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Deloitte consulting partner tells juniors their time is not their own

Five months after the chairman of KPMG UK told staff to stop moaning about working hours, Alexander Curry, a partner and the UK lead at Monitor Deloitte, has sent an email saying that his junior staff do not own their time. 

Sent in early July, the email seen by eFinancialCareers starts jovially enough. "Now as I hope you know I am generally a laissez-faire optimistic sort of cove," says Curry. "Today, however I've had a couple of discussions with some of the younger members of the practice that have made me rather grumpy. Those with whom I chatted essentially expressed the view that what they did with their time was up to them, based on their interests and preferences."

Curry then has some suggestions for how to achieve control of your time: "Now, if you want to do what you want I suggest that you become millionaires, authors or bums. Failing that, I would like to emphasize the rules of the road for scheduling."

Deloitte has yet to respond to a request to comment. It's understood that reactions to the email have so far been muted. "If you're overworked and underpaid and you receive an email like this it's not exactly motivating," said one insider. 

Curry joined Monitor in 2000 after a career as a submarine officer, and became a partner at Monitor Deloitte in 2013 and its UK Lead in June 2019. His email to juniors follows various complaints about the hours worked at some Big Four firms. In an email sent in January, a manager in the assurance team at EY in Hong Kong said working hours were 9.30am to 11.30pm during peak seasons, that midnight working wasn't unusual, and that people should expect to work the weekend too. 

Photo by Andrea Natali on Unsplash

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AUTHORSarah Butcher Global Editor
  • Th
    Thomas Crown
    16 July 2021

    Its all opinion and covered under free speech and opinion, so all you pin heads who are asking where's the beef or is there legal recourse, you are all dolts and that's my opinion

  • cy
    cybernewtype2
    15 July 2021

    I think he's being wildly misconstrued.

    I didn't see anything that was to be interpreted as "I own you 24/7." It was in reference to how firm projects were staffed, if I understood it correctly. A manager has an obligation to ensure work gets done, often with some items being priority and unpleasant. It'd be like if I worked at McDonalds and was surprised I had to man the burger station.

    I'm the first guy to diss on PA, but this felt like sensational journalism. I wonder if Mr. Curry has any sort of recourse against this type of article. I'm not sure if it counts as slander or libel, but the article is clearly designed to paint him in a negative light. The article title is trying to construe him as someone who wants 24/7 control over his subordinates, which is not the case in the rest of the article.

  • Wi
    Will Hunter
    15 July 2021

    This article is rubbish. Misrepresented, sensationalist crap.

    Senior Partner in firm tells juniors they can't do exactly what they like? That's his job.

    Anyone that doesn't understand that they can't always do the work they want to and sometimes other priorities take over shouldn't be in that sort of job in the first place.

    Poor little snowflakes.

  • An
    Anonymous
    15 July 2021

    It is not clear to me at all that an email suggesting that people can’t always do work that aligns with their preferences and interests is equivalent to an assertion that « their life is not their own ». I appreciate that sensational headlines sell, but journalism should also be about integrity and accurate representation of facts. Anybody who has had a real job in a corporate environment understands that an employee’s day-to-day work does not and cannot perfectly align to his/her interests and preferences all the time. To think otherwise is either naive, or an attempt to stoke outrage out of nothing to build rapport with one’s readership.

  • sr
    sr dev
    15 July 2021

    So where’s the actual content of the email?
    What were “the rules of the road” that he emphasized?

    You provided one sentence of semi-scandalous content. Is that all there is to this?

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