Firm: West Monroe Partners Headquarters: Chicago Billable Consultants: 220 Who knew? Employees can put money in a charity bank in order to wear jeans on Fridays

This five-and-a-half-year-old firm was founded by a group of former Arthur Andersen employees under the  direction of Dean Fischer, who now serves as West Monroe Partners’ president, and Kevin McCarty, who leads the company’s enterprise solutions and merger and acquisition practices.

“When the Andersen thing kind of imploded, there was a group of us who really felt very passionately about the kind of a culture and the set of values that we wanted to get back to from some our early days at Andersen,” Fischer says, adding that the firm emerged from “a core passion about going back and having fun again doing consulting work.”

But West Monroe’s target client was a departure from the Andersen ideal. Fischer says that while he understands that the big dollars are in the larger firms, he knew the middle market was where he and his people needed to be. “Not only was it a market that was under served, but it was also a market that our people enjoyed serving because they learn a lot, they’re exposed to higher-level executives in the company, and many of the things we do are very important to them.” Now the full-service consulting firm, which boasts specialization that range from bios-tech to financial services to insurance, has a client list that ranges from the likes of Merrill Lynch to Stop & Shop to JCPenney.

Growth at the firm demonstrates that Fischer’s plan has paid off, as he explains that West Monroe has soared from 56 to 220 billable consultants in just two years and recently opened offices in both New York and Dallas.

What’s the secret? According to Fischer, it’s the firm’s focus on its people. Without the red tape one might find at a larger firm, Fischer says, employees can take on projects that might otherwise face insurmountable internal obstacles. To that point, Fischer relayed the story of a 32-year-old employee named Marc who has been struggling with a rare degenerative lung-related illness and recently underwent a double-lung transplant.

He said that in April, employees decided to create a paid-time-off bank for Marc, and through their efforts, accumulated 52 weeks of donated time to give to Marc, who does not have long-term disability insurance. “It’s the kind of thing that just shows what’s going on here. When you get the right kind of culture, all of this kind of stuff just happens to take care of itself.”

“We pay a lot of attention to our gene pool.  We look for good people, and good people will look for an employer or a company to work for where they do good things.” —Dean Fischer President,  West Monroe Partners

Carrie Camino, a Chicago-based West Monroe consultant, has been with the firm for five months, and in that brief time has quickly discovered the same altruistic environment Fischer describes. “We truly support one another,” she says emphatically. “We are all working toward the greater good of the company.” And, she adds, that type of supportive environment is vital to fuel success. “To really help people be creative and innovate,” she adds, “you have to make sure there aren’t going to be horrible recriminations for being wrong.”

And the charitable nature of West Monroe employees spreads from their cubicles to their communities. The company is heavily involved with organizations in the cities where it has offices, such as Chicago and Seattle. This notion of corporate responsibility isn’t a one-time effort, evidenced by the fact that Fischer says he hires employees who will fit in with and continue this humanitarian culture. “We pay a lot of attention to our gene pool. We look for good people, and good people will look for an employer or a company to work for where they do good things.”