1a. Lack of Diversity (Except Gender diversity)
The company has consistently lacked diversity, particularly at the leadership and executive board levels, since its inception. This appears to be a conscious decision, despite multiple objections. Non-diversity is a pervasive and defining part of their culture. While they may hire diverse individuals at the junior level, these employees are often not given opportunities to grow. You can verify this by checking their people profiles and noting how few non-white individuals occupy Principal and Director positions on the profile section of their website.
1b. Impact on Work Culture
This lack of diversity is also reflected in their ways of working. The company continues to rely on outdated frameworks such as the Nous Architectural Operating Model Framework (NOAF), which they present as their best offering. You can review NOAF under their organisation performance section (sorry, Glassdoor does not permit external links). Their other key offerings, like writing reports for the public sector, have long lost relevance in today’s digital age, yet they persist in treating these offerings as indispensable, despite clients expressing dissatisfaction on multiple occasions. As a result they pick up micro projects that do not make transformational impact on the clients. These projects are basically boring admin work that clients want to get done onshore.
2. Overworked Staff and Burnout
Consulting staff are routinely assigned to multiple simultaneous projects, euphemistically termed “high exposure,” with the number of projects typically ranging between 2-5. This leads to poor-quality work and unhappy clients. Additionally, it causes burnout and job dissatisfaction among employees.
3. Overpriced Services and Underpaid Staff
Their billing rates are higher than those of the Big Four consultancies and comparable to MBB firms, even in sectors where they have little experience. Yet, salaries, including bonuses, are among the lowest in the consulting industry. Utilisation rates for consultants are slightly higher than the industry average. Unlike other consulting firms, Nous does not operate on a partnership model. Simple math suggests that profits are good, but they are exclusively enjoyed by a select few individuals who run the company like a personal fiefdom and hence why should they invest in upgrading their propositions that may change the utopian world they live in.
4. Purpose vs. Profit: A Hypocritical Claim
They boldly claim to prioritise purpose over profit. However, last year, when PwC laid off employees due to its involvement in a tax scandal, Nous opportunistically cited that outlier event, along with the Israel-Gaza conflict, as an absolute reflection of the economic downturn. Within two weeks of the conflict, they fired 8% of their staff, with more redundancies following. While this may be capitalism at work, it contradicts their rhetoric of being a “purpose-driven” consulting firm who takes care of their employees, especially when they continued hiring senior people after these rounds of layoffs and spent millions on extravagant events such as Nous Days, leadership offsites, and other parties.
