Deloitte wants to kill your HR department.
I am not joking.
It starts with a casual conversation. Deloitte has done work with your colleagues in operations, IT and finance. It’s not tough to secure a meeting with your CEO or CFO. They know your industry, and they’ve done research in HR — which is nothing more than a cloaked lead generation campaign — that uniquely identifies the strengths and weaknesses in most modern HR department.
Can they just have a moment of your CEO’s time to talk about how business leaders think and feel? (Never mind those feelings aren’t fact.) Can they give your CEO and CFO a report that supports their consulting services? (It’s a report that is nothing more than a marketing scheme.)
From there, it gets bad for HR folk who work in the trenches. Once the ball is rolling, it’s all about best practices and optimization. You get trends, tips and a list of talent acquisition technologies to procure. You get process methodologies and implementations.
And you, the HR line leader, get boxed out. Labelled administrative. Told that you need to be more strategic (as you’re preventing lawsuits and dealing with front-line employee relations issues) while Deloitte has your CEO out to dinner that your company will eventually pay for on an invoice.
So how do you stop Deloitte from killing your career?
I wrote a book with some tips. I offer career advice on this subject all of the time in coaching sessions and in keynotes. But there’s one thing that you can do tomorrow that will help your hemorrhaging career:
Don’t let Deloitte through the door.
Bribe the admin to kill conference calls and delay the meetings. (I’m not joking.) Make every HR experience an efficient, glorious, meaningful experience with clear ROI for your executive team. Form a relationship with your leadership team that is based on familiarity, commonality and reciprocity. Copy what Deloitte does and deliver it flawlessly. Bar the damn door to the executive suite.
Once they’re in, they’re in.
Deloitte and its ilk are killing your future. Their projects get bigger when your salary dollars are reallocated. Don’t go down without a fight.
ADP tried this a couple of times with me. Beat them by showing it is more expensive to use them than me and I was there all the time, not when “needed”.
Hi Laurie: I love you but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Deloitte’s Human Capital business (which includes Bersin by Deloitte) is 100% focused on helping HR leaders and their teams deliver business value to their organizations. Would you like us to fill you in on what Deloitte really does for clients?
“Make every HR experience an efficient, glorious, meaningful experience with clear ROI for your executive team. Copy what Deloitte does and deliver it flawlessly. Bar the damn door to the executive suite.”
As a HR Consultant that has come in to support clients when their in-house HR staff couldn’t/wouldn’t perform, I agree with the above statement wholeheartedly. Do your job and do it well. It becomes much harder for outsiders to gain influence.