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19 Jan 2009
KPMG has offered UK staff the option of working a four-day working week or sabbaticals in a move by the Big Four firm to avoid jobs cuts amid the economic downturn.
The accounting firm's 11,000 UK staff, including partners, can also apply for between four and 12 weeks of partially paid leave.
KPMG said its proposals were a contingency plan, and that staff were not being forced to accept the working options.
However, KPMG expects the majority of its employees to apply for the scheme by a deadline of February 6. KPMG will decide which staff can take part in the scheme based on economic conditions and the employee position within the firm.
'If the economy gets worse this is an option that we can quickly move to rather than a knee jerk reaction when you fire a load of people,' a KPMG spokesman said.
The move by KPMG, thought to be the first of its kind by a big accounting firm, is the latest sign of the economic crisis on the profession.
Firms including Deloitte, Grant Thornton and PKF have recently announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs in expectation of slower revenue growth this year.
A wave of redundancies in financial services has cut the amount of advisory work for accounting firms. Merger and acquisition activity has also slowed dramatically, reducing another key source of income for the big firms.
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Visitor comments Add your comment
a word to the wise's comments
AWTTW:
If you are a KPMG employee then i suggest you read the T&Cs of the whole initiative.
If not a KPMG employee, then suggest you find out the above before making comments!
Posted by: knowmorethanyou, 19 Jan 2009 | 00:00
Big profit share by partners taking its tow
This firms are supposed to know better as they proffess to be expert advisers. They shd. have reduced profit share and kept enoug profit to take care of such situations. They just care about their stomach.
Posted by: Reysark, 19 Jan 2009 | 00:00
who next.......
KPMG's annoucement is interesting and clearly is a signal that there is significant over capacity. A couple of points to note:
(i) 4 day weeks dont work very easily in most professional services environments....staff will need to be careful that this is not just a 20% pay cut.
(ii) the sabattical proposals are interesting and i think to be welcomed. Following the audit season high a summer of paid travel may well appeal to the more junior members of staff.
(iii) i dont like the comment that it is expected that the majority of staff will take this up......in a normal world most staff would not take this up....KPMG must take real care that they are not actively encouraging people to take these options or else its reputation will suffer.
(iv) who next....if kmpg are struggling it is very likely that their main competitors are in the same position...they will all be looking at the reaction to this initiative.
(v) finally the underlying problem for accountancy partnership is that they are not designed to ride the bad times...their partnership demands that the vast majority of its profits are distributed and the capital base that the firm's have is relatively small in comparison to the size of its operations....if things go wrong the safety net is not large. who will be the first big4 firm to join law firm such as clifford chance and make a capital call........
Posted by: a word to the wise, 19 Jan 2009 | 00:00
knowmorethanyou's comments
I have read the T&C's and to be clear welcome the initiative but would like to make two points from your comment:
(i) the written word and practice need to be considered seperately...ask yourself how your line manager/local partner will operate under such a system; we all know that the rule and action are not necessarily the same.
(ii) the views of the many are often influenced by a few key people in each office.
i think it is important that employees (with their working knowledge of the firm and its environment) are not cajoled into accepting something which doesnt work for them. Peer pressure is often very persuasive.....
Posted by: awordtothewise, 20 Jan 2009 | 00:00
Wise words?
Interesting choice of name, although I don't expect the wise need such superficial advice. Had it been "A word FROM the wise" I would have objected.
Posted by: KeithD, 09 Feb 2009 | 00:00
Intense Pressure
As a KPMG employee I can report that pressure
here to sign up has been intense.
The KPMG propaganda machine has been
working overtime to the exent
that they've changed our screensavers
to try and talk us into this.
I personally agree with the scheme and feel
it's workable but there are many
low grade staff here who simply cannot afford it.
Posted by: Anon, 11 Feb 2009 | 00:00
Utter nonsense, Anon
As another KPMG employee I'd like to say that there was masses of encouragement, including frequent updates on numbers, but absolutely zero "pressure". KPMG doesn't work like that, which is, I'm sure, a factor in the huge number of acceptances.
Posted by: Anon2, 25 Feb 2009 | 00:00
dont disrespect other people's experiences
as a fellow employee i too saw the extensive pressure junior staff in particular were under....some offices and some partners will have been better than others but kpmg's management, like any large organisation trying to cope in a downturn, will have their ownagenda and some managers will be able to enforce this message subtly and some less so.....
Posted by: TJ, 03 Mar 2009 | 00:00
coercion
I agree with the comments below; there was significant pressure to sign to this 'offer' - They, of course, stopped short of actually saying that whoever didn't sign would be first for the chop, however we were advised it would be beneficial to us, reminded about the scheme on a daily basis and informed of uptake figures constantly - I happened to sign up as I was advised that 'it probably won't be enforced' - two weeks following the scheme deadline it was enforced - i feel like i have been lied to
Posted by: twentypercentdown, 18 Mar 2009 | 00:00