The 2022 Best Firms to Work For: MorganFranklin

Client Industries Served: Financial Services, Aerospace & Defense, Technology, Media, Telecom, Retail & Consumer, Private Equity, Health Care & Lifesciences, Energy & Construction, Nonprofit

Consulting Service Lines: Accounting & Risk Advisory, Technology Enablement, Cybersecurity, Transaction Services, Strategic Transformation & Program Execution, Supply Chain & Retail Management

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

MorganFranklin Consulting leadership is committed to creating a great place to work by constantly being accessible, providing transparent communication, and putting our employee's safety and well-being first. This was even more true throughout the pandemic as we transitioned to fully remote work.

We embraced the MorganFranklin Way's Guiding Principles. The number one Guiding Principle, "Play for Each Other," helped us navigate these unprecedented times. We foster an environment that encourages and promotes teamwork, collaboration, and accountability. We act as we expect to be treated with appreciation, respect, responsiveness, and empathy. We became intentional about creating opportunities to connect and engage – more frequent firm-wide and practice meetings, more social connectivity virtual events (trivia, virtual yoga, coffee chats, practice drop-ins, and more). We made it a priority to understand the pulse of our people beyond their performance at work.

Our leadership also encouraged a culture of flexibility and balance, including embracing a "Work Your Way for Your Day" approach, recognizing that flexibility is both a right and an obligation.

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

The MorganFranklin Way (MFC Way) is our trademarked, unique approach that brings consistency to how we engage with our clients and one another. The MFC Way is fundamental to our culture of excellence. We embrace a set of Guiding Principles that encourage collaboration, diversity, empathy, client delivery excellence, and hard work, among other behaviors. Employee Experience: Our People & Culture Committee, diversity groups, focus/working groups, and regular highly-transparent Town Hall meetings demonstrate to our employees our commitment to developing and sustaining workplace excellence and employee satisfaction.

Our "Work your way, for your day" approach encourages tremendous flexibility regarding how, when, and where our people get their work done. While a consulting career can require a great deal of flexibility to meet client needs, it also offers a great deal of flexibility in return.

"Connect.Learn.Grow" was established as a monthly open forum/learning series where we spotlight a current event, topic, etc., important to our employees. This is a great way to get our employees together, learn together, and most importantly, keep the conversation going to advance understanding, diversity and inclusion, opening our minds to enable action and drive change.

Implemented "Thnks," a platform that allows leadership to send their employees an unexpected gesture of gratitude easily.

In the last 12 months, MorganFranklin has lowered billable hours baseline targets by level while increasing the target bonus opportunities for performance. Billable hours are an important metric for the financial performance of any professional services organization. Still, our leadership team intentionally chose not to create rewards for exceptionally high billable hours that would encourage individuals to overextend and burn out.

CMAG: What's unique about your firm? What sets it apart?

We are an entrepreneurial firm of diverse professionals passionate about delivering value to the clients we serve. The leadership of our organization also believes in developing our employees through education, training, and certifications so employees can maintain and improve their skills, feel challenged to grow, and pursue opportunities to advance their careers. We encourage a collaborative environment where we will match employees with a highly motivated team, dependent on the function or solution they will be working with.

Employees can typically get involved with the various company initiatives through groups like our People & Culture Committee, our Diversity & Inclusion Initiative, Veteran's Initiative, and our Women's Initiative to further engage employees and promote collaboration.

We leverage our People & Culture Committee, an annual engagement survey, and other ad hoc surveys and focus groups to ensure we hear the employee's voices and disseminate information timely throughout our ranks.

Our core-hours policy allows employees flexibility over how they manage their day-to-day responsibilities. Generous leave policies allow our team members to balance challenging and rewarding work with the time off they need to recharge and enjoy personal time.

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

We will continue to drive growth by providing unrivaled value to our existing client base, while also focusing on a multi-channel approach to adding new clients.

We will continue to integrate new team members from three acquisitions made in the last twelve months, including a cyber security practice, a supply chain planning practice and an SAP implementation practice.

We will continue refining our go-to-market strategy for the services we deliver to our clients, leveraging our team's amazing skills and capabilities to keep pace with the changing business environment.

CMAG: When you look at the remainder of this year and 2023, what excites you? What opportunities do you see in your future?

We are excited about the growing potential of our partnership with Vaco. We are three years into MorganFranklin's acquisition by Vaco. As Vaco's global consulting platform, we can collaborate, drive growth, and deliver unparalleled solutions across our client base. We accomplished a great deal in three years and are truly just getting started.

Our continued geographic expansion journey across the US. We went from 85% of the employee population living in the DC Metro area in 2018 to now only 43% of our team living in that region. In addition to DC metro, we now have strategic markets in NY Metro, Atlanta, the Carolinas, Nashville, Texas, Southern California, and the Bay Area. The next markets of focus include Denver, Philadelphia, and South Florida, among other regions.

We are excited about the multiple channels for business development that will enable consistent growth. Client referrals from Vaco represented 25% of our revenues in 2021, and we continue to drive significant growth from other partners in the market, including the PE community, the public accounting firms, and our own growing Business Development team.

We are also excited about investing further in industry specialization, enabling a growing managed services delivery model, and driving deeper into our areas of expertise, including accounting advisory, risk advisory, technology advisory, strategic transformation, and transaction support services.

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

It has an incredible impact on the firm. It recognizes the hard work that employees and leadership put in to support and enable our culture. It reinforces that our people embrace our guiding principles and underscores how we engage with colleagues, clients, and the market. Being named a Best Firm to Work For boosts employee morale, engagement, and excitement, increasing productivity and retention. It enhances our employee branding. In a hot candidate market, candidates want to work for firms that take pride in our culture and one that puts employees at the center of all we do. Clients can rest assured that they are working with a company that treats employees well and enables them to bring their best.

CMAG: Thank you, and congratulations.