This is the best time to join the Big Four companies! They are giving double appraisals, regardless of your performance

EY, PwC, Deloitte and KPMG- the Big Four, in hope to get the best talent, are tweaking terms in employee contracts where the new employees will get a fixed amount of appraisals for two years regardless of their performance.

"My team has earned Rs 16 crore while he (pointing towards a colleague in an adjacent cabin) has managed only Rs 6 crore. Yet, I get 10%, my team members get even worse and he gets 20% while two of his team members are promoted,” an advisory partner in one of the four firms told ET.

Every partner across the firm earns about Rs 10 crore as revenue every year and as if this wasn’t enough, some of the new partners will be getting anyways between 50%-100% of their annual salary as bonuses. This, say industry trackers, is one of the reasons why consultancies have become turbulent.

"When a consultant is moving from company A to B, he/she needs some time to settle down and they are now demanding guarantee of bonus so that in the initial one year, they get a cushion,” the head of an executive search firms that works with some of these firms told ET.

"The Big Four audit firms are resorting to innovative and aggressive practices to woo talent as they look at big bonanza this season because audit contracts with public companies are coming for a 10-year rotation and there is enough scampering for new clients as the firms want to showcase new talent in their ranks. Also, there is plenty of tax-related work with GST and firms have to go all way out to tap into the best talent,” R Suresh, managing director of RGF Executive Search India told ET.

The Bg Four have recently seen partners moving from one firm to another with their teams. Recently, about 20 partners and about 300 executives with KPMG put in their papers to join Deloitte. Before that some of the senior executives from KPMG's tax practice joined PwC. On their part, KPMG too has poached partners from its rivals in the last one year.

In all these cases, those partners who have jumped boats are given favorable terms where their appraisals will not depend upon their performance for the first two-three years, say insiders.
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