Consulting firms step up tough push to oust staff

Already a subscriber?As McKinsey’s 3000 partners gathered this week in Copenhagen for their first in-person meeting in two years, the firm’s leadership was projecting a positive message and pointing to a consulting market that appears to be picking up after more than a year of sluggish growth.

In the past few years, these mid-year performance reviews have been something of an informal catch-up with managers, much less significant than the year-end reviews that take place around October. The return to a formal grading system at the halfway point of the year is a way to speed more staff towards the exits, the people said.

Bob Sternfels, McKinsey’s global managing partner, signalled the firm will be “back in balance” by the end of this year, according to people familiar with his message, implying more large-scale departures. One person said that the percentage of McKinsey consultants who leave in a typical year is around 20 per cent, but in 2023 it slid to 15 per cent.“We stopped pushing people to leave and had an enormous overhang of people.

Deloitte publishes a staff turnover figure in its annual report, which last year showed departures at their lowest level in a decade both globally and in the Americas. KPMG noted “capacity issues created by ongoing and historically low attrition” when it cut jobs in its US audit business in March. But that was achieved via a notable shift. In the eight years from 2012 to 2020, voluntary attrition was about half of the total at BCG, while in 2023 it was only one-third. In other words, two-thirds of those who left had been told to go.“We hire exceptional people with a promise of enormous personal growth, substantial development opportunities, and a very honest culture around feedback,” said Rich Lesser, BCG’s global chair.

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