KPMG Reviews in London, UK Area

Pros

Variety
Career opportunities
International
Work life balance
Bright, hard working colleagues

Cons

A lot of working away from home.
Life style once described as best suited to new grads and the newly divorced!

Pros

Culture, promotions, flexibility, variety of work, fantastic & talented people, development, exposure

Cons

the work life balance, salary and benefits

Advice to Senior Management

need to benchmark and align salaries to industry offerings

Pros

Friendly people
Great facilities
Very good benefits
Interesting projects

Cons

Limited promotion opportunities
Only thing that matters is utilisation
Constant retrenchment becoming demoralising
Promotions and performance reviews highly subjective

Advice to Senior Management

Share the spoils - reduce your take and distribute it to staff
Identify and stick to a strategy
Remove non-performing partners

Pros

1. Steep learning curve: You will get to learn a lot, about many industries
2. Good work culture: The people are generally good to work with

Cons

1. No work life balance: They expect you to work all the time. And everyone seems to work all the time.
2. Promotions and Bonuses: They are not very forthcoming with these, and the appraisals process can be a bit wayward.

Advice to Senior Management

Help employees have a life beyond work. I know it's not much different at the other big fours, but please try and take the lead here.

Pros

People are generally nice and easy to get on with. Personally I have a good work life balance.

Cons

Don't pay your professional fees

Pros

Other employees are very good people, friendly, calm in the face of adversity and easy to get on with.
Work is very varied which is a great benefit.

Cons

Pay and benefits packages are not as good a elsewhere. This encourages people to look elsewhere even though the working environment aat KPMG is very good

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more, but keep the same mix of staff and atmosphere. Those are what makes KPMG such a good place to work.

Pros

All partners form their own kingdoms, play the game right and opportunities abound. Most of the work revolves around creating plans. Implementation is generally not favoured unless the fees are.correct.

Cons

Back the wrong horse and get sidelined. The partnership is made out of raising stars and wounded bears, pick your sponsor wisely. regardless of what the internal policies say, to move ahead you need to not only prove profitable but must also demonstrate that you have external options.

Advice to Senior Management

The performance management system is designed to be transparent but the application of the system is opaque. At the end its a nice veneer obfuscating a more political system.

Pros

good career progression
great benefits

Cons

hectic hours
no international training provided

Advice to Senior Management

pay more attention to employees

Pros

Good name in the market

Cons

Partners and senior management ineffective, nasty, bitchy and useless. They are terrified the market will find out they know nothing and overcharge for everuthing

Advice to Senior Management

Get some training. Try trearing people better

Pros

Lots of training on offer, teams I joined were always welcoming. Great benefits package with the ability to buy more holiday. The chance to move depts.

Cons

In my experience, there was an awful lot of low morale across the business unit. Frustration at how long some basic things took. I was surprised at the messy process in which the team hired new staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Really listen to what the employees are saying. Great to hear about future plans, however, we never felt we saw any progress with these plans, great ideas just faded. Do more to keep morale up by communicating more to the employees.