Workforce Retention
Deloitte Looks to Retain Its Gray Hairs
Dan Gruber was a consultant on the go. For most of his 20 years as a Deloitte Consulting partner, Gruber worked 70 hours or more a week and seldom stayed on the ground more than a few days at a time. So, as he approached his 50th birthday three years ago, Gruber decided enough was enough — it was time to exit the consulting life.
However, Deloitte's consulting chief had his own idea: Trim Gruber's workweek to 40 hours, significantly reduce his required travel time, and release him from a roster of tedious administrative responsibilities. In other words, convince him to stay.
Deloitte Consulting has a good reputation for the training, development, and work/life benefit programs it has created for its nearly 20,000 consultants. But, as more Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age, the firm realized it needed to come up with some retention strategies for its partners and senior people.
In June, Deloitte will announce the first participants in its Senior Leaders Program. The initiative is designed to ensure that the pool of talent at the upper level will not be lost as these older and more experienced professionals retire.
"The idea is to give very-high-performing older partners an opportunity to create their own unique role with the firm," says Gruber, who also leads some partner development and retention programs. "It's specially designed for people who don't want to continue what they are doing or to have conventional roles."
The program will be for partners over 50 who have at least 10 years of partner experience and who have spent the last five with Deloitte.
Marketing/Kearney's Art of the Deal
Clients visiting A.T. Kearney's San Francisco offices are coming away with more than just some business advice. They're getting a dose of culture, too.
A.T. Kearney's art-in-the-office program, Visions, could be interpreted as a nifty public relations campaign to help build its profile in local communities. But by partnering with the San Francisco Art Institute, the program is helping to connect potential patrons and art enthusiasts from the business world with the work of local artists.
The exhibit features some 46 modern art pieces from Bay Area artists. The pieces can be purchased, but only after the end of the exhibit, says a firm spokesman. A.T. Kearney plans similar exhibits at its offices around the world, including one in Chicago this fall.
Thought Leadership
Hamel Advances a Hierarchy of Imagination
Consulting recently asked Harvard Business School professor and chairman of Strategos Gary Hamel to better explain why certain consultancies are abandoning the partnership model.
CM: Do you believe the traditional partnership model is likely to be rejected by larger consultancies?
Hamel: I think there are two things that will put the partnership model at risk. The first is knowledge management. What consultancies have been doing with their knowledge management systems is that they have been turning private capital into corporate capital. The reason all these firms were partnerships is that historically they owned their own tools — like a guild in medieval Europe. They owned their own tools, they were individual craftspeople. Today, they don't own their own tools to the same extent, and we're taking
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