Strength in numbers - Deloitte & Touche LLP

Helena Bryan | | Published: December 01, 2007 Ranked #4 (Top Companies with More Than 100 Employees) - Best Companies to Work For in B.C. 2007

The 100-plus high-energy Gen Ys laughing it up in the sweeping lobby of Whistler’s Westin Resort & Spa look like they belong at a Killers concert – not the annual audit training event put on by the Vancouver office of Deloitte & Touche.

The company bills itself as “Canada’s leading professional services firm,” as in audits, taxes and financial advice. So I can be excused then for assuming that I’m looking for an older, more sedate gathering than the one I see here clad in stylish yoga wear and Nikes or Billabong jeans and DC flip flops. Then I spot the word “Deloitte” on the ubiquitous black pleather shoulder bags of these Red Bull-toting, iPod connected twenty­somethings (I find out later that 45 per cent of the employees at Deloitte’s Vancouver office are younger than 28 years old).

I follow one group into Alpine Room A to observe just why Deloitte & Touche is one of B.C.’s best companies to work for, and why this group of burgeoning number crunchers looks so darned keen, despite having to spend the next few hours learning about the finer points of a quality-assurance review.

A beaming young man juggles bottled water, a laptop and a trophy. He tells me that he secured the trophy, along with a $50 gift certificate to Earls, when he won the big poker match the night before. There are hopes, one of his entourage chimes in, for additional prizes at this afternoon’s “Olympics” event. The games will include a tug of war, limbo competition and a surprise dance off, I’m told conspiratorially by instructor Joanna Pearson. She’s a senior manager in auditing and one of 12 trainers here for the week.

So one thing about this company is clear so far: it knows how to throw a good party. It knows something else too: that employees who socialize together are more likely to work well together. And teamwork, it seems here, is worth its weight in tequila shooters, chicken wings and spa treatments.
This is confirmed later by the managing partner of the Vancouver office, Cal Buss (a mere 48 years young): “High-performance teams are more effective than any individual, no matter how brilliant that individual might be. One of Deloitte’s business advantages is that we have a very broad set of skills, but all of that skill is useless unless you can marshal it as part of a team.”

That’s why these training events are held away from the office, where the only option is to mingle. The intent is as much to hone the soft skills of employees as their technical expertise.

The Whistler week is limited to the audit group, but

the commitment to continual learning and team building is company-wide. Back on the plush 28th floor of Bentall Four in downtown Vancouver, Farzin Ismail is catching up on breakfast with a slice of toast and peanut butter after a late-night flight from Toronto. She was there attending an industry event featuring David Suzuki as the headline speaker.

Ismail started with the company as a co-op student nearly nine years ago and has worked her way up to senior manager of Deloitte’s 50-strong enterprise risk group.

During her rise, she benefited from the company’s performance-management program in which every employee is assigned a coach, someone in management to help steer the newbies and less experienced staff along their career paths.

In addition to developing business and building relationships with clients, Ismail is now a coach herself. She’s come full circle. It’s hoped that the newbies at Whistler will follow suit.

For this company, that’s a return worth investing in.

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