Deloitte cuts 250 underperforming staff in the UK

Deloitte has cut about 250 employees in the UK who it considered were underperforming — at least the third time in the past 13 months that the firm has axed staff.
The job cuts focused on Deloitte’s advisory division, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news, and were not made public by the firm. The total number of cuts represents about 1 per cent of Deloitte’s employees in the UK.
In some cases, departing staff are said to have had to sign non-disclosure agreements. The cull came as a result of the firm’s “performance management process” and affected employees received appropriate payments for notice.
Deloitte warned in September last year that it was planning on making 800 employees redundant because of a slowdown in demand after significant growth during the pandemic. All of the big four accountancy firms significantly increased their workforce to manage a surge in demand for clients seeking advice on how to weather Covid-19 and are now looking to cut costs as the industry faces more challenging market conditions.
PwC launched a round of lay-offs in June after it warned its 25,000 staff last year to expect less generous pay increases and bonuses, with some of its employees either facing pay freezes or real-term pay cuts. Last year EY also said it was planning a small round of redundancies and warned staff that they might see smaller pay rises and bonuses than in previous years.
However, Deloitte’s latest lay-offs come less than a month after it announced that its 749 UK equity partners took home more than £1 million on average for the fourth year in a row. The average figure was a 5 per cent fall compared with the previous year, though the number of partners at Deloitte has risen since then from 714 to 749. The accountancy firm is the only member of the big four to report an average payout in excess of £1 million for the past two years.
The company is also in the process of overhauling its operations in the UK as part of a global reorganisation, where the accountancy firm is shrinking the number of its main business units to four from the five it has had for the past decade. The new units will be audit and assurance; strategy, risk and transactions; technology and transformation; and tax and legal.
Deloitte declined to comment.