AI is pushing junior consultants back, but three U.S. researchers say how matters as much as where
Some of the world's largest consulting firms are reconsidering how much time junior staff need to spend in the office, as AI reshapes what those employees actually do.
Executives at the U.K. arms of EY and KPMG say AI is making interpersonal skills more valuable, and that they're best learned in person, the Financial Times reported. Sayeh Ghanbari, EY's U.K. head of consulting, told the paper the recent shift toward remote-heavy careers "is just not the route to success in the world of AI."
The debate isn't confined to the U.K., either. In the U.S., firms have leaned toward restructuring how junior staff build those same human skills. EY, for instance, has stretched its internship model into a yearlong Career Residency program, giving some students up to another year of paid training before they start full time. Ginnie Carlier, EY Americas' chief talent and culture officer, said cultivating "distinctly human capabilities of judgment, curiosity and trust" will remain the firm's biggest competitive advantage in an AI-powered world.
How AI is transforming work
Nicholas Bloom, the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University in California, said AI is changing the nature of consulting work in two specific ways.
"AI is increasingly taking over parts of data analysis. So for firms, they want to focus their deliverable more on the interpersonal part," Bloom said.
He also pointed to a surge in what the industry calls "forward deployed" work, sitting with clients to help implement AI systems rather than building them from a desk.
"A lot of companies are saying, we need AI, let's roll out AI, let's get some consulting firms in to help us implement it. And that is very much around interpersonal stuff: being there physically, sitting with employees, hearing what's working, what isn't, iterating," Bloom said.
What gets lost when mentoring goes remote
Bloom has spent years studying what remote and hybrid arrangements do to performance, and said research consistently shows mentoring works better in person, since people tend to learn faster that way.
Bloom pointed to a randomized controlled trial his research team ran at a fully remote organization, where employees were assigned to come into the office zero days a month or one day a month.
"We found significantly better performance for people who came in one day a month. Productivity was up around nine percent. Quit rates fell by a third," Bloom said.
He credited some of that gain to what he called the accidental learning that only happens in person.
"There's a lot of intangible, accidental learning that happens in person. It's just more informational bandwidth, because there's more visual signal, and you're seeing stuff, and you're there all the time," Bloom said.
Heidi Gardner, a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession in Cambridge, Massachusetts, made a similar point about how unpredictable good mentoring moments can be.
"There are many, many occasions that are hard to predict when a teachable moment will arise," Gardner said.
She described sitting with clients during her own time at McKinsey, when she or a colleague could quietly wave a junior consultant into the room to observe.
"It can be more awkward to pull somebody in virtually than it is to signal to somebody: come into my office, sit in the chair, zip it, listen in. Nobody even needs to know that you're here," Gardner said.
Ivan Matviak, founder and CEO of Smarter Collaboration International, said informal feedback, the kind that usually happens right before or after a meeting rather than during it, is one of the hardest things to preserve once everything moves to scheduled calls.
"You're not in the taxi afterward doing a debrief. You're not walking into the meeting getting some of those hints and tips beforehand. That whole informal, frequent feedback culture is much more difficult to sustain in a remote environment, and it's critical for development at every stage of a career, but certainly for junior people," Matviak said.
Presence alone doesn't guarantee learning
Gardner cautioned that requiring junior staff to show up doesn't automatically produce better mentorship on its own.
"We shouldn't assume that merely because people are working in an office building, they will get better mentorship, feedback, guidance and learning experiences," Gardner said. "That's perhaps an important condition, but it's not a guarantee."
Gardner argued firms owe junior staff more than a mandate memo if they want a return to office policy to actually work.
"If firms are going to make these return to office requirements, they have an obligation to create the context in the office that makes it worth people's while. That means mandating that partners are in the office too," Gardner said.
Gardner said requiring only junior staff to be present overlooks the fact that senior colleagues can learn from them too.
"It's really outrageous to make it mandatory for some levels and not for others," Gardner said. "The assumption that learning is a one way street is super obnoxious."
For example, Gardner pointed to the global head of a large international consulting firm, who meets monthly with mentors in their 20s, 30s and 40s as part of a reverse mentoring program he has built.
"He doesn't call them mentees because he's getting mentored by them, and it works both ways. He learns as much from them as they do from him," Gardner said.
Some firms are also paying for it
Office mandates aren't the only lever U.S. firms are pulling to encourage the development of human skills. Ernst & Young's U.S. division announced in late August that it will invest $100 million in bonuses for staff who demonstrate skills such as adaptability, judgment and innovation alongside their AI experimentation, with individual awards ranging from $500 up to $25,000.
"Economists believe in incentives. They'll be focused on it, and it'll help retain and recruit people with strong social skills," Bloom said. "It's not unreasonable. If I'm Ernst & Young, I'm aware AI is coming. It's a huge threat and also an opportunity for the business."
Gardner pointed to research her team has conducted with more than 10,000 professionals showing many simply lack the underlying skills to collaborate well in the first place, regardless of incentive.
"I don't think I'd think about bonusing and incentivizing the human skills. What we really need to think about is professional development in those areas. One of the biggest barriers to collaboration is a lack of skill," Gardner said.
That tracks with recent research on what executives actually prioritize when they hire, and with the World Economic Forum's tracking of a similar shift globally, where collaboration and leadership still rank among the core skills employers expect to need through 2030. PwC has paired its own AI training with lessons in storytelling and critical thinking to build the same muscle.
Whether firms choose to change where employees sit, how they're paid, or both, the skills that AI still can't replace look a lot like the ones Bloom, Gardner and Matviak described. Judgment, trust and the kind of feedback that rarely survives a scheduled call take real investment to build.
