Now this from Deloitte:
Within the Risk Services service-line of Deloitte today, word has spread quickly from the top (at a supposedly confidential managers and up only meeting) that our minimum base hours are going to increase from 37.5 to 41. What is not changing is our minimum rate of utilisation – which across all offices, has a YTD average of no more than 65 and 68%. In the last two months, some offices have dropped below 55%.
What does this mean?
We are going to be forced to work longer hours, bill more hours to Deloitte’s ridiculously low budgets (due to insanely greedy 50 to 80% recovery on rates, i.e. an employee “costs” Deloitte $30hr, and partners demand a minimum “recovery” of $50, meaning if we bill the client $15,000, they want the work done in $7,500 worth of hours at $50 an hour) and possibly lose up to 10% of our staff as they look to make us bill more minimum hours.
Err… what the? We’re confused. We think the writer is saying that when a Deloitte partner gives a budget estimate to a potential client for the cost of work, they are vastly under-estimating that cost in order to ensure they win the work. Then, all of a sudden, junior staffers (like the writer above in Risk Services) are lumped with a heap of work to do but no budget to bill it on. Number 1 – that sucks. Number 2 – junior staffers (we think) need to ensure they have a recovery on the time they bill of either 65 or 68% (as the writer says above), but because that figure has now slumped down to as low as 55%, partners appear to be considering a plan to make staffers spend more time in the office. The upshot? With more time in the office, there’s a better chance that staffers will reach their “minimum rate of utlisation”.
Our spy continues:
There isn’t a single person at any level that doesn’t do work at this firm that goes unbilled due to our low internal budgets – we’re at breaking point now, facing even higher demands on our time and possibly losing staff as well.
Well, if PwC and KPMG are any indication, Deloitte probably wants to lose staff, so the plan may be a stroke of genius after all. We sent the following email to the firm:
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Fwd: Anonymous tip submission: News submission
Date: Nov 2011 03:24:30 -0500
From: news@firmspy.com
To: <name@deloitte.com.au>
Cc: <name@deloitte.com.au>, <name@deloitte.com.au>, <name@deloitte.com.au>, <name@deloitte.com.au>Dear [name],
We received the following comments from a tipster a few days ago:
[tip above edited]
We would like to invite Deloitte to comment on this rumour. Are minimum base hours increasing? Are Risk Seervices staff going to be forced to work longer hours?
Further to several articles we’ve recently published, we would like to reaffirm that our aim is to give Deloitte an opportunity to respond pre-publication so that our article can be as balanced as possible.
We’ll be posting something on this later this week and hope to hear from you.
Regards,
FS
Alas, nothing from our friends at Deloitte. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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How Deloitteful!
You have to love the logic here: utilisation is dropping, so increase the base working hours… Thereby dropping utilisation further. Time to jump ship?
This is pretty typical of all the Big 4 firms… I regret every minute joining one and I’m spending most of my time looking for another job. Get out while you can!
I doubt this is accruate – I suspect what has happenned is that Deloitte has raised utilisation rate targets (ridiculous in this economy) rather than raising hours worked. Employees are on a contract for 37.5 hours work and this cannot be changed without their permission.
When did anyone at Deloitte last work just 37.5 hours in a week?
It doesnt really matter whether it is 37.5 or 41 hours per week.. because half of the employees come in late and another half leave earlier..early + late lunch, coffee breaks, started drinking at near by pubs at 3pm (sometime after lunch) on Friday! Instant messaging, surfing social sites, youtubing and etc.. are common during office hours… i was doing all that… but the most important thing is i get the job done! The best place to work? Oh ya!