Times are getting tough at KPMG. As the FT has reported:
KPMG has told hundreds of its UK employees to hand in their work mobiles as part of a cost-saving drive ahead of its latest financial results.
And they add:
It is the latest attempt by KPMG to rein in costs after it informed 630 secretaries and personal assistants that around a third of them would be made redundant and said it would encourage partners to file their own expenses to save resources.
It should be noted that most of those losing their phones will not be frontline staff, but given modern ways of working taking away the mobile phone of a person previously routinely contacted in that way is absurd: they might as well become a ghost. They might also take the hint that if their employer is now making them pay for a basic tool of the trade then either that employer is facing really hard times or they, personally, are really unwanted. Either way the messaging is dire in a firm where the average partner earnings still exceeds £600,000 a year.
However, this is not the really bad indicator in the story. The suggestion that partners do their own expense claims is much more damaging. As everyone knows, expense claims are a complete pain. No one has ever really solved that. To have your supposed highest fee earners spending their time filling in a form to justify their latest jolly with a client is absurd: the message that it sends out is that the firm does not understand value, profit, time allocation, efficiency, its staff, organisation, accounting, or plain straightforward common sense. As adverts go, that's right down there at the bottom of the pile. Well done KPMG!
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This seems to be the new business model for all large companies – they cry ‘we value our people!’ But at the same time remove, or outsource, vital support services, expecting people whose professions do not include knowledge of IT and form filling to just get on with learning new skills with a half hour of ‘training’, the bizarre thinking that somehow ability in one field and a computer makes everyone capable of doing all their own HR and finance themselves. The ‘valued people’ don’t even deserve desks either – far cheaper to have 5people share one desk – if we all had offices in our houses I’m not sure the point of being employed by a big company,,, and yes, their profits are still grand, for now. How far does the degradation have to go before it all falls apart?
Further, I fear
Already people are directed to shared space providers for a desk and computer. Or bring your own device.
There are jobs available to sit at home with a headset and a laptop making cold calls.
I know somebody that works for KPMG. The company has been following a course of “constructive dismissal” against this person for some time. I do not know how this person stuck it out for so long. However, the accounts they give to me of life in the company suggest a semi-feral environment dog-eat-dog etc. I am reluctant to give details to avouid any possibuility of the person being identified. KPMG, PwC Deloites etc – all far too big, far to fat n lazy (at least at the top). They should be broken up. The problem is: which gov would do it? These accountants/insultants are all over the European Commission – which is for them a milch cow – & yet the Commission (& DG Compo) is the only org with the pan-EU reach to break them up. Difficult eh?
I think we need to deny them their power over accounting and they would fail
I passed through KPMG many years ago when they took over the (consulting) firm I worked for. Within a couple of years virtually all of us had left. They were doing the sort of things you describe back then and their internal behaviour reflected the kind of advice they gave their clients. Back then their approach to desks and hot desking was described internally as being like ‘veal crates’!
I went as far as working out how much they saved in office space and relating that to what they lost in staff productivity and hence earnings. It was a no-brainer. Except to a no-brained bean counter partner (sorry Richard!).
Ive always observed that the culture of the big firms is positively feudal in nature, with partners earning huge fortunes, managers scrabbling and fighting to get their noses into the partner trough, and the rest as just peasant cannon fodder. Most of them have only known that world and they think it is a model for running any kind of organisation. No wonder so much of their advice is questionable if not downright dangerous.
What is really weird is that partners in these firms think they are entrepreneurs