Listening to our Directors and Principals

17 BDO LLP | LISTENING TO OUR DIRECTORS AND PRINCIPALS

DEMAND SIDE: HOW DO WE TEMPER THE DEMAND SIDE?

 Despite the above, we still want to take on new business because of our personal long-term ambitions and perceived partner behaviour  All agreed that more effort is needed to address that demand side, given there are obvious challenges on the supply side  There were then many stories shared of steps that teams are actively taking to Frost are looking at how to release more time to help people deliver quality work – Leeds: identifying 10% of the portfolio for time input against recovery rate, giving us c. £1m of time back that we want to walk away from. This (‘Project Heartsink’) is a powerful message to assistant managers upwards; they are being firm on this particularly to support the managers address the resource challenge: – LAG: Simon Brooker and Julian

– NRES: the ‘Soul Stoppers’ programme to identify which jobs people don’t like working on and then apply the 4Rs – Southampton: produced an Independent Business Review pack on our 20 watch-list jobs and are then tracking the delivery of these; turned down a £1m job on 100% recovery for the team’s Wellbeing, which they publicised internally – Financial Services: policy in place that senior agreement is needed to take on a job of more than £50k  This helped the group reach the conclusion that one size wouldn’t fit all when it came to workload and resource management. Instead, decision-makers need to keep being encouraged to reflect fully on any opportunity for the firm, as well as the specific teams or offices  Paul confirmed that this is also the LT’s position: we are telling partners to be strategic; not to worry if we end up being short of work for a small period; please do the 4Rs; and concentrate on the quality resource.

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