Each year, Consulting Magazine identifies the best firms to work for in the consulting profession. The rankings are based on responses to survey questions taken by a firm’s own consultants. Scores are measured against all qualifying firms. The annual survey ranks employee satisfaction in the categories of culture, career development, client engagement, compensation & benefits and firm leadership.

Veritas is proud to be named one of the 2021 Best Small Firms to Work For. For a list of this year’s honorees, click here.

This year’s changes and challenges shifted priorities for our company and employees. What made us different in the past is still true. However, certain attributes carry more weight in our new environment. While we didn’t have access to the answers to the survey, we asked our employees what they valued most about Veritas in this new world. Flexibility, transparency and collaboration were the three most common themes brought up by employees. Here are some of the things we have done to make sure our employees’ needs in these areas were met.

Flexibility

A flexible work environment has always been a core characteristic of Veritas. After all, we are consultants. By nature, we have always had employees working in different situations including on-site at Veritas, on-site at client offices or at home. However, after March 2020, we put health first and wanted to do whatever made everyone the most comfortable, recognizing that there would be a lot of different situations to address. For most of the pandemic, our team has had the option to work onsite at Veritas, client offices (for those that could) or remotely. The majority of our team has successfully been working from home with continued plans to do so in the near future. We have had some employees return to client offices recently as well. In all situations, our employees were safe, successful and productive. Through these actions, we have proven that personal accountability and trust are core to our culture and flexibility is a result of that.

Transparency

When our industry and economy are experiencing a lot of uncertainty, employment and job security are going to become a top concern for our employees. Our Executive Leadership Team took action to prevent unwanted layoffs and keep employees regularly updated on the health of the firm. We are proud to say that did not have to go through any layoffs due to the pandemic and that we have hired new staff in 2021! In order to keep everyone updated and informed, we held monthly All-Hands meetings including the latest financials. We received feedback that these actions and this level of transparency offered comfort and reassurance. “People are our best assets” is one of our culture codes and has been even more apparent in recent times.

Collaboration

Collaborating on projects has always been essential to our business so to see this go unchanged despite the pandemic is a true testament that this is and always will be core to our company. Our team members were agile and resourceful, finding new ways to be productive, work together and stay connected. We increased our usage of Zoom and Teams and we found other unique ways to stay connected outside of project work including lunch meet-ups, virtual book club, virtual “Brown Bags” and monthly All-Hands.

In summary, Veritas took measures to understand and address our employee’s changing needs while staying true to some of our core culture codes. What has changed at your company in the past year? What are employees valuing more now? What are companies doing to address this?

For more on our company and culture, check out the following blogs:

• Employee Spotlight Video Series: What Makes Veritas’s Culture Unique?
• HBJ 2020 Best Places to Work Award
• The Rise of the Culture Code

How we do things in just as important as what we do. Check out of Culture Code to better understand our core values that guide and make Veritas the great firm it is. If you are interested in learning more about our culture or services, contact us to learn more or subscribe to our blog to stay connected!