Thanks to the anonymous KPMG spy who sent us the following number-crunching hullabaloo:
Most accountants doing their CA usually take a week and a half off work to study for each exam. However, we aren’t given enough leave: here at KPMG we get 3 days of study leave per module and have to dip into our annual leave for the rest. This is pretty normal across the industry, and with 3 exams per year plus Christmas shutdown it’s normal to have no leave left at the end of the year for a proper holiday. Now it turns out that the internal audit division aren’t letting anyone take more than those 3 days of study leave off due to staffing shortages (and that includes the day of the exam). This wouldn’t have happened if pay and working conditions hadn’t led to so many people resigning, yet apparently the solution is to force staff to work and study at the same time. But make sure you don’t fail – or you will pay the $1,000+ course fee next time you do the subject and might be held back for promotion if you fail twice.
Accountants say companies expose themselves to higher liabilities by not making staff take leave as it accrues. “From an internal-control perspective, it’s a huge risk to have people who won’t take leave on the balance sheet,” said Sally Freeman, a KPMG partner for risk and compliance.
Leading on from your ‘A Fire Inside KPMG’ piece, only a bomb threat could have cleared that place faster than the resignations over the last year or so. Having been one of the fed up employees to walk out, I know exactly what it is like there. Leadership and business sense are obviously not prerequisites to the KPMG partnership. The people running the place are too interested in playing politics and ‘managing perceptions’, as they like to call it, to stem, what realistically, is a firm threatening flood of pissed off staff leaving. The continued denial of what is a pathetic level of pay for the people they employ has not gone down well with the staff. Other factors such as measuring performance with factors outside off our control and the disorganised nature of managing resources and projects add to the discontent. There is no doubt they will find some poor souls to fill most of the empty seats but a business that literally sells the services of its people can’t survive with turnover that has pushed 50% in some groups. I understand that other firms/banks etc have had some higher than average turnover during what is a good time for people to move on after the last few years, however it is one thing to have a few more than average it is another to have a clear majority of staff looking for employment elsewhere. No amount of $100 gift cards in lieu of bonuses or free Friday drinks will change things. I would have thought having half the group I was in walk out (including some senior staff to rival firms) would knock some sense into the partners, but no, I guess to them it is just part of the fun.
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What a shit firm, I remember an internal training session on project management (before they cut those sessions to save costs) for senior advisers where they handed out juggling balls. I’m sure it was meant to be some silly metaphor about juggling priorities but it I think what they really were trying to say is if you want to be a manger here you need to be a clown.
Is it just me or has Firmspy completely (as in by 180 degrees) misunderstood Sally Freeman’s comment?
In any event, if you need more than 3 days to study for your CA exam you’re not up to it.
@ um – isn’t firm spy drawing attention to the practice of KPMG to force staff to take leave, whether they want to take it or not? Sally has shown her cards by stating that she views moderate leave balances as a management risk.
The message is clear to me – KPMG are tight and treat staff poorly. This is witnessed in it’s treatment of CA students it’s attitudes toward annual leave
KPMG is not the only organisation to have forced leave over the xmas break!
As an alumni of KPMG’s internal audit division I can say that the leave entitlement for CA study has always been 3 days. There has been no cut to the entitlement that I am aware of. Certainly there has never been an allowance of 1 1/2 weeks per subject.
The restriction on taking leave in addition to the 3 days will be a policy of the division and more specifically, the office (e.g. Melbourne, or Sydney, or Brisbane).
I agree it is unreasonable that the Partners don’t allow this leave. The reason may be that the work to be delivered to achieve revenue budgets require a lot of hours charged and they probably don’t have the head count to achieve those hours, so they try to restrict leave.
@ Incorrect – I don’t see the word “moderate” used in the quote by Sally Freeman. Sally would be referring to excessing leave balances (e.g. greater than 8 weeks). Staff with these balances represent a higher risk to organisations from a number of angles:
- A large liability carried on balance sheet
- These staff may be burnt out and not functioning at an optimal level because they aren’t taking time out (i.e. leave) to refresh themselves.
- A fraud risk because these people often claim that they can’t take leave because they are crucial to the process/function they operate in.
- It may also highlight a key person dependency, which is a control deficinecy.
Used in the context of this article, Sally’s comments do come across as ironic. However, it is a forced context and not entirely accurate.
So, a recommendation to organisations would be to adopt policies to encourage (not necessarily force) employees to use their leave entitlements each year to allow time for employees to recharge and also to ensure the organisation is not overly reliant on any one individual.
To “um…” that’s the type of crap we’re fed at kpmg. Let’s see a partner pass CA with 3 days study leave. Half the time probably getting “urgent” calls from managers with crap like “uh where’s last year’s file?”
Mike Ritchie (KPMG Advisory partner) for 2010 Douche of the Year Award.
Serious? So you peeps at KPMG are NOT allowed to take annual leave ? i.e. I know you get 3 study days.. but don’t people normally take extra leave from their annual leave to study.. are u guys allowed that? Can someone please clarify?
At mid-tiers e.g. PKF, they get 3 days study leave and NO staff are NOT allowed to take extra annual leave days to study.. I agree.. try a partner sitting a CA with 3 days.. argh!
Accountant graduates really are picked upon in today’s society by public practice organisations.
The sheer money the people at the top generate from the minows below is staggering and yet they treat the ‘minows’ with such contempt and blatant discrimination (in terms of work/life balance and pay salaries).
As a former accountant in practice I can say I am in no way sad for leaving. God I love commerce
Would’nt it be funny to see the partner’s faces if a public practice accountancy union was started and enjoyed good support for the minows!
LOL imagine the partners facing the prospect of actually paying people if they stay after 5pm & at overtime rates!!! hahaha now I would pay to see that!
I feel like I am reading the same Firmspy article over and over again – only with the name of the firm changed.
Possibly this is because all our professional services firms are equally poor at managing their staff…or more likely the editors seriously lack imagination and feel the same old rant is still entertaining.
You need to be disabused of this notion. Your material is getting old. Firmspy.
This is typical of the big 4 accounting firms – they are all so mean and tight, and will extract the most they can out of CA students, and provide nothing in return.
Their vested interest is to give you as little CA time as possible so they can utilise you more since they are so understaffed. They couldn’t give 2 cents about whether you pass your CA or not, as it is of no benefit to them
All you are at these places is a number and a resource, and thats all you’ll ever be.
Ronnie – the reason stories like this continue to be published is that people continue to send these comments. The reason people continue to send these comments is the professional services firms continue to screw their employees. This is just an avenue for fed up staff (and ex-staff) to vent their frustrations. Maybe you should ask why big-4 staff continue to send these ‘rants’ in?
@ Ex-KPMG
Whole-Heartedly Agree!
What the graduates going into public practice don’t realise is the public practice environment and job progression possibilities, (and this is more relevant for larger firms) is a completely different animal to public practice of yester-year.
I would liken the large public practice firms of today as ‘pyramid schemes.’
The end benefit is not a ridiculous investment return % as the classical pyramid schemes of old but rather a veiled promise by the partners at the top that if as a graduate you slave yourself for many hours week upon week, month upon month, and year upon year you will eventually rise to the top.
However, as with every pyramid scheme it is only when the group within the scheme is relatively small that everyone will get their chance to make it to the top or at least make large gains in career progression.
As the firm gets larger and larger, and even achieves a global presence, it gets harder and harder to make it to the top from the bottom as there are more and more minnows waiting in line for their opportunity.
Eventually the pyramid is so big those entering from the bottom have very little chance (if any) to make it to the top.
Unfortunately for Public Practice firms this spiel of ‘slaving yourself to attain partnership’ can only go on for so long before the disenchanted and disenfranchised minows leaving this industry (serfdom) horror stories reach budding accountants fresh from uni and cause a big re-think in their desire to work in public practice.
Maybe then the industry will take heed to those wanting change from the bottom and implement true changes with regards to work-life balance and quantifiable remuneration for those working beyond their contracted 8:30-5pm, i.e. Overtime paid by the hour.
Who is forcing the down-trodden minnows to work at these firms? Is the economy so bad that they cant get a job anywhere else but these slave driving CA/law firms? So people stay because….? Perhaps on some level people understand that these firms have something to offer their employees? Just putting it out there.
@ More Anon
Like I said before because many are ‘sold’ the aspiration of so called career progression (mainly to the level of manager – they earn as much as your average financial controller but have to put in many times the effort & hours)
If these firms have ‘soo much’ to offer then why do they expect staff to work hours beyond what they are paid and from the GENERAL CONSESUS of pretty much all people I have meet during my employment in this industry (bar management and firm hierarchy aka Back-Stabbing Nazis) have said this expectation is NOT meet with appropriate reward.
People stay in this industry because they are SHEEP.
I left because I was sick of the BS
it would be good if firm spy can start providing news about mid tier accounting firms too..e .g. PKF, Grant Thornton etc
100% agree with “Public Practice is Lame” – many people in public practice are sold the illusion that they need to be senior or need to be manager in order to get anywhere in the commercial environment.
It’s a load of BS and propaganda that they feed staff, in order to keep them chained to the firm where if you get stuck too long there you think that you can’t leave because you are so close to a promotion and you’ve put in so much time and investment.
I was ex big 4, and was one of the smart ones that got out of the pyramid scheme.
The smart and talented people at these places do their 2-3 years and leave. The incompetent, game playing and back stabbing individuals get left behind and eventually become partner.
I agree with anonymous, its not only the big4 employees getting screwed over!
Public Practice is Lame (and others) will be interested to know that the Big 4 around the world treat employees differently.
In the Dutch and Belgian Big 4 member firms employees DO get paid overtime, either via a payout at the end of the year or through hour-for-hour additional leave (this was preferred in the GFC). Other benefits include a mobile phone with unlimited calls/data, company cars (or a travel allowance option) and performance based bonuses even for junior staff. Plus salaries are actually decent, even a grad will earn more than the national average salary (and then u have to add super on top of that too)…. can you imagine the Big 4 in Australia paying a grad $65k plus super – the current average salary?
The Australian Big 4 have a very different business model as someone mentioned a few months ago in a comment. Hire grads and pay them peanuts because they all want to just get their CA and a Big 4 on their CV and will put up with all the shit to do it. Of course with most of them leaving after 3-4 years they need to recruit Seniors/Managers. Foreigners are their source either on permanent contracts or via secondments simply because it’s “Australia” and those foreigners are just happy to have their airfares paid for (Brits and South Africans love this) – they’re also treated poorly but will put up with it for a few years. It’s a brilliant business model for the partners.
Of course the attrition rates in the Dutch/Belgian firms are much much lower than those in Australia and the average age of employees is in the mid-30s rather than mid-20s in Australia creating a far more professional environment. There is a quote I love to use to describe working at the Big 4 in Australia: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
In my experience, the smartest people actually leave after only 1 or 2 years because they realise this.