Had you been in our editorial offices a few weeks back, you would have seen a lot of bleary-eyed people walking the halls. That's because it's Best Firms to Work For time, and that means editors and analysts have been combing through data, charts, spreadsheets—everything but hanging chads—to determine the 2008 Best Firms to Work For. This year, however, the task was a little more difficult. First off, the sheer number or responses grew, up another 45 percent from last year to about 13,000. That's a lot of data and decimal points to sift through. And with 205 firms participating, that's a heck of a lot of firm contacts to keep track of. Fortunately (for me, at least) the managing editor, Jacqueline Durett, handles most of that heavy lifting.
The task was also more labor intensive because we launched our first Best Small Firms to Work For ranking this year. In previous years, any firm with fewer than 200 billable consultants wasn't eligible. But this year, we allowed firms with as few as 20 consultants to participate.
So, what did we learn? Well, for one there are a lot of small firms doing big things. We learned that, based on the final data sets and scores, it was more difficult to make the small firms ranking. Small firms tended to score better in the areas of Culture, Work/Life Balance and Job Satisfaction, however, they weren't dwarfed by the bigger firms as much as one might expect in the areas of Career Development and Compensation & Benefits. In those areas, small firms held their own. Morale is higher at small firms (88 percent to 80 percent), travel is lighter, (1.6 days to 2.0 days), and consultants at small firms believe their work is having an impact on clients more often (59 percent to 43 percent) and more often meeting client expectations (60 percent to 42 percent). Is that absolute gospel? Probably not, but consultants may be more intimate with the clients, the work and the results at those smaller firms. And remember, this survey measures employee perceptions as much as anything else.
And one final note about perceptions: Apparently, everyone's underpaid—or, at least, thinks they are underpaid. Average satisfaction scores varied greatly across the six areas the survey measures. When asked about firm culture, for instance, a firm scoring a 4.3 out of possible 5.0 might fall near the bottom of the pack. But that same 4.3 wins by a landslide when it comes to a question on compensation. Of course, it's all relative when the results are measured against all of the other firms. But, it's interesting nonetheless.
Joseph Kornik
Editor-in-Chief
jkornik@consultingmag.com
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