The 2021 Best Firms to Work For: Boston Consulting Group

Client Industries Served: Virtually All

Consulting Service Lines: Functional: People & Organization, Technology Advantage, Operations, Marketing, Sales & Pricing, Corporate Finance & Strategy, Global Advantage, Knowledge, Social Impact; Industry: Financial Institutions, Public Sector, Industrial Goods, Health Care, Technology, Media & Telecom, Principal Investors & Private Equity, Consumer, Energy, Insurance

CMAG: How would you say you've managed to stay among the industry's Best Firms to Work For amid these unprecedented times?

I am so proud of all we have accomplished in the past year – pivoting and adapting to new ways of working, continuing to deliver value for our clients, and supporting each other and having each other's backs. Our resilience through this unprecedented time is truly a testament to the collection of incredible talent we have, who both care for one another and want each other to excel, through teaming and collaboration. I believe we have some of the best people to figure out tough problems. We also have an inclusive, collaborative culture built over 50 years. There are many elements of our culture, but first and foremost is humility. This is central to creating value for our clients and strengthening the fabric of our firm. Even as our expertise grows across more sectors and practices and knowledge areas, we never forget, what we do not know is as important as what we do know.

This is our competitive advantage. This is how we:

• Bring insight to light
• Help our clients thrive in uncertain times
• Continue to support one another

Our humility pushes us to team across every level of our firm as one BCG—our core consultants, digital teams, designers and business services colleagues—and actively engage, listen, and learn together, for ourselves and our clients.

CMAG: Were there any specific programs or initiatives (internal or external) that contributed to you being a Best Firm to Work For?

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, we continued to support our people and introduced more flexibility into our work-life proposition. Over the past year, we have designed several initiatives to enhance flexibility to help all individuals and teams thrive and create better work-life balance. For example, we:

• Offered $1000 in covid-support stipend to help employees manage more effectively through remote and hybrid working models
• Gave consulting staff 180,000 hotel points to celebrate return to client travel
• Introduced five additional days off in 2020 and seven in 2021, including a new permanent holiday in our US offices on Juneteenth
• Launched COVID LOA20, a FlexTime initiative that allowed consulting staff to go on leave of absence at 20% pay during the first eight months of the pandemic
• And many more

CMAG: What is unique about your firm? What sets it apart?

At BCG it is important to us that our culture carries on from one generation to the next, and the next. One of the pillars of our culture is transparency – telling clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. We value honesty, rigor, and directness. Our culture fosters discussion and engagement. Transparency enables us to:

• Bring up complicated issues openly
• Put hard data on the table
• Spark the right conversations
• And make necessary, if difficult, decisions

Another of those pillars is shared accountability and transparency. Our Managing Directors and Partners are directly responsible for the firm, we are accountable to each other, and to our staff to ensure we do great work for our clients, lead our teams well, and stay true to our values and purpose. We are accountable for the future of BCG but do not get a free pass. We are each evaluated by a broad set of our peers with full transparency and a rich set of data including, quite importantly, anonymous feedback, from our peers and the teams we manage.

Our hope is by living our values, leading with integrity, and being proud of the impact we deliver, we will each individually, and as a group make the right choices and deliver on our purpose – to unlock the potential of those who advance the world.

CMAG: What's the top priority over the next 6 to 12 months?

At BCG, our purpose is to unlock the potential of those who advance the world. This purpose statement is our guiding principle for everything we do with our people and clients – and it is impossible to achieve without diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI will continue to be a priority for BCG around the globe. In the last year, we have:

• Publicly announced six actions to fight racial injustice in the US
• Published our first public DEI report, sharing our DEI data and our actions, publicly
• Internally, we launched our monthly Racial Equity Engagement Series, which brings the DEI conversation to the forefront across NA. Initially focusing on the Black experience the series has also brought Latinx, Asian, LGBTQ, Indigenous, and Neurodivergent leaders to share their stories with BCG

We are also investing in the mental health of our staff and prioritizing coming together safely. This continues to be a challenge considering the ongoing uncertainty around COVID, but we know that connecting safely in person is critical for the well being of our people.

CMAG: When you look at the remainder of this year and 2022, what excites you? What opportunities do you see in your markets?

Even before COVID-19, I believe BCG is the epitome of a flexible workplace. What makes BCGers great is not about WHERE we do the work – it is about how we:

• Build better teams
• Learn and develop one another
• Innovate to create the best solutions for our clients and our business
• And still, find a sustainable balance between our work and personal lives

As we come out of the pandemic, I am most excited about our new hybrid teaming models across client sites, our offices, and our homes, which will enable even more flexibility for our teams. These teaming models will not only help us serve our clients better, but also enhance flexibility to help individuals and teams thrive, promote community and affiliation, and help us achieve our carbon reduction goals. We recognize that every individual is unique, and so we are not prescriptive on what your working model will look like. It will vary by client, by team, by project, and by you. We are also exploring piloting and rolling out technology to enable hybrid teaming across BCG: new "Digital Team Room" tools, 360⁰ follow-me cameras, case team kits, VR, etc. All will help maximize experience equality in a hybrid environment.

CMAG: What impact do you think being a Best Firm to Work For has on the firm? Employees? Clients?

We are honored to be recognized as the #1 Best Firm to Work for the eighth consecutive year. We see this recognition by others in the industry as helpful in demonstrating our ongoing commitment to recruits, clients, industry partners, and the communities where we live and work. It is also an opportunity to both celebrate what's working and to learn from others in our industry – a useful signal that our client work and unique culture are central to everything we do. It's clear that every distinguished firm on this list shares a commitment to both delivering value for our clients, and to becoming exceptional workplaces that develop great people.