Junior consultants called back to office as AI increases need for human skills

Consulting executives are considering ordering junior staff back to the office more frequently to sharpen their human skills as AI takes over a growing proportion of their technical work.

Executives at some of the UK’s largest consulting firms said AI had made interpersonal skills increasingly valuable — competencies they argued must be developed in-office.

“This change we’ve seen in the last few years where people have set up their lives to be . . . at home a lot is just not the route to success in the world of AI,” said Sayeh Ghanbari, UK head of consulting at Big Four firm EY. “We’re facing a position where we’re going to have to reduce flexibility, but in order to help the human skills.”

AI will increasingly help with routine consulting work, she said, while human consultants will “have to be good at what we’re really good at, which is to be human . . . We have to be face to face once the agents are remote.”

Ghanbari said that forcing employees who had “set up their lives” around remote work to come to the office more regularly would be a “real leadership challenge”.

But she added: “To build a career in consulting and develop all of those human skills . . . you cannot do that through so much remote work.” EY said it would still maintain its “longstanding approach to flexibility”.

The comments reflect a broader shift in thinking across white-collar industries. After several years of investment in AI tools and defending hybrid working, some employers have concluded that the technology has made in-person collaboration vital.

Microsoft last year told staff they must come to the office three days a week, with chief executive Satya Nadella saying that in-person working is “even more important” in an age of AI. JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has repeatedly argued that younger bankers need to be in the office to learn professional judgment.

Consulting relies on an apprenticeship model in which junior staff observe how senior colleagues handle clients and discuss meetings afterwards.

But firms “dropped” training in human skills — including empathy, storytelling and leadership — during the remote working boom in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, instead prioritising AI and technical skills, Ghanbari said. EY is now investing more in this kind of training, she added: “We need to go back to the future.”

The debate comes as firms take divergent approaches to office attendance. Deloitte continues to give individual teams discretion over how often they work in person, while EY and PwC operate hybrid working policies.

Rival Big Four firm KPMG is experimenting with new approaches to in-person training to “reinvent” the way it helps staff build their “soft” skills as well as their technical skills, said Lisa Fernihough, a partner at KPMG. “The speed of learning . . . face to face is going to be much quicker than [remote working],” she said.

Callum Licence, who heads the firm’s UK advisory business, said changes wrought by AI made it “more important than ever for those starting out in their careers to have opportunities to learn directly from others”.

Several executives suggested younger employees would increasingly be expected to spend more time alongside colleagues. Boston Consulting Group’s London office is expanding its office activities, including chess, padel and netball clubs, to encourage junior consultants who started their careers during the pandemic to spend more time in person.

In 2023, Deloitte and PwC started giving extra coaching to their youngest UK recruits after noticing they had weaker teamwork and communication skills than previous cohorts after Covid-19 lockdowns.

Matt Prebble, UK senior partner of listed consultancy Accenture, said he had considered the need for in-person interaction to help train younger consultants in human skills, but did not need attendance mandates because younger employees already recognised the benefits of working in the office.

Top 10 accounting and consulting firm Azets, meanwhile, has reduced its requirement for a 2:1 from university to a 2:2 and has partnered with pubs and hotels to help graduates develop their soft skills.

The firm is also reviewing how much time it asks new recruits to spend in the office, encouraging junior staff to be in four days a week to improve their chances of learning informally.