case study:
Accounting firm KPMG’s UK offices wanted to decrease payroll costs while maintaining the company’s commitment to its employees. So KPMG gave its UKbased employees the choice of either volunteering for a four-day workweek at 90 percent of their salary (80 percent if fewer than 75 percent of employees
signed up); a four- to twelve-week sabbatical at 30 percent of their base pay; either or both; or neither. Volunteering for the program, called Flexible Futures,
triggered an eighteen-month change in the employees’ employment contract giving KPMG the right to exercise the chosen option if and when it needed to.
This allowed the company to reduce employee hours and pay on short notice and reduce the need for large-scale reductions if economic challenges arose.
To educate employees about their options, KPMG held conference calls, trained managers to answer potential questions, and posted a long list of questions
and answers on a dedicated Flexible Futures page on its intranet. The website also included a calculator to enable employees to easily calculate what their
take-home pay would be under any of the options. A link to KPMG’s corporate responsibility website helped connect employees interested in sabbaticals with
nonprofit organizations that needed accounting expertise.
Flexible Futures gives employees greater job security and control over their own destiny. This has allowed them to worry less about their jobs and focus more
on their clients. More than 85 percent of KPMG employees signed up for at least one of the options. KPMG expects this to save the company up to 15
percent of payroll costs and to boost employee morale.
Questions:
1.How does this program help KPMG?
2.How does this program help KPMG’s employees?
3.If you were employed by KPMG, would this program appeal to you? Why or why not?
