Critical Analysis Of HR Practices At Deloitte Global

Leadership and Retention Strategies at Deloitte

In finance sector, the Deloitte Group stands as one of the largest group in the world. The group majorly focuses on providing professional financial services to their selected customers in the finance sector. The Deloitte Group dedicates itself in providing audits, financial advice, legal, consultancy and risk management services to its clients. In terms of market share, revenue and human resources, Deloitte is ranked among the biggest financial service provider in the world. The company’s human resource team is responsible for more than three hundred thousand professionals working in various Deloitte affiliates around the globe. Conceived almost 180 years ago by British entrepreneur, William Welch Deloitte, the company has a global network that covers not less than 150 countries around the globe. Since 1845, Deloitte’s vision has revolved around enabling the company’s affiliates to work as a team and thus provide enviable services to their clients. In the 2019 financial year, Deloitte reported record high total revenue of 46.2 billion dollars. The multinational professional financial service provider has its headquarters in London, United Kingdom. Since 2015, Deloitte Global’s Chief Executive Officer has been Punit Renjen. This report attempted to investigate human resource practices of Deloitte Global. The critical analysis of this report sought to investigate the human resource strategies, employee development, staffing and training activities practised by the multinational professional financial service provider. The content in this report largely relied on reliable existing literature sources. The report also offers a few viable recommendations that the company may use to enhance its human resource team and increase the general productivity of the company. A few figures are also employed in this report to serve as numerical evidence of the report findings. The report ends with a conclusion which serves to summarize the contents of the report.

According to Deloitte’s 2014 Global Human Resource Trends report, companies need to transform with the changing trends influencing human capital in around the globe (Crozier, 2014, p. 1). The scholar asserts that leadership, retention and talent acquisition are among the most urgent strategies Deloitte needs to employ. The scholar explains the three strategic measures in detail and asserts that right leadership in all Deloitte departments is very necessary for the company’s success. Deloitte, being a multinational company, demands the correct leadership skills in all levels and departments. Excellent leaders have the critical skills in decision m According to Benko, Gorman, and Steinberg, (2014, p. 51), the employment of intelligible leadership skills by managers and leaders in companies is a very vital strategy to improve performance. The efficiency and sustainability of companies greatly depend on the quality of leadership (Nyokabi, K’Aol and Njenga, 2017, p. 19). The latter set of scholars asserts that leadership in human resource is a form of competitive advantage to any firm. In 2015, Deloitte Global announced their new CEO as Punit Renjen. The leader had worked with Deloitte for 33 years before his promotion to CEO in 2015 (Emma-Denisa, n.d, p. 45). The new CEO had worked as a Chairman for Deloitte in 2013 (Lepisto, 2015, p. 13). By having worked for a long time a Deloitte, it is apparent that the new CEO had adequate knowledge and skills to propel Deloitte into a sustainable future. Braun, et al. (n.d, p. 95) confirms that courtesy of the new CEO’s strategic leadership skills, Deloitte Global annual revenue of 38.8 billion in 2016. These results prove that having the right leaders with the right skills is much beneficial for the company.

Challenges and Benefits of Retention Strategies

Deloitte mostly retains its old employees. In their article, Orlando and Bank (2016, p. 42) engage Rob Massey who had worked for Deloitte Tax LLP for twelve years. Masey reveals that in Deloitte, professionals are likely to be retained for years, even decades. A case example is Pujit Renjen, the company’s CEO who had already worked for the company for more than three decades before his promotion to a CEO. This strategy is aimed at ensuring efficient professional services to their clients. According to Idris (2014, p. 71), retention of employees serves to increase the retained employees’ attitudes and loyalties to a company, which eventually increases the employees’ performance and productivity. When employees are retained, they tend to develop an attachment to the company. Moreover, employees that have worked for long times together are likely to form healthy bonds that could serve by increasing the Deloitte’s output. Terera and Ngirande (2014, p. 481) assert that retention has a positive impact in improving employee job satisfaction. By working at a company for long periods makes the employee develop positive attitudes and appreciation of his/her job. In essence, the most vital role played by retention strategies employed by firms is motivation to the employee (Al-Emadi, et al., 2015, p. 7). Retained employees are highly motivated and in turn, are more committed and loyal to their companies. Moreover, Deloitte’s retention strategy is also meant to keep talented and skilled manpower for sustainable future performances and growth (Mitambo and Ndemo, 2016, p. 19). By retaining old members of staff, Deloitte ensure that its talented and skilled workforce continues impacting the company’s performance.

According to Foday (2014, p. 2), the biggest challenge faced by human resource management revolves around the companies’ is the lacking of well-defined retention programmes. In most companies, retention strategies end up reducing companies’ incoming talent and creativity. Although retention strategies conserve a company’s talents, skills and experience, the strategy limits a company from realizing new creativity and talents that may be brought forward by new employees (Deery and Jago, 2015, p. 455). Retention reduces the benefits that a company may derive from creative decision making and management skills from new employees. Furthermore, retention strategies keep away the youths that may possess enviable talents. For instance, by retaining old employees, Deloitte fails to exploit the energy, skills and talents from youths. Moreover, in a century where technology is a fundamental concept in provision of professional services, retention of old staffs is a disadvantage. Younger employees are in a better position to handle technologically advanced digital hardware and software in Deloitte as compared to old employees. By retaining old staff members, the company’s speed and performance is relatively slow. The following are some of the projections of Deloitte employees’ cohorts for 2024.

Employee Development at Deloitte

Employ development refers to the learning processes undertaken by companies to continue upgrading the employability skills of their employees after hiring them (Noe, et al., 2014, p. 153). Although Deloitte ensures that it hires professional graduates, the company ensures that its employees are taken through seminars and up skilling sessions. Despite the need of Deloitte to retain its employees, Deloitte acknowledges the benefits derived from continuous learning of employees. In Deloitte, majority of professionals benefit from employee development through the company’s learning and development programmes. The primary motive behind Deloitte’s employee development is the company’s need to upgrade their skills due to the uncertain future demands. Deloitte acknowledges that for a sustainable future, its employees need to have the relevant skills in their performance. Moreover, the company trains its employee to deal with the advancing technologies and trends in the work place. For instance, due to the increase usage of Internet of Things (IoT) in providing professional services, Deloitte has seen it prudent to teach its members of staff on how to use technological appliances in the workplace. Deloitte, moreover, recognizes the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) on human resource presence in the company. According to Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends (2017, n.d), investment into augmented workforce, robotics, cognitive computing and AI are some of the broader trends that Deloitte needs to exploit in the future. Employees, therefore, need to be prepared to face the new realities that are brought by technology advancements. Employee development reduces the company’s unprecedented future shocks that may occur due to the development of technology.

In its various departments, Deloitte’s employees have some characteristic educational and occupational requirements. When recruiting new staffs, Deloitte ensures that its future members of staff possess some requirements before hiring. For instance, Deloitte recommends that all its formal employees have undergraduate degree (Massoudi and Hamdi, 2017, p. 36). Education level is one of the background checks carried out by the company’s human resource team during its hiring processes. Moreover, the company also ensures that its prospective staff members have conventional work ethics and discipline during the interviews they conduct before hiring employees. This helps the company to regulate the performance of their human resource team. By ensuring that its future employees at least have an undergraduate degree, the company’s performance and productivity in the future is somehow guaranteed.

Deloitte employs its staffs basing on the staff’s academic specialization in their undergraduate courses. Employees are employed basing on the areas of their specialization. For instance, an actuarial scientist is employed in the department of auditing. The following graphical representations show the increasing workforce celebrated by Deloitte. The graph reveals that since 2006, Deloitte’s overall workforce has been increasing.

Hiring and Staffing at Deloitte

One of the largest human capital investments by Deloitte is employee training (Abrhiem, 2014, p. 50).  Through their internship programmes, Deloitte has been investing heavily in training undergraduates to improve their employability indexes. In internships, Deloitte ensures that it have a sustainable human resource. At the end of internships, Deloitte retains intelligent, diligent and creative interns. By this, the company is guaranteed to have an effective employee performance in the future. Interns that are trained by Deloitte, moreover, facilitate efficient workflow in the company. By increasing the workforce in Deloitte, tasks in Deloitte are assigned to the new interns.  Moreover, apart from the internships, Deloitte also trains its staff during their annually scheduled seminars. The professionals are taught new methods to handle the emerging trends in professional service provision in the finance sector. Trained interns and up-skilled employees promote healthy employee relationships in Deloitte that eventually leads to increased output per employee.

Although Deloitte have been performing excellently in providing effective professional service, there is still room for modifications. The company, for instance, has not yet ventured in providing health insurance services to clients. Considering that the company mainly deals with financial instruments, initiating a Deloitte Insurance cover could increase the company’s revenue even further. Deloitte’s risk management task force should work hand in hand with the insurance department to ensure efficiency in the new department. Secondly, Deloitte should reduce its retention strategies and search for new talents from the youth. Apart from talents, the youth are likely to possess more energy and manpower that would eventually lead to the company’s increased productivity. The company should emulate IBM’s action and fire old employees for creative, energetic and more productive youths.

Deloitte’s human resource strategies, insofar, have yielded for both the company and the employees. Deloitte has enjoyed a continuous flow of efficient labour in many centuries. To the employees, job retention has served greatly in improving job satisfaction and developing attachment and loyalty for the company. The company’s retention strategies have served the company greatly by ensuring that employee bonds and relationships are strengthened. Moreover, training and education offered by the company improves the quality of labour offered by the employees. The employees benefit from the training because their employability index is improved. Employees who undergo training eye at getting promotions and a rise of pay in their departments.

Conclusions

To sum up, Deloitte’s excellent performance in the professional services industry can be attributed to the company’s effective human resource strategies. Deloitte human resource strategies such as retention have served to manage the Deloitte employees’ skills, talents and experiences. The company retain its employees to preserve the training it has invested on its employees.  Through the efforts of company’s able human resource team, the appointed top leaders and managers in the company have been major drivers of Deloitte’s success. The company, however, is recommended to consider employing more youths. Youths will serve to increase the company’s creativity, performance and productivity. Moreover, the company is recommended to consider venturing into new fields such as provision of health insurance.

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