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Deloitte has denied allegations about experiences of “extreme overwork and pressure” from former staff at the latest Senate Inquiry.
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‘Like a war zone’: Deloitte responds to claims about ‘dark and aggressive culture’
26 February 2024
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11 minute read
Appearing before the Senate Inquiry into consulting services, the big four firm rejected reports made by former staff who worked at the firm about Deloitte cultivating a "dark culture" and that it aggressively pursued government contracts.
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Senator Barbara Pocock said in the past few months she has had contact from partners, directors, juniors and contractors who previously worked at Deloitte or alongside the firm who have openly shared concerns about the firm and its business model.
“People have been very open about sharing concerns about a couple of issues in Deloitte. One is the business model. The second is the question of governance and leadership,” said Senator Pocock.
Ms Pocock said that informants had described the employment structure at Deloitte as a “pyramid model of employment” where highly paid partners benefit from the heavy lifting and large workloads of more junior staff.
“I’m told by informants that some juniors are utilised on jobs, regardless of their experience and expertise – ‘as long as they have a heartbeat’ as one put it,” she said.
“Highly paid partners of up to 30, which one informant referred to as the ‘greedy 30’ earning between 1.5 and $3 million a year, don't have a practical caseload but effectively live off the heavy lifting and the long hours of more junior staff who are paid in the vicinity of around $70,000 a year.
Ms Pocock stated that past Deloitte directors told her these highly paid partners “sit behind their desk and push junior staff pretty hard for high utilisation rates to service the earnings for partners.
“These past directors raised concerns about the revenue metrics for partners for directors and other staff and they pointed to the great pressure on those coming up the ranks, with a number of junior members and directors saying they were forced to share confidential government information that compromised their position so that information could inform the next sale. If they didn’t do this, their career was held back,” she said.
“Some of those who have contacted me have left the business over those concerns and some have described being bullied or pushed as they exited the firm. They spoke specifically about HR practices used to manage them out of the firm.”
Deloitte chief executive Adam Powick said while the reports made to the Senator by former staff were “concerning at face value” he rejected claims that partners “sit at desks and push pencils”.
“All of us are expected to be servicing clients or respectively managing teams. I still serve clients. Tom Imbesi, [Deloitte’s chair], still services clients. Our partners absolutely service clients and are on the front line every single day, working with clients,” he told the inquiry.
“One of the expectations for partners and leaders is that as you go through the organisation is that they are very much still market focused and serving clients.”
Mr Powick told the inquiry that there will always be people who make comments but that overall the reports about the firm’s culture was not a culture he was familiar with.
“I don’t have a lot of tolerance as a leader for people that don't put their clients first and don't put their people first,” he said.
Senator Pocock said she had also received a report from a former partner who had left the firm recently and described the inside of Deloitte “like a war zone”.
“They described it as like a war zone with partners fighting each other to snatch and grab revenue so that they could save their jobs and win bonuses,” she stated.
The former partner said that what’s best for the client is often forgotten in that scenario, with the partner deciding to leave the firm due to the “ethical failures arising from the business model”.
Senator Pocock questioned whether Deloitte’s business model was putting unnecessary pressure on people, resulting in “extreme experiences of overwork and pressure”.
Mr Powick stated that Deloitte took the challenges around workload and wellbeing of staff incredibly seriously and that it had been focused on improving those areas in the past couple of years.
“We have our work well program focused on the well being of mental health and flexible work across our workforce,” he said.
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