Companies
At the Big Four, work stress is taking a toll on both employee and employer
Summary
- In the high-stakes world of consulting, young professionals are leaving in droves, exhausted by the relentless demands of 16-hour workdays and constant client pressures. But the consultancy firms are facing their own challenges, battling high attrition and a talent war.
MUMBAI : The Big Four global consultancies—KPMG, EY, PwC, and Deloitte—rely heavily on one key asset: manpower. This workforce is also their most expensive, making the business model heavily dependent on utilising their employees to the maximum.
But it has now come at a cost—the recent death of a 26-year-old chartered accountant four months after she joined EY in Pune. Her parents have blamed work stress for her passing.
While EY on Wednesday said it was “deeply saddened" by the employee’s death and that it “will continue to find ways to improve and provide a healthy workplace", senior executives at the Big 4 audit firms acknowledged the demanding work pressure.
“Unlike other sectors, in consulting firms, the manpower is their only asset. Here, the utilisation of the workforce is at maximum. And unlike in IT, there is no concept of ‘bench’," said a senior partner at Deloitte, speaking anonymously. “Hence the pressure is high, especially in teams where the billing is outcome-based."
Utilisation rate indicates the percentage of staff engaged in active projects, while ‘bench’ refers to employees not yet assigned a project.
To be sure, long hours and high work pressure aren’t unique to consultancy firms. The startup sector’s so-called ‘hustle culture’ is both condemned and celebrated. If Infosys Ltd co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and Ola Electric Ltd’s Bhavish Aggarwal found cheerleaders for their advocacy of a minimum of 70 hours of work in a week, they also attracted stone-throwers in equal measure.
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But the Big 4 are starting to pay a price.
The expectation of 16-hour workdays, frequent meetings, and weekends spent preparing for client pitches is leading to a troubling trend: hurried exits of young professionals. Once coveted during B-school placement seasons, these firms are now seeing junior and mid-level employees resign within just a few years, exhausted.
Attrition at the junior level in India’s consulting industry was estimated at 20-22% last year, and in the middle and senior ranks at 10%, according to consultants.
“I had to go to client’s site six days a week and travel 2-3 hours a day, return at night, and get back on my laptop," said a former employee of one of the consultancies who left the job in three years. “Work spilled over during weekends as I was in the risk and compliance team and worked for a telecom client, and escalations came in almost everyday."
Another former employee, a cybersecurity analyst who spent eight years at one of the Big Four, recalled having to manage the demands of clients across three different time zones—Indian companies in the mornings, afternoons for clients in West Asia, and evenings delegated for European firms.
“There were times when the deadlines clashed, and in profiles like ours we had to learn ourselves as the technology used kept evolving," said the New Delhi-based analyst who has now joined a finance firm.
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Pressure all round
A senior partner at one of the Big Four firms said hospitalisation among younger employees was not uncommon, especially as they are expected to put in 14-16 hours a day in their initial years.
A senior partner at a rival consultancy added that workload had increased in recent years. “Clients now want more options… The number of permutations and combinations for each project has increased and the failure rates have upped as well."
“Considering how much the pace of doing business has changed, harmonising work and life and reducing stress is indeed a challenge we must address," a representative of Deloitte India said in an email to Mint.
The consultancy offers its employees a flexi-working model, with ‘hybrid’ as its default setting, and a year-end firmwide downtime, the company said.
“We have introduced well-being as a component of goals too. The requirement is to take at least two days off every quarter and this is reflected in a burnout dashboard," the Deloitte representative said, highlighting other initiatives such as a counselling helpline and a peer-to-peer network of mental health champions.
A spokesperson for KPMG highlighted similar policies and initiatives, including counselling for the firm’s employees and their families and periodic health check-ups as part of its wellness measures.
PwC did not respond to Mint’s queries.
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The Big Four audit firms—which compete with other consulting firms such as Accenture Plc. and McKinsey for talent—offer annual salaries of ₹25-35 lakh for junior-level employees. Chartered accountants at the base level can earn ₹10-15 lakh per annum, not including bonuses.
As at law firms, consultants at Big Four audit firms can choose to be either equity partners or fixed-income partners. Equity partners get a share of the company’s revenue, while the other lot earns a fixed salary with variable pay linked to the firm’s performance.
The Big Four are facing their own share of pressure: poaching of their top talent by rivals. Amid rising opportunities in artificial intelligence to business transformation and risk to digital advisory, global consulting blue chips in India have seen top partners switch jobs recently.
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