusion to your workplace going forward.
Here’s the TL;DR. We are transitioning away from hourly rates for audits, policy services, custom programs and related services. Based on yours and our team's feedback, we found hourly rates to be an ineffective, overly rigid and inauthentic pricing system for the nature of our work today. To better suit these large scale projects and their evolving nature, we are transitioning to a flat rate system. This change will become effective on May 15, 2023. We are also introducing packages where you can get up to 15% off services!
How we got here
Transparency guides how we do our work. We know better than anyone that the buzz for diversity, equity and inclusion work can sometimes cloud what exactly that work is and what you can expect when you embark on this journey. We’re here to demystify DEI consulting and help you make meaningful change within your organization. For many clients, some of the first questions of this journey are “How much will this cost?” and “What can we afford?”. These questions are fundamental to many projects and often guide the results we can achieved together.
Up to this point, we had an hourly rate system for large scale projects like audits, policy creation and custom training programs. This system was introduced when Bakau Consulting was still Cicely Blain Consulting and we had fewer than five employees. Over the last five years, we have grown as a company and also seen the growth happening within our clients. Basically, we recognize that our needs have changed and so have yours.
We are on the ground of a rapidly evolving landscape. Staying flexible and attune to the needs of our clients and team is pivotal to how we present our offerings. While we have found success and fruitful collaborations through our hourly rate system, we are aware of its drawbacks. From our clients, we heard it can be a source of budgeting confusion and feels too rigid. From our team, we heard it limits the potential for seamless, ongoing collaborations and doesn’t capture the scope of their work.
We're making this change to relieve confusion around pricing, infuse more value by expanding our offerings and boost the sustainability of our collaborations long-term.
The much needed change
It’s clear we need a change in how we work together. After thorough research and consideration, we are excited to introduce our new pricing system and packages! We now have a fixed cost range for our services instead of a fluctuating cost based on an hourly rate. These cost ranges were determined based on the average price for our services at different scales.
We now have a fixed cost range for our services instead of a fluctuating cost based on an hourly rate.
This new system will help eliminate budgeting confusion in the early stages of your projects with us and avoid surprises later on if you decide to scale it up. For our team, this change allows for more flexibility and expansiveness in how we approach the work. It also allows us to be more responsive to your needs, better define expectations and create more clarity for building on existing projects.
The services that are affected by this change are large scale projects like internal, external and full audits, policy creation and custom training programs. Virtual and in-person workshops are not affected.
You also asked for more smaller scale services, so we are boosting our roster of à la carte services that can be done independently or bundled with larger scale projects. This includes:
Focus groups
Hiring process review
Single job description review
Social media scans
Follow-up audits
As well, we now have more focused policy-related offerings like:
Policy review
Policy guidelines
Implementation coaching
Bundle and save
Now, this is where it gets exciting. It’s time to talk package discounts. If you opt to bundle any of these services with a large scale project (audit, policy creation, custom training program), you save up to 15% on the cost of the add-on! Here’s how it works:
Large scale project + 1 add-on = 5% off the add-on
Large scale project + 2 add-ons = 10% off add-ons
Large scale project + 3 add-ons = 15% off add-ons
To secure your savings, choose your add-ons when you start your project.
(*infomercial voice*) But wait, there’s more! Until now, our only discount opportunity was for organizations who sponsor their employees in our Facilitation Certificate Program. These organizations receive 10% off ALL services for one year following employee certification. This offer is still available and stacks with package discounts. That means you can get up to 25% off. We know, this is huge.
We understand this is a big change but feel this is the best way to create clarity, expand our services and facilitate seamless long-term partnerships. We are happy to answer any question you may have and to continue offer payment plan options for our services to ease this transition. Thank you for all the support that has allowed us to make this change. We can’t wait to continue advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within your organization.