Vault 2020 Firm Rankings: Culture, Leadership, Relationships with Supervisors, and Work/Life Balance

Hey, guys. Hope you all had a nice, relaxing holiday weekend. As you know, Mondays after a holiday weekend suck, especially if you hate your job. But there are accounting professionals out there who were probably champing at the bit to come to work today because they actually enjoy being there and being around their co-workers, they have a life outside of the office, and their firm’s partners aren’t raging asshats.

Let’s take a look at Vault’s 2020 “quality of life” firm rankings to find out where these unicorns work.

Based on the results of a survey sent to 8,200 accounting professionals, Vault put together rankings of accounting firms in 18 categories that fall under its “Best Accounting Firms to Work For” section.

Last week, we looked at the best firms for benefits, compensation, vacation policies, and promotion policies. Today, we’re going to look at the best firms in the following four areas: culture, firm leadership, relationships with supervisors, and work/life balance.

Vault ranks the top 25 firms in each quality of life category, so we’ll share the top three firms in culture, leadership, relationships with supervisors, and work/life balance, as well as how some notables fared (previous year ranking in parenthesis).

Culture

1. Friedman (3, tie)
2. Brown Smith Wallace (3, tie)
3. Plante Moran (1)
4. PwC (8)
11. Grant Thornton (9)
13. Deloitte (17)
16. BDO USA (18)
17. KPMG (13)
23. CBIZ MHM (25)
24. RSM US (NR)

Firm leadership

1. PwC (5)
2. Friedman (6)
3. Brown Smith Wallace (3)
13. BDO USA (14)
14. Deloitte (10)
21. Grant Thornton (21)
22. KPMG (18)
23. RSM US (NR)
24. CBIZ MHM (23)

Relationships with supervisors

1. Friedman (3)
2. PKF O’Connor Davies (2)
3. PwC (5)
6. Deloitte (12)
10. Grant Thornton (9)
16. BDO USA (8)
17. KPMG (7)
22. CBIZ MHM (25)
24. RSM US (NR)

Work/life balance

1. Friedman (2)
2. Frank, Rimerman + Co. (4)
3. Brown Smith Wallace (3)
9. PwC (10)
10. Grant Thornton (17)
18. BDO USA (21)
20. Deloitte (22)
21. CBIZ MHM (25)
24. KPMG (23)

Outside of PwC, Friedman and Brown Smith Wallace were the big winners in each of these four quality of life categories. EY, which sat outside of the top 25 for the second straight year in Vault’s Accounting 50, is absent from these rankings, too, probably because the firm is getting a bad reputation globally for nurturing a culture of sexual harassment and intimidation (ALLEGEDLY).

We’ll take a look at some other Vault rankings later this week.