The 2021 Best Firms to Work For: North Highland

Client Industries Served:  Energy, Entertainment, Financial Services/Banking, Healthcare, Hospitality, Insurance, Packaged Goods, Retail, State Government, Transportation, Utilities

Consulting Service Lines: Multiple service lines

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

At North Highland, we stayed true to our roots and focused on what has made us a desirable place to work until now. We have always put people at the heart of every decision, delivering a truly people-first experience for our employees and when creating value for our clients. So, when the pandemic hit, without question we remained laser-focused on what mattered - we listened to our employees, ensured flexibility in our decision-making and were willing to try new things.

The voice of our employees sits at the forefront of our culture, we encourage open and candid feedback, and throughout the last year we carried out regular engagement and pulse surveys of our people, and, more importantly, we acted on what they told us. Even following such volatile times, our engagement scores are some of the highest we have ever seen. Since the pandemic, we have kept our promise to allow our employees to grow through their choices, offering flexibility around remote working and providing lots of opportunities to upskill. No matter what's happening in the wider world, we'll always continue to look for ways to improve our employee experience.

As for our clients, our position as the leading Change and Transformation consultancy gave us the opportunity to do the type of work, we love to do at the height of the pandemic. It felt like we pressed fast forward on our thinking, and quickly had permission to try out new solutions that clients previously were more cautious about but are now eager to try. We continued to grow and do impactful work – receiving many recognitions from industry analysts and awards for our outstanding expertise, exceptional people, and impactful projects, so this has helped us build our reputation among the industry's Best Firms.

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

We're the leaders in Change and Transformation and as such, have operated with a philosophy of 'always-on change' for a long time now. Pre-pandemic we had a three-year plan to embed change and transformation into everything we do as a business. The pandemic helped us accelerate that! We thought, "why wait?" - and spearheaded a pivot of our operating model, deploying agile ways of working across our entire organization, creating a culture that truly embraces business agility. As part of the pivot, we also made strategic organizational changes to strengthen our focus on removing silos, driving improved collaboration and integration across our teams.  Other key initiatives included:

• Reinvigorated our Ways of Working (the WoW Factor). The WoW Factor is a new way of working program, designed to maintain our enviable culture with meaningful changes such as 'Wellness Wednesdays' and new norms for meeting behaviors. These have been widely successful. So much so, that when sharing our experience with clients, we've seen some of them adopting the same norms.
• Introduced a new employee platform to help our people easily reward and recognize each other and foster a broader connection to the firm – particularly important with the workforce being largely remote.
• Implemented a new wellness program focused on both the mental and physical health of our employees.
• Recognized the critical importance of particular skills development and career pathing (i.e., Agile / enterprise business agility coaching); and invested heavily in firm- wide training for all of our people - knowing these skillsets are no longer a 'nice to have' but necessary for effective consultants
• Invested in more digital collaboration tools and trained our people to use them within our firm and when working with clients
• Expanded our Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) approach, updated our I&D charter, embedded I&D within firm-wide goals, and put it at the forefront of all firm-wide discussions. We committed to doing more with our active and passionate ERGs, and engaged them in our external 'Make Change Happen' client- facing campaign and events

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

Collaboration and culture are two areas that truly set the experience or working for us and with us apart.

At North Highland, we have built a firm that is silo-less. Meaning, we are all about collaboration and integration. This is what allows us to work as one team, with complete transparency, and it shows up in the way we engage with our clients. There is no us and them. We're committed to action, driving results, and doing it in a way that feels like we're part of their team. We're never going to be happy unless we leave our clients in a better place than when we started. Lasting change – after all isn't just a vague pledge.

Then we have our vision to have the most enviable culture on the planet, which underpins everything our firm stands for and what our people believe in. Traditional consulting terms can't really describe North Highland. Promises are good but fulfilling them is better.  Whatever your perspective, background, tastes or interests, we want to be the most enviable culture on the planet, inspiring employees to reach their highest potential. We were able to really lean into this promise over the past year and support our people in ways that were important to them.

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

First and foremost, it's about talent.

Our firm's vision and strategy are working. And we want to keep moving forward at a strong pace – with the continued growth and impactful work we are seeing today. That consistent growth and the success of our teammates which drove it has opened promotion opportunities for our people – and this year so far, we've been able to promote 20% of our workforce. But to keep this pace up we need even more exceptional people to join our team. Right now, we're in a very disruptive labor market and so we are hyper-focused on attracting and retaining the best talent.

For our employees, we're committed to offering opportunities for further growth. That means that we will continue to upskill them, support their career paths and choices, and build a workplace environment that reflects what we've learned in these last 18 months. We will be working through the ongoing uncertainty linked to the pandemic, providing people with a safe and collaborative workplace experience for those who choose to be on-site and support those working remotely. It's also vital that we continue to serve our clients effectively in a hybrid model, generating growth for our firm, and delivering great work so that we start 2022 strong.

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

There's a lot that excites us right now. While it's still an uncertain time, from a business point of view it feels like the whole world tilted on its axis towards us! Our purpose is "to make change happen, helping businesses transform, with people at the heart of every decision." Most organizations have realized they are not well prepared or equipped to change and transform effectively, and we are in a sweet spot to be able to help them.

Now more than ever, as we continue learning from the pandemic and looking at what the future has in store for businesses, there's a huge opportunity for our clients to think differently. They have been forced to question the ways they traditionally operated, how their workforce can be most productive and how they serve their customers effectively in new and adapted ways – and while it's been a challenge, it's truly an exciting time for those who embrace change.

Speaking of change, we've hosted a series of 'Make Change Happen' webinars over the past 18 months with leaders, offering guidance on embracing different perspectives. Leaders from hospitality, retail, media, finance, life sciences, healthcare, transportation, and others have shared what they are doing differently, and how their organizations are developing a new mindset and culture to be bold and take risks. Thinking differently and creative solutioning is something North Highland consultants are passionate about and presents a huge opportunity for us to help clients make an impact.

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

This award certainly gives us confidence – to be recognized for the things we do well and to know our people feel proud to work at North Highland. We won't deny that it's rewarding when someone else to tells you that you're doing a good job; we're human and humans seek validation. While we hear and appreciate this, we'll also continue to learn and aspire to do even more to make North Highland a great place to work. Importantly, it also gives our clients confidence that they are partnering with people who really care about where they work – and are here because they want to be. The way we treat our people is so important – when our people are working hard and happy at the same time, we know our clients recognize this too and therein lies the secret to the strong sense of partnership across our people, clients and Firm!