Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. is paying its underperforming staffers to embark on the job hunt.
Instead of taking on new projects, managers at the consultancy’s U.K. offices will receive nine months of pay and continue to have access to its career-coaching services while looking for a new position, London-based newspaper The Times reported over the weekend. There are some strings attached, however: If managers don’t find another job at the end of the nine months, they have to leave the firm.
The opportunity is also on offer at its U.S. offices, sources told the publication, but it’s not known if there are any pay or duration differences between the two programs.
A McKinsey spokesperson told The Times that the program will allow employees to “grow into leaders, whether they stay at McKinsey or continue their careers elsewhere” and that the actions are part of an “ongoing effort to ensure our performance management and development approach is as effective as possible, and to do so in a caring and supportive way.”
McKinsey did not immediately respond to Quartz’s request for comment.
This is an apparent expansion of the firm’s “counseled to leave” approach, a practice reserved for underperforming employees wherein the company keeps the staffer off of client projects and recommends they look for a new employer.
In the last several months, the firm gave 3,000 of its consultants a “concerns” rating over unsatisfactory performance, Bloomberg News reported last month. The rating gives staffers roughly three months to improve the performance, placing them on the “counseled to leave” program. If they’re not able to turn their performance around in that time, they are at risk of being put on the chopping block.
McKinsey has grown its staff size to about 45,000 employees — an increase of 60% from 28,000 employees in 2018.
Layoffs at major consulting firms have become almost run-of-the-mill as they try to pare back their bloated headcounts following a pandemic-era hiring craze. In March 2023, McKinsey culled 1,400 jobs in a rare — but sweeping — headcount reduction, Bloomberg reported at the time.
Advising on new technologies, simplifying supply chain networks, helping to remove inefficiencies in workflow plans, identifying creative ways to mitigate risk—these are just a handful of the services that management consultants have been providing to businesses since the consulting field was invented around the turn of the twentieth century. Even as businesses have continued to innovate over the years, “in many ways, the problems of businesses haven’t changed; it’s the complexity of the problems, the environment in which the problems occur, and all the tools that are available to solve them that are constantly changing,” says Fred Pursell, adjunct professor of consulting at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.
Regardless of the circumstances, however, consultants still operate within a tried-and-true framework, which Pursell likens to the way doctors approach their patients: “Doctors of business,” he says, must diagnose each client’s problems—which requires a broad understanding of the industry landscape as well as an assessment of each business’s symptoms and health history—and prescribe a remediation plan based on the client’s desired outcomes.
It’s not an easy feat but the consultancies on this year’s list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms rise to the challenge again and again. How do we know? For the ninth year in a row, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to ask industry insiders which management consulting firms are leading the pack. To do so, we conducted two surveys from mid-November 2023 through mid-January 2024: the first, a peer-to-peer survey of more than 1,100 partners and executives at management consulting firms; the other, a survey of more than 1,200 clients who had worked with management consulting firms in the past four years. Both groups evaluated consulting firms within their areas of knowledge across 16 different industries (such as healthcare, consumer goods and insurance) and 16 different functional areas (including human resources, operations, and innovation and growth).
All responses were combined into a scoring model, and the consulting firms with the most recommendations in each category were given star ratings: five stars for “very frequently recommended,” four stars for “frequently recommended” and three stars for “recommended.” The final list features 190 companies that together received 904 star ratings.
For the third year in a row, both Deloitte and Bain & Company received the most recommendations, with 32 star ratings each. Accenture, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and McKinsey & Company followed closely behind, with 31 star ratings each. Trailing those were PwC, with 29 star ratings; IBM Consulting, with 26; and Ernst & Young Global Limited, with 25.
What each of these top-performing consultancies do best, says Pursell, is offer their clients an objective view of the market environment while providing deep industry knowledge. And Christina Bieniek, deputy CEO of Deloitte Consulting, says it’s these qualities that distinguish the work of her company. As professionals who have worked as bankers, retailers, manufacturers, scientists, doctors and nurses themselves, Deloitte’s consultants bring years of experience not just in consulting but also in their respective areas of expertise, Bieniek says, affording them an “intimate understanding of a client’s business and specific industry.”
Alicia Pittman, managing director, senior partner and global people chair at BCG, says that one of the things that sets BCG apart is the firm’s ability to customize solutions for each client. “We really take the time to blend together best practices from within industry with what’s really right for this client at this point in their history,” Pittman says. BCG’s teams also take care, she says, to consult with employees at all levels of their organization rather than just working with leadership. That means “sitting with the junior people on the team and asking what they are seeing on the ground,” and then incorporating those insights into the firm’s recommendations.
Furthermore, says Pittman: “We make sure that we’re not just giving our clients ideas and actions, but actually enabling them to do something different, and drive things themselves when we leave.” This may involve “building a new team capability for our clients, operating it alongside them for some time, and then transferring it to their ownership.”
At GE HealthCare, which earned a 5-star rating in the health and life sciences sector, consultants help clinicians and healthcare systems bring new modalities to patients. For example, GE HealthCare is advising clients on theranostics—a combination of therapeutics and diagnostics that involves using molecular imaging to both diagnose and treat cancer, says Yassine Bhija, president of the company’s enterprise solutions in the United States and Canada. “GE HealthCare and our partners’ deep understanding and expertise can help our customers navigate the complexities of delivering theranostics care sustainably,” she says.
Of course, when it comes to innovative technology, consulting firms across all sectors are attuned to the siren song of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). “GenAI was not just the most notable—but a tectonic—shift this past year, as it is the constant and pervasive topic throughout our client discussions,” says Bieniek. “Those discussions started with organizations wanting to understand the benefit. Fast-forward to now, and those conversations are about their strategy, data needs and deployment. As a result, our teams are helping our clients navigate the GenAI revolution, outlining effective use cases for this transformational technology, and helping them scale GenAI across all areas of their businesses.”
Similarly, BCG’s consultants are guiding clients on GenAI at every level, says Pittman. “We’re doing board presentations on what you can make of GenAI, we are supporting marketing and commercial teams on how to create new businesses out of GenAI, and we are supporting HR operations teams and back-office processing centers on how to use GenAI to create new efficiencies,” she says. BCG even has its own internal GenAI enablement network, which consists of hundreds of people across the company who volunteered to be become “black belts” in GenAI, says Pittman. These newly minted in-house experts now mentor their BCG colleagues—getting them up to speed on GenAI for themselves and for their clients.
But for those in the consulting field who worry that GenAI may soon replace human consultants altogether, Pursell says there will always be a need for people. “Consulting is still a people business. It’s about relationships,” he says. “As long as the customer is a human being, there’s a very important role for a human relationship.”
For the full list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms, click here.
Methodology
Forbes’ list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms 2024, is based on two surveys conducted by market research company Statista from mid-November 2023 and mid-January 2024: a peer-to-peer survey of more than 1,100 partners and executives at management consulting firms; and a survey of more than 1,200 clients who had worked with management consulting firms in the past four years. Both groups evaluated consulting firms within their areas of knowledge across 16 different industries (such as healthcare, consumer goods and insurance) and 16 different functional areas (including human resources, operations, and innovation and growth).
All responses were combined into a scoring model that also included last year’s results to assess the consulting firms’ performance over time. Recommendations from the management consultants were weighted more heavily than those from clients; this year’s recommendations were given more weight than last year’s. The consulting firms with the most recommendations in each category were given star ratings: five stars for “very frequently recommended,” four stars for “frequently recommended” and three stars for “recommended.” The final list highlights 190 companies.
As with all Forbes lists, companies do not pay any fee to be considered. For questions about this list, please contact listdesk [at] Forbes.com.
The MBB: McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group.
The best people, the best projects, the best pay. The widest practices and deepest resources. Expertise and prestige. Influence and impact. Alumni and clients who shape industry and policy. Opportunity and possibilities galore for ambitious graduates.
Traditionally, the MBB sat atop of the Vault Consulting 50 Ranking – the gold standard for measuring which consulting firms possess the best industry reputations and provide the best experiences to employees. In 2024, the M is missing from the MBB in the Vault Consulting 50 Ranking.
MISSING THE MCKINSEY MYSTIQUE
Yes, Bain & Company has ranked #1 for the 4th consecutive year in 2024. However, the result feels a bit hollow with McKinsey & Company missing from the list. The Boston Consulting Company again finished as the runner-up – a spot it has claimed for 5 of the last 7 years in the Vault Consulting 50. That said, McKinsey’s absence has created a vacuum – one filled by Alvarez & Marsal, a firm that ranked 22nd just four years ago. ghSMART, which finished 20th in 2020, clawed its way to 4th in 2024. At the same time, Oliver Wyman, a Top 10 stalwart which was unranked last year, returned to snag the 5th spot.
Talk about a memorable ranking!
What happened to McKinsey? That’s hard to say. Vault itself has directed readers to its participation policy: “Some years, firms choose not to participate, for whatever reason, which may explain why they don’t appear in the Consulting 50 or Quality of LIfe Rankings. Firms may also be excluded from these rankings if they participate but don’t meet the minimums participant counts or don’t score highly enough on Quality of Life. As far as the Practice Area Rankings, all firms, regardless if they distribute the survey internally or not, indicate to us which practice areas they want to be considered for, and firms may change their selections from year to year.”
Indeed, McKinsey was sliding downward in 2023, posting lower scores in every Quality of Work and Life dimension against the previous year. That’s not to say McKinsey’s presence wasn’t felt in the 2024 Vault Consulting 50. The firm still ranked 1st in Prestige according to competing firms’ consultants. Even more, McKinsey was listed as the top consulting firm in nearly two-thirds of the practice areas measured by Vault! In other words, McKinsey may be enduring a down cycle, but the firm has the fundamentals in place to quickly return to the top.
“The firm is doing a great job of constantly reinventing itself and innovating in areas of growth (for example digital and sustainability),” writes one anonymous McKinsey consultant surveyed by Vault. “It can be sometimes slower than first movers but tends to innovate in a thoughtful manner and has a strong track record of success with innovations (transformation, operations, design, sustainability).”
THE MEASURES THAT MATTER
This year’s results were released on February 7th, representing the 18th year of the Vault Consulting 50. The ranking is produced by Vault. An infobase platform, Vault collects employee reviews to produce rankings and company profiles in the banking, consulting, legal, and accounting sectors. In addition, Vault delivers career advice in everything from internships to employment, as well as two dozen career guides that cover industries (including hospitality, real estate, and media and entertainment), job hunting (resumes, networking, and interviewing), and education (college readiness, graduate school, MBA).
This fall, Vault surveyed consultants from over a hundred top firms, ultimately surveying 8,000 North American consultants. Using a scale ranging from 1 to 10 – where 10 is the highest possible score – Vault had consultants evaluate their own firm across 19 Quality of Work and Life dimensions and 6 Diversity measures. Using this same scale, consultants rated their peer firms for Prestige. Overall, consulting firms are evaluated against 7 of the 19 Quality of Work and Life dimensions (plus Prestige). Vault also publishes separate rankings for Prestige, Boutique Firms, and Practice Areas.
These rankings are designed to measure what matters most to consultants. Like last year, Vault notes that Culture ranks as the top priority for consultants, garnering a 40% share of first place votes. Beyond Culture, the survey sample also listed Prestige, Work-Life balance, and Practice Strength among their other priorities. At the same time, Satisfaction and Career Progress continue to gain momentum among consultants in Vault’s recent survey, which aligns with the previous year’s result.
Click on the links below for in-depth analysis and ranking tables for each area of the Vault Consulting 50.
WHY BAIN RANKED #1 AND BCG RANKED #2 (Analysis)
VAULT CONSULTING 50 RANKING (Analysis Plus Table)
FIRM PRESTIGE RANKING (Analysis Plus Table)
BOUTIQUE FIRM RANKING (Analysis Plus Table)
BAIN-MCKINSEY-BCG HISTORICAL COMPARISON (Compensations, Training, Management, Outlook, etc.)
QUALITY OF EMPLOYMENT AND LIFE RANKINGS
DIVERSITY (Women, LGBTQ+, Military, etc.)
PRACTICE AREA RANKINGS (Energy, Finance, Management, Strategy, etc.)
HISTORICAL VAULT CONSULTING 50 SCORES (Analysis Plus Table)
Next Page: Why Bain Ranked #1