Who is Annick?

From sales and change to talent

I came into sales as a starting point, never as a final destination. I have never been a classic salesperson. I always had to rely on the relationship with my clients, and I could not sell anything I did not stand behind one hundred per cent. That conviction, that trust and quality are the basis of every professional relationship, is something I still carry with me today in my role as Talent Manager.

After more than a decade I moved up to sales manager. But it was always the human conversations that gave me energy. Colleagues would drop in spontaneously about the HR side of their job. My door was always open. Other sales managers were not too keen on that, but it was where I got my energy. It made me go back to studying: Human Resources Management, evening classes at EHSAL, alongside a full-time job and two young children.

Those studies brought me into contact with coaching and change management. At ING I guided people through major organisational changes. The career element was always part of it. There were so many changes in the bank, and supporting people through a transition like that, from one role to another, is work that does not let go of you. At Pauwels Consulting all the threads came together: my commercial past, my change expertise and my coaching background.

What talent management means to me

If you ask me what a Talent Manager does, you will not get a job description. You will get a conviction.

I support our consultants from onboarding right through to their end point. But for me the role is broader: it is career coaching, personal growth, internal training through the Pauwels Academy, change support where that is needed. That variety, that diversity, is the finest thing there is.

What sets my approach apart is my background in change management. When a client goes through a reorganisation, or when a consultant switches projects and faces a new context, I have a sharp sense of what is going on psychologically and organisationally. If you have no idea why a change has to happen, you will never fully accept it. I try to give my consultants that context. Ask your manager that question. If you seek out that conversation, you are already a step ahead of most other people. People who actively ask about the context behind a change often feel more involved and stronger in their role.

And then there is the literal part. On Fridays I run my own coaching practice, where I guide people in personal and professional growth. That I also offer movement coaching there, to people who want to get moving in the physical sense, fits perfectly with my background in Physical Education. I get people moving in both the literal and the figurative sense. Growing as a consultant is often about crossing thresholds. Motivating, guiding and getting our consultants moving is exactly what my job is about.

How I work with our consultants

The first contact with a new colleague starts a week before their first working day. Not to go through forms, but to make one message very clear: there is a team ready for you. Never hesitate to call me, email me or send me a WhatsApp. If something is on your mind, do not hold back. We are here to support you. That message is the most important one. The rest follows by itself.

My signature as a Talent Manager lies in being fully present. No divided attention, no half conversations.

I am also a firm believer in the glass being half full. I look at what is possible, not at what stands in the way. That helps me in my own life, but it also creates a positive vibe around me, and it colours not only my conversations with our consultants but the atmosphere in the team as well.

Two stories from practice

The added value of talent management at Pauwels Consulting shows best in concrete situations. Let me share two, anonymised but telling.

The first is about a colleague with an autism spectrum condition who had to adjust a number of habits on his project in order to keep working. For someone with ASD, that is no small ask. Through an intensive support programme, we managed together to shift those behavioural patterns step by step. The project was completed successfully and he received an excellent evaluation. From the very start we were convinced of our consultant's qualities, and he proved them himself. The extra support at that specific moment is where our added value as Talent Manager lies. Not a standard procedure, but a path tailored to that one person.

The second story is closer to the personal. A colleague who went through a pregnancy with serious complications. I was there for her. She later told me that without those moments with me, she could not have kept working. She needed a safe place to let her emotions out, to vent, to set the worry aside for a moment, so that she could focus again afterwards. At the same time I want to be clear about the boundary: talent managers are not therapists. Sometimes you have to refer someone to a GP or to a psychologist who specialises in what that person needs at that moment. That is not merely advisable, it is necessary. And it is part of our job.

Why this makes a difference for consultant and client alike

The way we follow up our consultants at Pauwels Consulting is not an HR process at a distance. It is an individual, personal relationship with the same talent manager, always.

That is not a given. Gallup research shows that only 11% of Belgian employees feel genuinely engaged with their employer. That puts Belgium 30th out of 38 in Europe. For consultants who work at a client day after day, far from their own employer, connection is not created by itself. It has to be built, actively and personally. Forrester research from 2025 confirms that coaching-led support makes the difference: employees who receive it are 1.7 times more likely to stay with their employer.

That is exactly what I aim for. I really hope the threshold feels extremely low, so that our consultants can say it out loud, share it, and look for a solution together.

For our consultants working at a client, that has a concrete benefit: they do not have to worry about peripheral matters. Where do I go with my questions? What if something changes on my project? If you are sitting at your client as a consultant and you do not know where to turn, you start worrying. Your motivation drops, so does your focus, and your project runs less well. We take that worry away, so that our consultants can give their full attention to what they were hired for.

Clients may not notice it explicitly, but they do experience it. A consultant who is supported is a consultant who is present. And you can see that in the quality of the work.

What I hope consultants and clients alike take away from it is simple. I hope they feel that a whole team is standing behind them. Backed up and heard.

Always in motion

That optimism is not naivety. I ask the difficult questions, even when that is uncomfortable. And I am there at the moments that really matter: the difficult ones, the vulnerable ones, the turning points in a career.

At Pauwels Consulting, talent management is not just a tick box in an onboarding process. It is a relationship that keeps growing with you, from day one. Annick is one of several Talent Managers at Pauwels Consulting. Els Roesems describes what the role looks like day to day, and Debbie Croonen helped build the role from scratch in the Kempen pharma cluster.