As long as we can remember, that’s been the widely accepted view – that professional services firms are the sum of their people. But with the huge changes that they and the wider corporate world are going through, is this still the case? What about technology and AI, the impact of that on your offer, and the role of your people? How do you portray the human potential and how do you ensure your brand is in tune with what your people do and how they behave? And what does all of this mean for the brands and employer brands of professional services firms?
Here are 6 principles we discussed at our recent event:
The pace of change in professional services is hard to overstate. AI is no longer a future concern — it’s already reshaping the workforce, the client relationship, and the nature of the work itself. CEO of Microsoft AI put it plainly at the end of 2025, ‘If you’re not a little bit afraid at this moment, then you’re not paying attention‘.
And the impact is far-reaching. The UK government has recently committed to training 10 million adults in AI skills by 2030. Law firms like Farrer & Co and Linklaters are making dedicated AI hires. And McKinsey has been reframing its entire model towards what it calls outcomes-based pricing, moving away from time-and-expertise billing model.
And yet, even amongst leading minds in the field there is a lack of certainty in what comes next. Discussion amongst influential voices in AI at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting touched on the topic of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). There were completely different viewpoints on when this next leap in technology would happen (or even if it would happen at all).
But what does all of the above mean for professional services firms, their people, their brands and their employer brands? Well, we think there’s a need to build in balance. What do we mean by that?
Professional services firms are absolutely still, in part, the sum of their people. People are now more, not less, important because clients are reassured by technology, but they’re really engaged by people. They go to top firms for resources, expertise and experience, and they’ll expect tech to be part of it. But above all, they want to work with top people. And in this changing and challenging world, clients need a human partner by their side to help navigate all the complexity.
But they also need to understand what your firm, the collective, stands for. What’s the ethos that holds it all together and what are the values and characteristics that unite these individual people? In other words, elements that are absolutely fundamental to your brand and your employer brand. So it’s important to get a balance and showcase both.
And one way of doing that is to bring both of those together – the people and the firm –and embed this into the core idea at the heart of the brand. We developed Forsters’ core idea, ‘Closer connections, exceptional results’, and this talks to those two sides. The key differentiator for Forsters is the close connections that their people forge with their clients. They develop really genuine relationships with them, get to understand them more which enables them to deliver exceptional results for them. So it’s this personal connection that leads to exceptional results for the broader firm.
And Hollis brings the two sides together in a very different way with their core idea of ‘All together different’. This captures both the diverse range of people in their business and their very collaborative culture – the idea of multiple skills all brought together in one team, to create something unique.
And for both firms this idea is then woven though everything: brand, employer brand, visual identity and more. So both sides of the coin are brought together and sit at the core.
Another way of elevating both your people and the firm, is to focus on and showcase your culture – the collective ethos that brings your people together. US accountancy firm, Plante Moran, has a strong culture and sense of self built around the idea of ‘care’ which is potentially surprising for a professional services firm. But it rings true because it’s woven convincingly through their messaging, proof points and more. You get a really strong sense of what they stand for as a team, and as individuals.
Management consultancy, Kearney, do it in a slightly different way. They refer to their people as ‘Kearney Originals’, using this label of belonging to convey both the idea of the collective (be Kearney, be part of us) and the individual (but be original, be your own person). And they further support this with consistent messaging (‘Our culture is uniquely different because we celebrate individuality and authenticity, and we avoid groupthink’) and testimonials from their people (“I am a very non-traditional consultant, Kearney embraced this and helped me find a place to create value”).
Another way to showcase your people and the wider firm is to harness those multiple voices and bring them together. Social media is a natural platform for this and there are many ways to do it. If you have standout spokespeople who are great at opining on a number of subjects, they can be a gift for adding a personal face to the firm. For example, Bain’s Worldwide Managing Partner, Christophe De Vussa, who’s equally at ease being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal Institute at Davos as he is talking about his journey up to the top job at Bain He’s natural, authentic and obviously very comfortable in this space.
McKinsey also do this well by showcasing a wide variety of their people on their platforms with a real mixture of content: from informal posts where a consultant is talking about a personal ritual he follows to prepare for big meetings, to formal case studies presented to camera by their people, to interviews with the global managing partner, through to polished films featuring multiple people.
But if you don’t have the resource for creating lots of film or UG footage for your social platform, there other techniques you can use. Plenty of professional services firms use visual social cards to promote recent wins, deals or thought leadership. There’s a real opportunity to make this much more personal and showcase your people – and their points of view. A&O Shearman do this really well whether they’re announcing a recent completed matter or promoting one of their podcasts. As do Forsters, whether they’re promoting an article they’ve contributed to, or giving a point of view about a family law matter. It’s an approach that’s clear, simple, easy to implement and showcases your individuals in a clearly firm-branded framework.
Authenticity has become an overused word. But in career communications especially, the difference between content that feels real and content that doesn’t, is immediately apparent, and it matters enormously to the people you’re trying to attract.
Baringa’s careers content is a good benchmark. Their invitation to ‘geek out with the best of us’ sets the tone — and their employee stories deliver on it. Short, light-touch and direct. They are memorable and give a genuine sense of what life is like at Baringa.
Scottish law firm Brodies takes a more polished approach with a smaller set of curated videos, but warmth and authenticity comes through in the way the stories are told — with glimpses of people inside and outside of work, and shown in a way that connects back to what the firm stands for. KPMG have built out an entire visual system on their careers site that allows individual stories to sit within a strong, consistent brand — across apprentices, undergraduates, graduates and senior hires. The patchwork format translates well to social, where the story lands in seconds.
And in reiterating the crucial role of people in a moment when the role of AI can feel destabilising, McKinsey’s QuantumBlack (their AI and technology practice) does this well. Their landing page leads with the phrase ‘hybrid intelligence’ — a deliberate signal that the value comes from the combination of technology and people, not technology alone. Further down the page: ‘there’s no shortcut. It takes strategy, technology, and people moving together.’
UBS took a different route with their global rebrand last year. Their central idea — ‘banking is our craft‘ — is a confident commitment to the idea that human skill, judgment and care are irreplaceable. They extended it through collaborations, events and films exploring the idea of craft across different disciplines, from high fashion to pastry-making. The message was never about rejecting technology. It was about what human craft means in a world where so much can be automated.
The instinct behind it resonates beyond banking. People connect differently to handmade things. They respond to care, skill, and the sense that a real person was involved. In professional services, where the stakes are high and the decisions are complex, that human dimension is more important than ever.
So, in summary, professional services firms today have to be about both the sum of their people and the collective ethos and identity that unites them – their wider brand and employer brand. As we’ve shown there are many ways to bring together both sides of the coin – your individual people and the wider firm picture. But whatever you do, do showcase both and be authentic. Because in today’s world of continual flux and change, both your people and your brand are even more important, not less.
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