17 July 2025
Founded by sisters Helen Silver-MacMahon and Claire Sanders, the consultancy is dedicated to helping organisations understand and improve the human side of work.
At Being Human Consulting, we believe that people are the heart of every organisation. Regardless of the profession, success is not just about technical expertise. It is about how people communicate, collaborate and manage the human challenges of work. That is where we come in.
Using the discipline of Human Factors as our foundation, we apply scientific insights about how the human mind and body behave and interact. This helps us design environments that support both technical skills and human strengths, maximising performance and well-being.
Being Human Consulting was founded by sisters Helen Silver-MacMahon and Claire Sanders.
Together, we combined our expertise to create a consultancy dedicated to helping organisations understand and improve the human side of work. We also integrate insights from our How to Thrive podcast, offering practical, evidence-based strategies to sustain well-being in high-pressure roles.
We offer veterinary (and legal) professionals human skills training and consultancy to improve well-being and enhance patient safety. Our human-centred approach is what makes us unique.
At Being Human Consulting, our human factors training helps veterinary and legal teams understand the human behaviours and limitations that influence performance. While human factors is well established in industries like aviation and health care, we believe it is just as crucial in professional environments where the stakes are high and the work is complex. Our training helps teams understand why errors occur, improve situational awareness, make better decisions under pressure and communicate more effectively.
We also support organisations to design systems and working environments that enable safe and efficient practice. By embedding human factors principles, teams can reduce risk, improve outcomes and build a safer, more resilient workplace.
Effective leadership is essential for shaping both the culture and performance of any team. At Being Human Consulting, our leadership development programmes focus on helping leaders build emotional intelligence, enabling them to understand and manage their own emotions as well as those of others.
We guide leaders in giving and receiving feedback constructively, navigating change and conflict with confidence, and fostering psychologically safe environments where team members feel valued and supported. For us, leadership is not simply about holding authority, but about empowering others to thrive. Through practical tools and strategies, we equip leaders to inspire, support, and bring out the best in their teams.
High-performing teams are created through deliberate efforts to build strong relationships and open communication. At Being Human Consulting, we work closely with teams to assess and enhance their culture, helping them identify areas for growth and improvement.
We support teams in strengthening collaboration and cohesion by clarifying roles and expectations, ensuring everyone understands their responsibilities and how they contribute to shared goals. By fostering shared values and building trust, we help teams develop a solid foundation that boosts productivity, lifts morale and leads to better outcomes for clients and patients alike.
Veterinary and legal professionals often face high levels of stress and are at significant risk of burnout. At Being Human Consulting, we offer support to help individuals and organisations recognise the early signs of burnout before they escalate.
We work with teams to develop effective stress management strategies and build resilience both on a personal and organisational level. Our approach encourages the establishment of healthy work habits and clear boundaries to promote sustainable working practices. Additionally, we help organisations create cultures that prioritise and value well-being, ensuring that staff feel supported, balanced and equipped to thrive in their demanding roles.
Our flagship event “How to Thrive” is an event that offers the opportunity to learn the human skills that we need to thrive, not just survive, in the veterinary profession. Sessions are designed to address the key challenges that we currently face and to empower individuals and teams with the knowledge and understanding required to enhance wellbeing and optimise performance.
The theme of How to Thrive ’25 is Listening to understand. With morning workshops dedicated to learning to listen to yourself, to enable you to develop magnetic confidence and understand what you need to thrive and afternoon workshops focused on listening to others and navigating difficult conversations.
This day will help you…
We also deliver engaging talks and workshops, covering a range of important topics. These include Human Factors and how understanding them can reduce errors, the essentials of effective leadership, and building psychological safety within teams. We help veterinary teams understand the importance of civility in the workplace and support the improvement of communication and teamwork. Our popular Civility in Action course empowers individuals to lead civility in practice.
We specialise in working with:
These sectors operate in high-pressure, high-stakes environments where human performance matters. We help organisations improve outcomes by focusing on the people doing the work.
Human skills like empathy, communication and emotional awareness are essential for creating safe, sustainable and high-performing workplaces. Investing in the human side of work results in better outcomes, improved well-being and stronger team cultures.
At Being Human Consulting, our approach is grounded in evidence-based, research-backed Human Factors principles to ensure the highest quality of support. We tailor our solutions to fit the unique needs of each organisation, recognising that every workplace faces its own challenges and opportunities.
Our focus is always practical, delivering strategies and tools that can be applied effectively in real-world settings. We work collaboratively, partnering closely with your team to co-create meaningful change. Above all, we are empathetic, appreciating that human change takes time, patience and ongoing support to be sustainable and successful.
Being Human Consulting, founded by Helen Silver-MacMahon and Claire Sanders, helps veterinary and legal professionals build safer, healthier and more effective workplaces. Through human skills training, leadership development, civility training, team support, well-being programmes and initiatives like How to Thrive, we enable organisations to strengthen their most valuable asset: their people.
When organisations embrace the full potential of their people, including their human strengths and limitations, extraordinary results follow.
