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The Deloitte Vow of Poverty; Giam Sweigers’ Daily “Prayer Time” Phone Calls
Posted by The Spy | Posted in Deloitte, Firm Gossip, Spy HQ | Posted on 02-07-2010
A few weeks ago, you’ll recall the sermon we delivered in respect of Deloitte Chief Giam Sweigers’ “favourite management mottos”. We read Giam’s commandments mottos, immediately took the Lord’s name in vain, and thereafter made a religious vow to do whatever we could to spread stop His messages.
For those who’ve forgotten, in a staggering BRW article, Giam variously exclaimed:
“Try new things, but fail fast and fail cheaply.”
“Soft on people, tough on performance.”
“Leadership is not about taking people where they want to go, it’s about taking people where they should go. It’s not a popularity contest.”
In our minds this immediately evoked the image of a Papal assembly, huddled beneath a Vatican window, devouring to the words of a religious leader.
But have the Deloitte masses been listening? Apparently, yes!
We received the following comments from an anonymous Deloitte spy a couple of weeks ago:
Firm Spy,
Here at Deloitte, our leader Giam Swiegers constantly bothers us with his whimsical, stream-of-consciousness “messages”. When I say “messages”, I mean that every day, almost without fail, we receive a voicemail (an innovative communication tool from Deloitte management that, for some reason, they believe is more powerful than conventional email) from Giam giving us spiritual guidance and his thoughts for the day. Among the various nuisances he delivers to us on a day-to-day basis, are the homages he pays to arcane religious holidays like “happy-Martyrdom-of-Guru-Tegh-Bahadur-Ji-day”. I wish I was joking.
“Prayer time”, as a few of us call it, has been done to death. But the final straw came earlier this year when Giam failed to recognise ANZAC Day. Yes, despite recounting every single religious holiday - including all those observed by the people who entered “Jedi” [as their chosen religion] in the national census - Giam forgot to mention the one that really matters.
Holy moly - Giam forgot ANZAC Day!
But the blasphemous employee reproach does not stop there. We received the following biblically proportioned spray from another Deloitte spy a few days ago:
As part of its much awaited remuneration process, Deloitte has once again delivered very little on its promises. After the convoluted messages of the past and subsequent pay freezes, much is expected… and as is usually the case there is very little. High volumes of staff received nil payrises with the average being less than 5% in a period where partner distributable profit has increased by 22% and 11% revenue growth. Just to reinforce that staff are just that… staff. An email was sent by Giam advising that we are the 14th best place to work in Australia. Clearly the vote was taken well before news of the payrise hit but rather was done at a time when there was strong rhetoric that we would be rewarded for what have been some hard years. Thanks Giam.
Yes, a well-timed psalm that one! These comments were given a blessing by the following words, sent by yet another Deloitte preacher:
hi guys, Apparently the Deloitte payletters just came out very recently for the Audit and Assurance staff… the word is senior analysts were very very disappointed…
By “disappointed”, do you think our Deloitte spy means that workers have lost their faith? Or is it time that they accepted a vow of poverty?



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