First it was EY, then it was PwC, now Deloitte has told its U.S. staff not to bother coming to the office for a while because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But unlike EY and PwC, which will be full-on remote work beginning tomorrow, Green Dotters will have to wait until Wednesday.
Thanks to a tipster, we have the email that Deloitte CEO Joe Ucuzoglu sent to all staff late this afternoon:
US Colleagues,
We continue to closely assess the rapidly evolving circumstances, at all times with your health and the safety of our communities as our most important priorities. This situation is truly unprecedented and requires all of humanity to collectively band together for a common purpose and embrace social-distancing. I know I can count on all of you to rise to the occasion. Over the past several days, I have been inspired by the countless examples of teams finding creative and agile ways to virtualize our firm—continuing to deliver client service of the highest quality and carry out our important mission while embracing this societal imperative. We are already well into this virtualization process through our prior encouragement to work-from-home, enabled by the world-class technology and Deloitte ingenuity that we all have at our disposal. Now is the time to take the next important step and mandate work-from-home, except in the most limited of essential circumstances. Accordingly:
Effective with the close of business on Tuesday 3/17, work-from-home will be required—we will no longer work at our US offices or at client sites until further notice. Limited support will be available in Deloitte offices for the next two days (unless otherwise precluded by local regulations) in the event you need to come in and gather some of your items to facilitate working from home. Further, please work with your engagement leadership to determine the best approach to gather any necessary items from client sites and wind down your on-site presence.
We recognize that in a small number of instances, we support mission essential client operations from certain locations within the Deloitte office footprint and client sites or perform work in the office that our firm cannot operate without. In these circumstances, PPMDs must request approval from a member of the US ExCo for a limited exception to enable such essential operations to continue (please reach out to your business CEO, Jason Girzadas, Stacy Janiak, or Pete Shimer; any request related to GPS should be directed to Mike Canning). These circumstances are expected to be limited.
The previously announced restrictions on travel and meetings are extended until further notice (with ExCo approval required for any limited exception around travel, as previously communicated). We will closely monitor new developments and communicate updates to you immediately.
We will continue to live up to our commitment of frequent, transparent communication grounded in straight-talk. Many of you have shared with me that the webcasts held last week were helpful, we will plan to hold similar functional webcasts to cover the latest up to date information later this week.
Please continue to communicate with your clients to assure them we will do everything feasible to minimize any disruption and continue delivering exceptional service during this period. Our core purpose is to help clients and markets navigate their most important issues—this is certainly one of them, and we will live up to the highest ideals of our profession by finding new and creative ways to continue delivering to our clients with distinction. This is also a time to demonstrate the utmost empathy and care for our clients and each other.
There’s some more but you get the point of Joe U.’s email.
Haven’t seen or heard anything yet about KPMG going mandatory work from home. We’ll keep you guys posted if word come out of the House of Klynveld.
