Company Structure at Guidehouse

Earlier in the summer, I learned about Guidehouse’s core values of Respect, Integrity, Innovation, Stewardship, and Excellence. As my internship wraps up, I decided to reflect on one of these values and how I saw its importance within the organization. Respect is paired with diversity and Guidehouse strives to ensure that all people at the firm are able to be successful. This is definently one of the organization’s strengths. There are different programs interns had the opportunity to join this summer in order to learn about Guidehouse’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion efforts. Some of these programs include the Women’s Inclusion Network, LGBTQA Employee group, and the Diversity and Inclusion Network. Each group had monthly meetings to discuss what the firm is doing in order to promote respect amongst employees. This brings me to another aspect of my internship with Guidehouse: clear communication. Last spring, I reflected on how I would like to work on my communication skills and become better at replying promptly to people’s emails. During the summer I was able to work on these skills because I was constantly getting emails from people internally at Guidehouse but also from clients at FEMA. Strong communication helped us create the meaningful solutions for the clients, so we are able to exceed our expectations. As I grew in my network and continued to meet people from all different levels and roles at the firm, I was able to learn about more opportunities Guidehouse has to offer. A large component of my internship this summer was to learn about Guidehouse’s capabilities. I feel that I was able to do that due to the strong communication between myself and my coworkers but also through different meetings I observed how everything was explained clearly and succinctly. Another one of Guidehouse’s strengths is the gender norms at the firm. I was expecting it to be a majority masculine environment however there is equal representation of both men and women in all different levels at the firm. It was inspiring for me to speak with female partners and learning from female members in the C-Suite. It gave me a sense of what it would be like to be a real employee at the firm. The healthy work life balance reassured me that I am able to have personal goals while working in this role and even raise a family. Despite all of the positive norms and this healthy work life balance, I do have recommendations regarding the communication at the firm. While communication within teams was strong, I believe that Guidehouse could work on communication between teams and sectors. They make efforts to have weekly meetings to do this, however I still observed some challenges that they were having. For example, I would recommend that the internship leadership team communicate better with the sector leadership team. This way, the interns are able to have a good idea of what they should be working on during the earlier side of the internship. Overall, I have had a positive experience with the firm and the structure of the organization made it a great place to be at this summer.