<p><img class="lead-image-large" src="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/60342f2f38aa9f00185e0558-2400/management consulting firms losing mothers 2x1.png" border="0" alt="management consulting firms losing mothers 2x1" data-mce-source="Samantha Lee/Insider"></p><p></p><bi-shortcode id="summary-shortcode" data-type="summary-shortcode" class="mceNonEditable" contenteditable="false">Summary List Placement</bi-shortcode><p>A few months ago, a would-be boomerang was considering whether she should go back to McKinsey. </p><p>This employee, who worked at the management consultant for nearly three years, left in 2015 because of burnout. She said she "felt and looked like a zombie" from traveling four days and clocking a minimum of 80 hours a week. But the time at the firm was nonetheless fulfilling, she said, and she missed the varied client work that included assessing retail operations in the Midwest and advising global-health partnerships abroad. </p><p>Since her resignation, she had continued to work in the management-consulting sector and reached an executive role at another, smaller firm. In December 2019, she got pregnant and soon gave birth to her first child. </p><p>Then McKinsey came calling. She spoke with recruiters and senior partners. She seriously considered returning in November 2020. But some trade-offs were just too hard to argue with.</p><p>"I can't imagine a schedule of traveling four days a week on a consistent basis and missing out on the joy when my baby wakes up and smiles in the morning," she said, contemplating a post-pandemic job offer at McKinsey. "I would like to go back at some point but not until there are some real changes made."</p><p>As of late, many consultancies have emphasized gender equity. McKinsey said it has recruiting teams dedicated to hiring women. Bain has a global women's leadership council. Accenture is partnering with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/18/success/accenture-hiring-moms/index.html">talent marketplaces</a> to connect mothers and caregivers to jobs. <a href="https://www.hrkatha.com/hiring-firing/deloitte-plans-to-hire-more-women-post-lockdown/">Deloitte</a> and <a href="https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/about/diversity/iwd/iwd-female-talent-report-web.pdf">PwC</a> have also shared plans to hire more women.</p><p>But hiring is not the same as retentionor promotion. </p><p>The stats speak to what people in the talent world call a "leaky leadership pipeline." Diverse talentin this case, a greater share of womencome through the door, but they have a hard time advancing through the ranks, and they leave.</p><p><a href="https://www.sheffieldhaworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Road-Less-Travelled.pdf">A 2018 industry analysis</a> from Sheffield Haworth, a human-resources consultancy in London, included 35 in-depth interviews with executives at consulting firms from the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. It found that women were joining the industry in even greater numbers than before, but they weren't staying. Less than 10% of partners, a <a href="https://managementconsulted.com/consulting-career-path-how-to-make-partner/#:~:text=Partners%20are%20the%20money%2Dmakers,and%20to%20grow%20the%20firm.">money-making top-level rank</a> that tends to be reached <a href="https://managementconsulted.com/consulting-career-path-how-to-make-partner/">around ages 33 to 37</a>, were women.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.heforshe.org/sites/default/files/2019-12/HFS_IMPACT_2019_Onscreen_revised.pdf">gender equity report published by the United Nations</a> the following year revealed that McKinsey increased its female representation among the top 6% of leadership positions from 11% in 2014 to 14% in 2018. (UN data for 2019 and 2020 will come out this summer, the agency says, as reporting was pushed back to due to COVID). That figure moved up to 16% in 2020, a McKinsey spokesperson said. While that marks a 5 percentage point increase in female representation, it remains the case that five out of every six senior leaders at McKinsey are men. </p><p>Across companies, major consultancies told Insider that women partner representation ranged from 16 to 25% in 2020.</p><p>If women are going to stay in the still-highly competitive field, policies and cultures are going to need to change. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kpmg-pwc-bcg-future-management-consulting-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-10">A post-pandemic reset</a> might be the perfect opportunity to do so.</p><h2><strong>Introducing a roster of pro-parent policies</strong></h2><p>Crystal Wright, a capital markets and deals partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, got pregnant with her first son at age 35, two months before she was promoted. She put a lot of thought into both how she'd tell her boss she was pregnant and the transition plans she'd have in place before and after her maternity leave. </p><p>"My husband and I decided we were ready to have children, and it was a personal decision," Wright said. "But I recognize that I started a family a bit later in life and when I was already pretty senior."</p><p>Wright used her employer's six-month maternity-leave benefit, which made a huge difference because she'd committed to a six-month nursing and breastfeeding schedule for her newborn. The extended leave also allowed her body to recover from childbirth, Wright said. The managing director worked on a 60% reduced scheduleanother parental benefit at PwC, where 23% of partners were women in 2020during her first month back.</p><p>"It helped me re-acclimate into the working environment, which was extremely helpful," Wright said.</p><p>Former and current staffers across firms said their employers have similar benefits and policies for new parents. The consultancies themselves frequently conduct gender research, and the data from those studies resulted in some helpful policies.</p><p>A former Bain case-team leader who left the company within the past two years said her employer had developed a "time-share" work model in which female partners could split the workload of one client case, allowing for more flexible schedules and <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3018384/share-your-job-save-your-sanity">time off</a> for employees. The firm also has a long-standing private-equity group that requires minimal or no travel, and some women have chosen to join the practice as a way to make their jobs more sustainable, she added. Its female partner representation has moved from 10% in 1996 to 16% in 2011 and finally 24% in 2020.</p><p>Ernst & Young,where the share of women in leadership has increased by 5% over the past five years, now accounting for 25% of partners and principalshas doubled parental offerings and introduced free tutoring for employees' kids. Other programs at McKinsey and PwC include up to six months of maternity leave and Zoom counseling sessions for parental and caregiver support. </p><p>But benefits only go so far. Without cultural changes, these plans won't be enough to keep women from leaving, mothers told Insider.</p><h2><strong>The need for a culture overhaul</strong></h2><p><a href="https://www.sheffieldhaworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Road-Less-Travelled.pdf">More than 60%</a> of the female leaders interviewed in the Sheffield Haworth study said the demands of a job in consulting made it difficult for them to balance work and family lives. This contributed to why women decided to leave their jobs.</p><p>"There are cultural norms at play here that are impacting women and causing them to leave," said the former case-team leader of Bain. "Even if consulting firms were to reduce work hours or travel, they may not necessarily solve the retention problem for all women."</p><p>A <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/subtle-ways-women-treated-differently-work-2014-6#if-women-are-assertive-it-can-be-seen-as-aggressive-2">growing body of organizational and psychological research</a> suggests that biasessuch as being perceived as less hardworking after having childrenalso keep women from advancing in the workforce. One <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~pdupas/Gender&SeminarDynamics.pdf">recent study</a> found, for instance, that female economists giving presentations are more likely to be asked "patronizing or hostile" questions. And women experience a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lack-of-confidence-among-women-gender-gap-in-stem-tech-2020-10">confidence gap</a> compared to men, where they're much more likely to underestimate their own abilities. </p><p>A current employee and new father at McKinsey shared that female employees in the consultancy face biases and microaggressions when they decide to have a child before they reach partner.</p><p>"If you have a child when you're an associate partner, that's really going to impact your speed of promotion," he said.</p><p>Part of this owes to the billable-hours model itself: Promotions for expectant mothers are often delayed, or don't happen at all, because they've completed fewer hours as a result of their six-month maternity leave, or they had to cancel travel plans during their third trimester, he said.</p><p>McKinsey told Insider that pregnancy or maternity-related leave wouldn't delay an already-planned promotion, but a spokesperson did recognize that taking extended leave can affect the speed at which an employee advances toward a senior role.</p><p>"Acknowledging that an extended leave of absence from workwhether for pregnancy or other personal reasonscan affect the time in role and momentum required for professional development and promotion readiness in one's role, McKinsey offers several programs designed to counter the impact on career progressions," the spokesperson said. </p><p>For example, the firm has a "ramp off, ramp on" program that gives consultants the option to freeze their career progression for six months after returning from leave. The incentive is to allow staffers more time to "ramp back into their roles" without the pressure to overperform. </p><p>The pandemic has offered some perspective: For some working mothers in consulting, the complete halt on travel plans and a remote-work setup offered more flexibility and allowed for better balance at home, sources told Insider. </p><p>Mothers in consulting are now worried about what life will look like after the pandemic, when household and family burdens will likely fall on their shoulders and they'll be expected to travel throughout the week again. </p><h2><strong>Investing in flexible work</strong></h2><p>The work-from-home era has taught Wright, the PwC capital markets and deals partner, to set better boundaries as she works from home with her 2-year-old son. She blocks off her calendar every morning and evening with time for both personal and work responsibilities.</p><p>"Taking ownership of my calendar is one way for me to be transparent with my team," Wright said.</p><p>Flexible hours, the data indicates, are a key lever for helping <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pandemic-effects-gender-equity-childcare-family-workplace-flexibility-racial-inequality-2021-1">parents combine work and family</a>though the option is often available only to professional-class workers like consultants.</p><p>Companies should audit all the systems they haveincluding recruitment, team structure, promotion, and human capitalto create a more inclusive environment, said <a href="https://broad.msu.edu/profile/robers96/">Quinetta Roberson</a>, a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations'user=nSGCQB0AAAAJ&hl=en">highly cited</a> diversity, equity, and inclusion researcher and a management professor at Michigan State University.</p><p>Netflix, for example, introduced coaching sessions to get employees to think with an "inclusion lens," <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-inclusion-report-shows-diversity-tactics-stats-shortcomings-2021-1">Insider previously reported.</a> Women <a href="https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-inclusion-report-2021">make up half</a> of Netflix's leadership, and about 42% of its leaders are from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. Executives attend workshops to reflect on where and how they've hired people in the past and how they combat their own biases to bring in people from different backgrounds. </p><p>Accountability systems need to be put in place to facilitate and monitor progress, Roberson said, and it needs to involve metrics beyond head counts and leaders other than just the chief diversity or HR officers.</p><p>Wright is making inclusion a day-to-day practice. Not everyone is going to feel as if they can access PwC's benefit without having a team culture in which people feel comfortable speaking up about their needs. The more people can see the flexibility and openness of communication she exhibits, the more new norms will take hold. </p><p>"I think some of the challenges right now happen within the individual and team levels," she said. "We can do better by making sure our culture matriculates down to all employee levels at the firm." </p><p><strong>SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kpmg-pwc-bcg-future-management-consulting-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-10" >The high-flying $132 billion world of management consulting has been grounded by the coronavirus. Insiders at big firms like PwC and KPMG reveal how they're adapting to the new normal.</a></strong></p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/management-consulting-female-talent-retention-working-mothers-mckinsey-bain-pwc-2021-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story »</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-parasite-delivered-one-of-the-best-twists-in-cinema-2020-2">What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence</a></p>
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