Report: Analyzing KPMG's Human Resource Strategies for MBA401

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of KPMG's human resource management strategies, focusing on performance-related initiatives, culture-related initiatives, and engagement-related initiatives. The report begins with an introduction to human resource management and its significance within organizations, highlighting KPMG's initiatives for employee well-being and organizational growth. It then delves into specific initiatives, such as rationalizing governance and controls, innovating with technology, and optimizing human performance to improve workforce performance. The report also examines culture-related initiatives, including communicating goals and expectations and embracing failure, as well as engagement-related initiatives aimed at fostering a more engaged workforce. The report incorporates recommendations for enhancing these strategies, emphasizing the importance of technological advancements, cultural training, and employee engagement. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, underscoring the importance of these initiatives for KPMG's continued success in a competitive market. It also references key academic sources to support the analysis.

Human Resource Management

Contents
Introduction..............................................................................................................................................................3
Performance-related initiatives................................................................................................................................4
 Rationalize governance and controls............................................................................................................4
 Innovate with technology.............................................................................................................................4
 Optimize human performance......................................................................................................................4
Culture-related initiatives.........................................................................................................................................5
 Communicate goals and expectations..........................................................................................................5
 Embrace failure.............................................................................................................................................5
Engagement-related initiatives.................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations-...................................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................8
References................................................................................................................................................................9

Introduction
Human resource management refers to the management of human resources in an organization. It includes
conflict resolution, leave management and performance appraisal. It also assist an organization in taking
different kinds of initiative for the betterment of the organization like Performance related Initiatives, Culture
related initiatives and Engagement related Initiatives. KPMG has also taken such kind of initiatives for the growth
and development or organization and employees. KPMG is a very big professional service company and comes
under BIG Four auditors. KPMG stands for Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler. The company has a huge workforce
that contributes in the success of the organization on daily basis and the organization also cares for its
employees and provides a good working environment for employee satisfaction.

Performance-related initiatives
 Rationalize governance and controls
In case of KPMG, risk and control always remain static for the owners and contractors. Such controls are
considered as complex as there is high variety of information with many tasks so it becomes difficult for the
managers to make good decisions. There is a solution for this challenge-
1. Assess- It includes taking the ownership of governance, risk and control procedures that helps in
assessing the design of overall environment structure.
2. Rationalize- After assessing the governance, organization should verify the missing controls. New people
belong to new generation have a different criteria and they have fresh perspective in order to create
effectiveness in order to create effective control environment (Zafar, 2013).
3. Rebuild- It is important to create an alignment between the Governance and business strategy and the
whole project environment. Technological investments should be as per the strategy.
 Innovate with technology
There should be proper innovation related to technology in order to enhance the performance of the
organization. Latest technology also helps KPMG to attract young generation and leads in proper transparency.

1. Create technology- KPMG evaluates and understands the data, system and technology of the
organization first and then evaluate the area of investment to gain maximum benefits. Technology plays
a very important role in organizational operations.
2. Find quick wins- The organization finds the highlighted areas of operation where there is a high impact of
technology in performance improvement.
3. Create a digital strategy- The third step is to create a proper strategy that helps in creating innovations.
 Optimize human performance
There is a high change in technology so similarly there is a starting of complex and large scale projects. It is
important to create high performing workforce to cope up such challenges (Sols and Johannesen, 2013).
1. Create a common culture- KPMG believes in creating a common culture so that there can be proper
communication within different group of employees. It also helps in getting fresh talent.
2. Balance all the controls- KPMG adopts a contemporary approach to provide freedom to all the
employees (Thacker, 2012).
3. Rethink talent management- In this organization, contractors and owners always think upon the
procedures to enhance the performance. They focus on utilizing the resources in an effective way by
finding out high performers and provide them a good platform so that they can create changes.
Culture-related initiatives
There are many concerns related to cultural change in KPMG and due to the people belong to different culture
there are large scale patterns of behavior. There is a high visibility of cultural change on the teams and
departments. In order to manage cultural changes, the organization has adopted different transformation
patterns so that they can connect with employee’s mind as well as heart (Special Feature: Statement of
Principles on Global Cross Sectoral Digitisation Initiatives, 2013).
 Communicate goals and expectations
Change is considered as very dangerous as employees are used to the technology they use and it becomes
difficult to adopt technological changes. To cope up with this situation, KPMG explains the reasons behind the
changes and communicate clear expectations to the employees. Innovation also helps in creating opportunities
and help employees to focus on key areas (Phornprapha, 2015).
 Build capacity

It is very difficult to find employees that are not stressed and work as per their capacity. Everyone is very busy
nowadays in most of the industries. There should be proper time for employees to understand the innovation.
So, KPMG try to make cross-functional teams to work on innovative projects (Perrewé, 2011).
 Embrace failure
There is no success without the failures; it is the nature of human being to be terrified of the failure and results.
It is necessary to take out this fear among the employees in order to create an innovative culture. KPMG try to
ensure that the employees are allowed to bring new and innovative ideas to make things easy and smooth.
There is one more method to start innovative approach and it includes creating KPIs for innovation and creates
rewarding process and innovative thinking on specific results as well as achievements (KPMG cuts through
complexity for young recruits, 2015).
Engagement-related initiatives
Engagement related activities states that employees play a very important role in execution of business strategy
and in the achievement of the goals of the organization. Some organizations have a very engaged workforce and
it is a big advantage for the organization in creating innovation, employee activation and retention and customer
service. KPMS always focus on improving the performance of the organization as efficient employees are
successful in providing high quality services. It is important for the organization to measure employee
engagement so that it become easy to apply new initiatives for maintaining engagement in the organization
(Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2013).
There are many researches and studies have been done on this and most of the studies state that only 30% of
the employees are “engaged”, 50% are disengaged and 20% are actively disengaged that means they are getting
the level down of the organization. KPMG’s People and Change Advisory team has also conducted a survey and
according to it 50% of HR knows that there are chances to make employee engagement better.
In KPMG, there is a very strong link between the success of the business and employee engagement and it was
very difficult for the organization to focus on employee engagement on priority basis. The organization has taken
measures to improve engagement of employees. It has started to understand the engagement and

disengagement levels in the organization. By knowing this, organization gets a very clear scenario of the current
position and possible improvements (Special Feature: Statement of Principles on Global Cross Sectoral
Digitisation Initiatives, 2013).
With the help of this strategy, KPMG has started converting the weaknesses into strengths. It mainly prevents
the organization to face market competition. Organization can easily able to track the whole data and check that
improvements implementation is actually working or not. Employee engagement is a long term initiative that
helps in develop, improve and sustain (Delina and Samuel, 2019).
With the help of Employee Engagement plus Index, The KPMG people as well as the change advisory team
supports the organization in calculating the current engagement level with the help of online questionnaire.
Recommendations-
It is important to take different kind of initiatives to sustain the organization and it is necessary to make the
employees happy, satisfied as well as comfortable. In case of performance- related initiatives, it is necessary to
adopt the latest technology in order to attract the new talent. New people are always innovative and have a
fresh view to analyze things. They should be given an introduction about the technology and proper training so
that it becomes easy for employees to understand the technology. KPMG should also start some cultural training
to make everyone familiar with the different cultures. There should be some motivational factors for employees
for effective productivity (Zwikael and Smyrk, 2012). It can also create project groups with different people
belong to different culture as it can also help them to having a good and clear communication. The major
concern in creating culture- related initiatives is communication. Having a clear and effective communication is
very important in understanding the goals and objectives of the organization. When there is a beginning of new
technology then employees feel nervous and have fear of failure so KPMG should take initiatives of creating self-
confidence among the employees. It can also start some confidence building session at the time of inaugurating
new technology. In case of Engagement- related activities, there should be a very strong and dedicated
workforce that can easily able to manage the difficult situation. It is necessary to make employees engaged and
make them feel a sense of ownership; only in that case an employee can become fully dedicated. KPMG can ask
the employees the area of improvements and how organization can help employees in performance

enhancement. Employees can give new ideas that KPMG can actually implement for increase in level of
performance and it can also leads to employee engagement (Del Rio and Loggins, 2019).
Conclusion
It can be concluded that KPMG is a very successful and growing organization and it is also taking different kind of
initiatives related to performance, culture and employee engagement. These initiatives help the organization to
face the difficult market competition and to grow the organization and the employees well. There are some
recommendations as well that help the organization to bring improvements in those initiatives. There is a high
work- load in every organization nowadays and it is very difficult for employees to cope up with any
technological changes but some initiatives by the organization can actually make it simple and smooth.

References
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