EY employee death: Deloitte forms 3-member committee to review people practices

New Delhi: Amid a social media storm over the death of a young employee at tax consultancy EY, allegedly due to work pressure, Deloitte has formed a three-member external committee, which includes former revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj, to to analyze practices and policies. and employee lawsuits, its South Asia CEO Romal Shetty said on Friday. Shetty said that to manage work pressure within the organization and to have an open work culture, Deloitte has a Chief Happiness Officer and takes strictest action on any misbehavior within the organization.

Deloitte is one of the big four global tax consulting firms. In addition to Deloitte and EY, the other major firms are PwC and KPMG.

“… Very unfortunate, very tragic, young child losing his life. We are in the customer service business and in the customer service business there will always be deadlines… having all these pressures,” Shetty told PTI in an interview.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, who passed the CA exam in 2023 and worked at EY’s Pune office for four months, died in July. According to a letter her mother wrote to EY India president Rajiv Memani, she was overworked by an “overwhelming” workload as a new hire that affected her “physically, emotionally and mentally”.

Shetty dismissed any culture of bullying within organizations that had been built up over 100-150 years, but did not rule out any individual wrongdoing.

“… The culture of bullying is not normally what professional organizations are. But are there individuals who do certain things? Yes, absolutely… So, first of all, I think as an organization you have to have an open culture, which nobody should have. be afraid to bring up these issues”. Shetty said Deloitte had set up a panel of three eminent and independent people on Friday following the tragic death of 26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil at EY. “We have set up a panel this post… Tarun Bajaj, who was the revenue secretary, Manoj Kohli, who was the managing director of Airtel, Subodh Jaiswal, who was the CBI director, to review all our human practices, our policies , the processes. How are ethics cases… We have an ethics helpline. How are they actually managed?

He said that in today’s world where the workforce is diverse, there is a need to review the work environment and make it suitable for stress management. Mental health is a serious issue and tackling it is a challenge, he said.

Shetty said young people joining the workforce today are coming from tier 2 and 3 cities, leaving their families behind and may be going through stress in their personal lives in addition to the professional pressure they face in a service business. clients who have a strict deadline.

“The younger generation is much smarter than we ever were, much smarter, much smarter. Sometimes, I think a little more resilience will be helpful,” said Shetty.

As CEO, Shetty said he goes to every office and holds an open forum where people can ask any question.

“The concept is that if you can ask your CEO any question, including a slightly embarrassing one, then you can even walk up to an older person and say, I don’t like this… We can have and an environment to make sure people are comfortable with what they’re doing because sometimes you spend 14 hours at work,” Shetty said.