Hi,Are there any roles with good name consulting firms that don't require travel and can be done from home at least some of the time?Any thoughts are much appreciated.Thanks

I hear that clients are becoming increasingly hostile towards the notion of expensive consultants being on premise and this is creating crowded conditions for MBB - I read somewhere there's a ton of law suits from former employees for breach of H&S. To top things off (and I reckon in response to this) McK is apparently going on a massive drive to reduce its real estate footprint and start delivering a more flexible 'virtual' consulting service, delivered through WebEx and Dropbox. But wait for this. Because consultants generally adore travelling all year round to magical exotic places like Riyadh and Abuja, McK is seeing double digit attrition and are on a massive recruitment drive for people willing to work from home and forego travel alltogether. The market beckons - I mean look at the holographic industry numbers. Through the roof!

I'm starting in V&BM at EY London in February and have agreed two days working from home per week. When flexible working was discussed in my interview I thought it was a 'gimmick', however speaking to people I know who work at EY and the HR chap whom I've been liaising with they take it very seriously.

Frankly, any firm that expects its staff to endure the drudgery of commuting in and out of London just to sit at a desk doing exactly what they could do at home is bonkers. If you've got meetings or whatever - fine. But if there's no need for you to go into the office yet they insist that you do, it's probably worth passing them over. Small firms are especially enlightened when it comes to flexible working.

[quote]I know who work at EY and the HR chap whom I've been liaising with they take it very seriously.[/quote]They do, it's now part of engagement manager scorecards: what actions do you take to support flexible working?Of course it can be client dependent, strangely over the past few years I've seen the opposite to the situation that powernap suggested (perhaps it's limited to the strategy arena?) in that clients/programme managers often require more visibility from "those expensive consultants" and want to know what we are up to when we are not on site but they are paying for our time. This could be a symptom of having more and more of client leads being ex consultants themselves and knowing that working back at the office can sometimes mean actually just having coffee and catch ups with the network/friends.

[i]"what actions do you take to support flexible working?"[/i]When I was a junior consultant, the answer to that would have been something like "Sometimes we let our consultants have the weekend off so that they can spend time with their family".I'm glad to see things are changing.

BEPAnd at christmas I bet you got a bottle of Whiskey off the partners - the miniture Bells he got on his last flight from Heathrow to Liverpool.Another flexible working feature I remember was getting to travel with a partner on a first class flexible ticket (from up North to smoke) - you even got breakfast on the train - of course on the way back I used to try and come back at a different time keeping my first class returns to woo some totty (think I better stop going a bit off piste now)DC

If you want consulting in business, I can suggest you from my personal experience, the Association of Accredited Small Business Consultant (AASBC), as they provide certification to small business owner who prove their proficiency in running small business, aasbc.com