Finding Your Place When Working for a Consultancy

I’ve worked in consulting for nearly four years now and recently in a period of reflection, I asked myself, where do I actually belong?

For so long as consultants, you don’t realise that you’re regularly thrown into unfamiliar environments and temporarily integrated into organisations that may or may not have some form of contrast towards your outlined objectives. Our training and prior experience teaches us to quickly settle in, size-up the problem at hand and offer a readymade solution. Having regularly been in this cycle for the past four years I am very much used to this way of working, however, with the amount of time spent on client engagements you could be forgiven for unintentionally dissociating yourself with your home consultancy, as you go further down the rabbit hole of a complex (but equally enthralling) client engagement.  

I have certainly found myself on certain client engagements where I end up so consumed by the work and the workings of a new organisation that I almost forget about my parent organisation and fall out of touch with friends, colleagues and internal engagements. This process of falling out of touch can happen very gradually so much so you may not even notice it’s happening. It’s not all doom and gloom however. 

Upon joining the company, the Airwalk Reply Values were very much drilled into us and it’s something that you don’t quite grasp at the time amongst the many activities of onboarding but it’s really come to the fore recently. I’ve recently worked on a particularly intricate client engagement where I’ve felt myself falling down the rabbit hole as described above but this time, friends and colleagues from within Airwalk have reached out to check in on me and really demonstrate the Airwalk Reply values. The brilliant opportunities offered by internal engagements have also provided a welcome buoy where my client work has been particularly challenging. 

In order to deliver high quality client engagements, a consultancy requires strong management, a good sense of camaraderie between employees and a vast breadth of experience. I firmly believe that Airwalk Reply’s internal structure, ways of working and embedded values really ensure that as an employee you don’t end up isolated in difficult situations and consequently are delivering the highest possible quality of work. 

Airwalk Reply awarded 2023 UK’s Best Workplaces™ recognition Read more