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

Amid a social media storm over the death of a young employee at tax consultancy major EY allegedly due to work pressure, Deloitte has formed a three-member external committee, which includes former revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj, to look into practices, policies and processes concerning employees, its South Asia CEO Romal Shetty said on Friday.

Shetty said to manage the work pressure within the organisation and have an open work culture, Deloitte has a chief happiness officer and takes strictest action for any bad behaviour within the organisation.

Deloitte is one of the four major global tax consultancy firms. Besides Deloitte and EY, the other major firms are PwC and KPMG.

"... Very unfortunate, very tragic, young child losing her life. We are in the client service business and in the client service business there will always be deadlines... having all of those pressures," Shetty told PTI in an interview.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, who passed her CA exam in 2023 and worked at EY Pune office for four months, died in July. According to a letter her mother wrote to EY India chairman Rajiv Memani, she was overworked with a "backbreaking" load as a new employee that affected her "physically, emotionally, and mentally".

Shetty dismissed any bullying culture within organizations that have been built over 100-150 years, but did not rule out any individual transgressions.

"... Bullying culture is not normally the way professional organizations are. But are there individuals who do certain things? Yes, absolutely... So first, I think, as an organization, you need to have an open culture that nobody should be scared to bring up those issues."

Shetty said Deloitte on Friday has instituted a panel of three eminent and independent people after the tragic loss of life of 26-year old Anna Sebastian Perayil at EY.

"We have instituted a panel post this.. Tarun Bajaj who used to be the Revenue Secretary, Manoj Kohli who used to be the CEO of Airtel, Subodh Jaiswal who used to be the CBI Director to relook at all our people practices, our policies, processes. How are ethics cases... We have an ethics helpline. How do they get actually managed? What are our mechanisms in place to do it?," Shetty said.

He said in today's world where the workforce is diverse, there is a need to relook at the work environment and make it suitable to manage stress. Mental health is a serious problem and dealing with it is a challenge, he said.

Shetty said, the youngsters joining the workforce today are coming from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities leaving their families and might be going through some stress in their personal lives, besides the work pressure that they encounter in a client servicing business which has a strict deadline.

"The younger generation is far smarter than I ever was, far more intelligent, far more smarter. Sometimes, I think a little bit more resilience will be useful," Shetty said.

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

"The concept is, if you can ask your CEO any question, including, little bit embarrassing one as well, then you can actually walk up to a senior person and say, I don't enjoy this... Can we also have an environment to ensure that people are comfortable with what they do, because sometimes you spend 14 hours in the workplace," Shetty said.