Charakis Research & Consulting Ltd., established in 2003, has grown significantly over the past two decades, expanding its reach and impact across various sectors. The company has consistently invested in innovation, research, and development, leading to the creation of pioneering HR solutions and tools. 

In our interview, Managing Director Michael Charakis discusses key milestones in the company’s journey and how his academic background has shaped his approach to consulting and management. Michael also highlights the importance of continuous learning and innovation in today's rapidly changing business environment and elaborates on the tailored HR solutions and training programs that have significantly impacted their clients’ success.

In these 21 years, the company has significantly developed and diversified. A major milestone was the expansion to Greece in 2004, driven by the country's rapid growth at that point due to the Olympic Games. This strategic move gave us an important exposure to a larger market with more complex HR projects, thus enabling us to gain know-how and rich experience on HR Development. Moreover, we developed partnerships with competitive organizations and academic institutions and started investing in Research and Development.

Subsequently, from 2005 and onwards, the company has actively participated in research programs, gaining the expertise to develop competitive HR services. Notable achievements include the NEMO System in 2007, Europe’s first location-based content management tool. In 2012, NEMO was selected for the Athens Archaeological Museum, integrated into Samsung phones and sponsored by OTE-Cosmote . Other projects include the Nautothorax Program, through which we developed HR Systems for the Maritime sector, as well as our latest project, the Naftoplus program in which we digitize our HR assessment tools and consulting services combined with AI. This SaaS solution is expected to be officially launched in 2025.

Finally in 2013, we forged a significant partnership with Gi Group, a leading global HR solutions provider, marking a critical step in our growth as their partners in Cyprus. These milestones reflect our commitment to innovation and market expansion, ensuring our continued success.

Academic studies play an important role as they provide you with the necessary theoretical frameworks, knowledge, methodologies, and a way of thinking. They provide you a specific discipline. This can be particularly helpful in the early stages of someone's career as a starting point.

From a point and after, what really matter is experience, deep involvement, and exposure to multiple projects, different sectors, countries, and cultures. This, for me, holds higher significance for being able to deliver specialized services with real added value and to create competitive advantages for your company.

Lastly, let's not forget the era we live in. Heraclitus is more relevant than ever. 'Everything Flows'. We see a continuous flow of changes at rapid pace, with the evolution of technology and the integration of AI across all sectors. Therefore, entrepreneurship itself is changing, as are work roles, business needs, business models etc. HR Management is now Talent Management. No one can afford to remain static with knowledge acquired solely from universities. The market itself will render them obsolete. Continuous and lifelong learning, re-skilling, and up-skilling are of utmost importance.

In order to offer competitive and innovative HR solutions to our clients, we must start by focusing on our own “house”. We need to have a passion for innovation ourselves. While our revenue-generating service lines are HR Consulting and Training, we consider our third line, Research and Innovation, as our central pillar. Through research and innovation, we have developed our own innovative methodologies, tools, psychometric tests, HR systems, and models across a wide range of topics such as Culture Reinforcement, Position/Role Management, Workload Analysis, Functionalization Alignment, HR Audit tools, and training content, which we practically implement for our clients.

Simultaneously, most of our research begins with a focus on specific sectors. This customization inherently creates conditions for increased specialization. For example, we have developed HR Solutions for sectors such as Shipping, Health, Education, Telecommunications, etc., which we have successfully offered to organizations in Cyprus, Greece, and internationally.

Additionally, our involvement in innovation projects has helped us offer consulting services to our clients on how to foster a culture of innovation. We have provided services to create conditions within organizations that support the development of innovation, utilizing human intelligence and creativity. Moreover, in cases of larger organizations, we have helped them establish Innovation Centres or developed the Intrapreneurship initiatives within the organizations themselves.

If you don't provide customized services, you cannot offer value to your customers. We always strive to investigate and assess the needs of our clients so that the service we offer can be appropriately aligned.

For example, in 2020, Charakis Research and Consulting developed a complete set of digital soft and cognitive skills solutions for the German company Safebridge, a leading EdTech company. These solutions were customized to work in full synergy with the existing SafeMetrix psychometric assessments that the client was offering.

The digital solutions were also designed to be customized according to the employees' needs. Our approach was to create engaging small digital "capsules of knowledge" that would enable employees to use their skills flexibly, based on the findings of their psychometrics and the various situations they encountered in their work life on 18 relevant skills and divided into two core skill categories of soft and cognitive skills.

It is worth noting that in 2022, Safebridge acquired the Intellectual Property rights for a specific sector of this solution and has since been promoting it through its specialized platform in the global market.

Our trainings, like all our services, are tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients and address current business challenges. After all, we too are in the market and in business, experiencing the same challenges. We understand and experience how factors such as technological advancements, AI, or geopolitical developments affect the market, business models, and consequently, HR. We continuously adapt and invest in knowledge for ourselves as well.

In our training courses we leverage innovative Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, specifically within a business context, to empower executives. NLP helps them gather and consolidate vital information, negotiate effectively, and handle complex situations with flexibility.

Through our training courses, we aim to “structure the thought” of the employees based on their role and position and towards the relevant skills they need. We choose not to explicitly guide them on exactly what they should do, which might limit their flexibility and performance. Rather, we aim to “stimulate” their minds on how to find their own solutions in the areas that truly matter to them and, of course, to their companies.

The structure and design of the programs, consisting of "modular units," are based on achieving measurable results—both qualitative and quantitative. Finally, we ensure personal coaching for each participant by limiting the number of participants per work group.

Innovation and R&D are core values of our culture. Therefore, it goes without saying that this is how we have learned to work, and this is how we will strive to work in the future. We recognize technological advancements, understand the changes brought by the introduction of AI, and aim to move forward accordingly.

At the same time, we understand that if we do not invest in technology and digitization ourselves, sooner or later, we will become obsolete. Thus, we have already started focusing our investments on this direction. Our current investments in innovation initially involve digitizing some of our services and simultaneously integrating AI. In this way, by the end of 2025, as we estimate, we will be able to offer to the international market, specialized HR assessment tools such as Culture Alignment, HR Audit, and Work-load Analysis in the form of SaaS. These are just the first of the tools we will present because, gradually, we will digitize more within the digital platforms we are preparing.

Along with the technological transformation, we are also working on customizing these digital services for various sectors. We are planning to launch these SaaS solutions specialized for specific industries like Maritime, Health, Banking, Education and so on, a feature that will provide increased added value for our customers. In short, we always keep being “alert” and strive to be as competitive as possible.

What: Charakis Research & Consulting Ltd

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Who: Michael Charakis is the Managing Director of Charakis Research & Consulting Ltd since 2003. Prior to this, Michael worked at the Bank of Cyprus (Greece) in the Strategic Planning as the Head of the General Manager’s Office, as well as a consultant at Deloitte & Touche. He has provided consulting services in Cyprus, Greece, and abroad across a wide range of sectors. Additionally, he has served as a project manager for several research programs as well as for over 5,000 hours of training programs. Finally, he is an NLP Certified Master Practitioner and a trainer himself in seminars on Strategy, Business Development, and Management.