How top consulting leaders are using benchmarking reports to close the gap between leadership perception and employee reality.
Every firm that participates in the Best Firms to Work For program receives a benchmarking report. What that report contains, and what the firms most committed to genuine improvement do with it, is the story most firm leaders haven't heard yet. Because your firm culture already has a voice. The only question is whether you're creating the conditions to hear it. We share perspectives from Grant Thornton Stax, Spaulding Ridge and SEI. Submissions close June 4.
This is the second of a three-part series about the value of building (and consistently improving) great firm culture.
There is a gap that exists inside most consulting firms – between what leadership believes is true about the employee experience and what employees actually experience. It is rarely a gap born of bad intentions. It is almost always a gap born of distance: the distance between the partner level and the associate level, between the firm's stated values and the daily reality of living inside them, between what gets communicated in all-hands meetings and what gets said among colleagues afterward.
Consulting Magazine's Best Firms to Work For program doesn't close that gap on its own. But it does something no internal survey, culture committee or leadership retreat can fully replicate: it measures it, benchmarks it against the profession and hands the results back to the firm in a form that is impossible to dismiss.
Every qualifying firm that participates receives a basic benchmarking report across all six evaluated categories. The question isn't just what it says. The question is what you do with it.
What Six Short Sections Actually Reveal
The survey covers Work/Life Balance, Client Engagement, Career Development, Compensation, Leadership and Culture. Taken individually, each category offers a reading on a specific dimension of the employee experience. Taken together, they produce something more valuable: a profile of where a firm's culture is working and where it isn't.
Leadership scores, for instance, frequently diverge from what firm leaders expect – not because employees have no faith in senior leadership, but because the experience of leadership often looks different at different levels of the organization. Career development scores reveal whether the firm's stated investment in professional growth is being felt on the ground. Culture scores surface whether the values on the website match the values in the room.
A benchmarking report doesn't just tell a firm where it scored. It tells a firm where it scored relative to every other qualifying firm in its size category. That context is what transforms a number into a signal – and a signal into a decision.
One additional factor shapes the quality of that signal: participation depth. Firms that exceed their response minimums don't just improve their standing — they generate richer, more statistically reliable data. The floor is enough to qualify. The ceiling is what makes the benchmarking report genuinely actionable.
What the Data Said When Nobody Was Spinning It
SEI has spent thirteen consecutive years on the honoree list with two No. 1 finishes. CEO Bill Gallagher has received more benchmarking reports than perhaps any other firm leader in the program's history, and is direct about what the data has delivered.
"A lot of it confirmed what we hoped was true. Our people feel connected to the work, to each other, and to the direction of the firm. That matters," Gallagher emphasized. "What stood out were the pockets where we weren't as consistent. Not broken, but not where we want to be. That's where the value is. It gave us clarity on where leadership needed to show up differently, communicate more directly, and remove friction. We've used that data to sharpen how we think about onboarding, career pathing, and day to day experience. Not as a one-time fix, but as an ongoing commitment."
That phrase – not as a one-time fix, but as an ongoing commitment – is worth focusing on. The firms that extract the most from this program are not the ones that enter once, review the report and file it away. They are the ones that treat each year's data as a chapter in a longer story about their organization.
Goran Gmitrovic, CEO of Outlook Tax & Advisory and the top ranked firm in 2025 boutique category in its very first year of participation, sees the same dynamic from a different vantage point:
Gmitrovic noted, "The profession is evolving quickly, expectations from employees are changing, and the benchmarking alone provides valuable perspective on where your firm stands relative to peers. Even beyond the recognition itself, the process creates important internal conversations that many firms otherwise never formally have."
When the Data Echoes Outside the Firm
Benchmarking reports tell a firm what its people are saying internally. What happens next –when that internal reality is validated externally through recognition – is where the program's second layer of value emerges.
Joseph Brownell is the Global Head of Marketing at Grant Thornton Stax which spent four consecutive years on the honoree list and the No. 2 small firm in 2025. Brownell has watched the recognition shape recruiting conversations in ways that no marketing asset could replicate.
"More applicants step into the process already familiar with the award, and it delivers instant credibility around our culture and the employee journey," said Brownell. "Within a crowded talent arena, third-party validation carries weight, particularly when it comes straight from employee voices. The striking bit is that candidates don't view this as simply another 'best places to work' recognition. They see the substance behind it: career growth, mentorship, accessible leadership, and the opportunity to do impactful work in an environment where people genuinely support one another."
Jay Laabs, CEO of Spaulding Ridge, which has spent seven consecutive years on the honoree list, frames the recognition's market value in terms that resonate with any midsize or growing firm navigating a competitive talent landscape.
Laabs commented,"Participating in the program helps level the playing field with larger firms, such as the Big Four, which often benefit from longstanding brand recognition. As a modern firm like Spaulding Ridge, we don't have that same legacy advantage, so having our name featured alongside theirs in a respected industry publication is especially valuable. We consistently hear from experienced professionals that seeing Spaulding Ridge on this list reinforces their interest in joining us, especially when they may not yet have direct experience with the firm."
The through line across all three observations is the same: the recognition carries weight because it didn't come from the firm's marketing department. It came from the firm's own people, and candidates know the difference.
Tracking Culture Over Time
For firms that participate year over year, the benchmarking report takes on an additional dimension. A single year's data is a snapshot. Multiple years of data become a trend line, and a trend line tells a firm whether the investments it is making in culture are actually moving the needle.
Brownell describes how Grant Thornton Stax approaches the program not as an annual award cycle but as a recurring mechanism for organizational listening. "The program offers much more than a trophy, it provides a real opportunity to listen to your people and to track your culture as time moves forward, adjusting with clear insight from year to year. Workplaces keep shifting fast, and employee expectations evolve with them. Returning to the program equips firms with sharp insight into what works, where gaps remain, and how staff feel about the organization today."
That longitudinal view, that culture measured not as a fixed state but as a living condition, is what separates the firms that use this program most effectively from those that treat it as a one-time exercise. We'll close the series with the firms that have built that view over the longest stretch of time.
HOW TO ENTER
The 2026 Best Firms to Work For survey remains open through June 4, 2026. Every qualifying firm receives a benchmarking report across all six evaluated categories — regardless of whether it earns a place on the honoree list. That data belongs to your firm. The only way to get it is to participate.
Begin the survey here. Firms that exceed their response minimums generate stronger, more actionable data. The floor qualifies you. The ceiling is what makes the report worth reading.
Coming Next — Part Three: "Firm Culture Is Not a Credential. It's a Commitment."
The firms that have never stopped entering. What thirteen years of consecutive participation looks like — and what the firms that keep coming back have learned that the firms sitting on the sideline haven't. The final installment of the Best Firms to Work For series, with Bill Gallagher of SEI, Jay Laabs of Spaulding Ridge and Joseph Brownell of Grant Thornton Stax.
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