KPMG plans to lay off hundreds of workers — who is likely to be impacted? Everything we know so far
The U.K. unit of big four accounting firm KPMG has notified about 600 employees in its audit business that their jobs are at risk, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Affected employees were notified they could face layoffs depending on the outcome of redundancy consultation, according to an internal memo distributed to staff and reviewed by the news agency.
If the proposed redundancy consultation goes ahead as planned, the company expects up to 440 employees to leave as a result, the report said.
Which positions are at risk?
The planned layoffs primarily target executive assistants who are qualified accountants, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The proposal is expected to affect approximately 6% of the division’s total workforce of 7,100 employees.
Why is KPMG laying off staff?
Commenting on the development, a spokesperson for KPMG UK said: “Current market conditions mean that our attrition rates are very low for certain parts of our audit population, so we are recommending that these areas are right-sized.”
“This is not a decision we take lightly,” the spokesman said in a statement to Bloomberg.
KPMG is not the only consultancy firm reducing its workforce. Many rival consulting firms have also faced layoffs as the industry attempts to rein in costs after years of aggressive growth.
Layoffs in the consulting industry
Separately, McKinsey & Co.’s leadership team discussed the possibility of job cuts with executives in non-client-facing departments, Bloomberg previously reported; this can affect around 10% of their business’s headcount. The layoffs could mean several thousand layoffs, which McKinsey will surprise over the next 18 to 24 months.
Another major consultancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), also warned earlier this month that partners who do not embrace and use artificial intelligence in their work have no future at the company.
PWC chief executive Paul Griggs said senior staff who were not paranoid about being “AI first” would likely be replaced by those ready to embrace the technology. “I don’t think anyone gets a free pass here. Nobody,” he told the Financial Times.
Consulting is seen as one of the white-collar sectors that experts believe is most exposed to the rise of artificial intelligence, as the technology increasingly has the capacity to perform tasks such as accounting, research and analyzing complex business problems.
