Hartford Business Journal

11 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 29, 2021 The Connecticut Forum's 2021-2022 Season YEARS 30 FRI, FEB. 25, 2022 The Fight for Racial Justice FRI, MAY 13, 2022 Creator of Humans of New York Brandon Stanton An Evening of Storytelling and Photos THURS, DEC. 9, 2021 Creative Minds Unique Voices from Music, Art, and Television LIVE from The Bushnell SAT, APRIL 9, 2022 Life in 2042 How We'll Work and Live in the Future subscribe: ctforum.org HOSTED BY XFINITY LIFETIME PATRONS: Connecticut Public | The Hartford Financial Services Group | Lincoln Financial Foundation | Raytheon Technologies | The Rosalyn Group | Stanley Black & Decker | Travelers HOSTED BY TRAVELERS ON THE RECORD: Q&A office holding up in the Great Resignation? Are you seeing a lot of turnover? The Great Resignation exists, but I'm not sure it's changed the dynamic in our firm completely. Most of our employees have a longer view of their career, but we are not immune to these kinds of trends. It's having some impact but we are trying to address that and react to it. In professional services we are always competing for talent. We hire folks who are attractive to other companies, and of course people are given opportunities outside the firm. What we try to do is match those opportunities so that the experience and opportunity inside the firm is compelling and they stay. Q: What's the competition out there locally for accounting and CPA talent? Where do you recruit from? There is tremendous opportunity if you want to come into professional services because there isn't enough talent at the end of the day and we are competing against other professional service firms and private industry. I think some of the remote work environment creates an opportunity. If you are working remotely and you're not commuting into Manhattan or Boston, central Connecticut has a great work-life balance to offer. I don't think the pandemic necessarily hurt us or helped us in terms of recruiting, but for us in Hartford, we're a great place to live and work. Q: When you are looking to recruit, are you mostly looking at Connecticut colleges? At the firm level, we have an open application so anyone, anywhere can go on and apply for a job. We do spend time on college campuses, UConn, University of Hartford, Fairfield University, Central Connecticut State University. But it's also an interesting dynamic here in Connecticut because a lot of students leave the state to go to college so that's where our national footprint comes into play, especially for those students who want to come back to Connecticut after they graduate. Q: What does the future of work look like at KPMG? Our future work state is what we call 'flex with purpose,' and I think that's an important distinction. It's a hybrid model. We are a big firm. People's roles are different. There are some people who would traditionally be at a client location primarily, there are some that would be in the office primarily and some who do a combination of both. Fundamentally none of that is changing, except we don't expect everyone to come to a location everyday. Remote working has proven to be effective and we are going to continue that, but we do believe in the value of teaming and getting together in person as colleagues or with clients. And so when the interactions are meaningful we want people to come together, when conditions are safe. We see an essential kind of cultural and personal bonding and professional development of interacting with others in person. Over time that's how I think our new model will work. Q: Are most of your employees working remotely right now? Yes, to a large extent. You can come into the office with the right protocols, vaccination, wearing a mask, appropriately social distancing. Q: Will your real estate needs change with a more permanent hybrid model going forward? I think over time, across the firm we are rethinking what the right layout is when you have a flex with purpose type of program. Do you need more individual cubes or gathering spaces? All of that is still in the works, we aren't ready to make a decision yet. Q: I'm sure you are getting a lot of questions from clients about the future of work and retaining and attracting talent. What advice are you giving them? I think we've been working with a lot of companies on front-office and digital transformations. It really started from an acute need to go remote. In the early days of the crisis we had a lot of short-term projects of really getting people up and going remotely. And now you move on to where companies are saying they see the value of flexibility and maybe not every job needs to be day to day in the office, so then the question becomes 'How do we change our processes and systems to make that a long-term solution?' That's really one of the big trends coming out of this pandemic.

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