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Professional services focus: How a post-COVID-19 operating model could help create a more diverse leadership pipeline
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Professional services focus: How a post-COVID-19 operating model could help create a more diverse leadership pipeline

Gustavo Alba and Rebecca Glick
Heidrick & Struggles, 2021
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Allow your mind to wander over the workplaces of your past. Do you recall any promising employees who fell by the wayside? Remember the brilliant woman who wowed clients, but could no longer go on business trips after having children? Or the brilliant junior team member who quit because the long commute hindered her responsibilities in an intergenerational household? This article from executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles imagines a post-pandemic workplace that draws from a bigger pool of top talent because the post-pandemic world allows for more flexible ways of working.

Summary

The professional services workforce is more diverse now than in the past, but most firms still have a long way to go. 

In 2020, non-white employees made up about 30% of the leadership teams of US professional services firms, and about 30% were women. The vast majority of lawyers are white (86%) and only 37% of lawyers are women.

These figures represent an improvement over the past, but firms still have a long way to go in embracing diversity, especially when considering that people of color make up about 36% of the people with entry-level positions, but only 15% of the people who inhabit the C-suite are people of color. Women show a similar disparity; 47% of entry-level workers are women, but only 22% of people occupying C-suite positions are women. Women of color only make up 3% of those who dwell in the C-suite. 

The pandemic disrupted long-standing working models; firms...

About the Authors

Gustavo Alba is the Heidrick & Struggles’ global managing partner of the Technology & Services Practice, and a partner in the Miami and New York offices. Rebecca Glick is a member of Heidrick Consulting and a principal in the Chicago office.

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