guide
The Consulting Compensation Gap
A 2026 guide for Total Rewards leaders at large consulting firms.
Your internal Total Rewards team is probably still running on the same legacy tools, spreadsheets, and fragmented survey stitching the firm warns clients away from. This guide is for the Total Rewards leader who knows the operating model is straining and wants a clear picture of what to do about it.
Inside the guide, you’ll find:
- Why AI, pay transparency, lateral premiums, and partner redesign are compounding faster than annual comp cycles can absorb.
- How practice sprawl and survey overload are consuming the senior analysts who should be doing strategic work.
- Why lateral hire and partner promotion modeling in Excel is the risk a board won’t let pass twice. What a compensation stack built for the multi-practice consulting model actually looks like.
Your firm’s compensation function should be the proof point for everything it sells to clients. If it isn’t, this guide shows you where to start.