Layoff Watch ’23: If You Work at Grant Thornton, You Might Not By the End of the Week

Earlier this afternoon we received a tip:

Grant Thornton to perform layoffs across the firm. Numbers unknown. Areas impacted unknown.

Well then, that’s not very helpful is it. A quick search uncovered this Reddit thread from a few hours ago which along with many comments about how these hoes ain’t loyal contains what appears to be the text of an email that went out earlier today. To everyone? Just leadership? Unclear. Someone let us know. (Thank you tipsters who let us know the email went to everyone)

We’re writing today to inform you about difficult but necessary decisions that the Senior Leadership Team has made in response to changing market conditions. Over the next several days, we will reduce the number of roles in certain areas of the business. We will also re-allocate budget and capacity from parts of the business where growth has slowed to areas where growth is accelerating. These changes will be targeted and limited in scope.

As you are all aware, the economy has slowed in recent months. Macro-economic conditions have had varying degrees of impact across all parts of our business, reducing demand for some of our services – particularly in some of our consulting-focused businesses that may represent discretionary spend for clients.

Grant Thornton is not alone in facing this reality. Yet, unlike peers, our revenue growth had been strong through March versus the prior fiscal year thanks to the superb client service our team delivers. We also took proactive steps over the past several months to mitigate the effects of the slowing economy by tightening expense controls and aggressively pursuing new business. While we were cautiously optimistic that these actions would be enough to support continued investment in growth areas through this downturn, it is now clear that we need to do more.

The reductions we’ll make this week will be across our firm at varying levels. They were carefully considered and analyzed by our Senior Leadership Team, ensuring personnel changes are as targeted and limited in scope as possible. We are also taking every opportunity to minimize the number of impacted colleagues by redirecting teammates to apply for open roles in growing areas of the firm.

Here’s what you can expect over the coming days: Conversations to notify affected teammates will begin tomorrow morning. Our goal is to complete these conversations by Thursday morning. Our service line leaders – Janet Malzone, Renato Zanichelli and Wade Kruse – will hold all-hands calls for their teams on Thursday. ICS team leaders may call similar meetings late in the week. The four-day weekend in honor of Memorial Day will take place as scheduled.

To conclude, we’d like to focus on two key points.

First, we will lean into our values and our culture as we go through a difficult process with some of our teammates this week. While this will be a challenging week for the entire firm, we should never forget that it will be most difficult for the teammates who will be directly impacted.

These professionals have given their best to our firm, and they have added value to our team. They deserve, and will receive, our full respect and utmost care as we help them transition to their next professional opportunity. We will be providing severance benefits including salary continuation and professional outplacement services to help each individual identify their next career opportunity as soon as possible.

Second, these steps we are taking will enable us to advance our strategy and achieve the same goals we’ve talked about: namely, continued investment in growth, serving clients with value and quality, and providing teammates professional development opportunities.

To our colleagues who will learn this week you are impacted by these reductions, thank you for all you have done for Grant Thornton and the firm’s clients. We hold each of you in the highest regard and we will support you through this process.

With our deepest gratitude.

Mentioned in the above email, Wade Kruse is National Managing Partner for Advisory and appears in this YouTube video posted just four days ago on Grant Thornton’s YouTube channel. Probably not the best idea to take any of this advice given the situation.

Janet Malzone leads Audit and Renato Zanichelli rules over Tax so we can assume from the email that layoffs will hit from all sides.

Note to GT leadership: layoffs are not an INSTINCT FOR GROWTH.

Good luck on the chopping block this week, all. Let’s be honest, you’ll probably be better off.