Anthony Viel, CEO of Deloitte Canada, describes a popular new retention strategy that benefits both employees and clients alike.
Russell: Let's talk a bit about retention. What are Deloitte Days? How does it work? And frankly, why is it so popular with your employees?
Anthony Viel: Like all corporate Canadian organizations, we are driving tactics to first and foremost ensure the health and well-being of our people. Working through the pandemic, it's been tough. And we've introduced one of our tactics with Deloitte Days. This year is 13 days, in addition to your normal leave, personal days and statutory holidays. If you work for Deloitte, you have 40 to 45 days off a year, eight to nine weeks a year.
Russell: And that includes new hires just out of school?
Anthony Viel: Yes, exactly. Why do we want to do that? Because we've done more than enough work to suggest that when you're healthy, and when you're balanced, you're more productive. We're fortunate now in our industry, we measure production in terms of time. So notwithstanding, you have a more time off, the more time you can do with clients, we can measure. That's linked to the way in which we recognize revenue and the like. Hopefully the data would say you're more productive, the healthier you are for longer, and that's important. The feature of the Deloitte Days is this, we have picked days that everyone takes off. That is benefit number one. If you and I have a day each, so to speak, and we take it on different days. Guess what happens when you're off and I'm on? I'm calling you. I'll send you an email.
Russell: I love that you do it that way, because if I'm a Deloitte employee and I look at my phone and it says AV, I'm going to answer.
Anthony Viel: Hundred percent. And then this is the truth, when we introduced it, half the employees, might be exaggerating the half, a lot of them and say, is this guy for real? Does he really mean we can take the day off? I can tell you now, two and a half years in, you do not get a call. You do not get an email.
The second feature of the Deloitte Day is we normally call it if it's a three-day weekend because of a strategy holiday, we'll make it a four-day weekend. Think Canada Day as an example. It just gives you a little bit more stretch if you will. And when you return on the Tuesday, your inbox is exactly the same size of what you left it on the Thursday or the Friday, whatever the case may be. And that's another thing. Think about when we take out normal leave, we come back, and the inbox is enormous. The fact that we're not annoying each other when we're away and the fact that we start where we finished when we left has been very, very powerful for us and our clients.
Listen to the episode here:
Anthony's transcript has been slightly altered in this Q&A for clarity and brevity.