People

It takes people with outstanding talent, energy, understanding, commitment and ideas to provide clients with outstanding service. That’s why our people and client strategies are so closely interlinked and why we aim for excellence in both.

The formation of KPMG Europe LLP has proved that when we excel at recruiting, retaining, rewarding, developing and mobilising our professionals we win work with the best clients, again and again.

Equally, when we win exciting assignments with leading companies and institutions on the critical economic issues of the day, we attract the best people to KPMG.

During the year we worked hard to maintain this virtuous circle in a very challenging market and we began to see the benefits of enlarging the combined group in terms of recruitment and winning work.

We’ve looked at new ways to develop and support our people in building trusted, long-term relationships with our clients.

We’ve also managed our huge investment in people skilfully. This has meant we’ve been able to control costs while continuing to respond flexibly to our clients’ needs, and continuing to build an inspiring workplace for our people.

The success of our approach was again widely recognised. During the year we were:

• Named ‘Best Big Company to Work For’ in the UK by The Sunday Times for the second year running and for the third time in four years.
• The only one of the Big 4 accountancy firms to be named among Germany’s top five employers for graduates in the Trendence Absolventenbarometer.
• Ranked amongst the 100 best companies to work for in Spain by Merco Personas.

But these accolades are not the end of the story. We are determined to improve our performance further.

Board members

View the board members

Focusing on skills

During the year we made three key changes to our learning and development programmes to ensure our people continue to provide the best possible client service.

Read about focusing on skills

Diverse clients, diverse people

Recognising the business benefits of greater diversity at the very highest positions in our profession, the KPMG Europe LLP Board has renewed its commitment to clear diversity goals, including, where appropriate, a target for the number of women reaching partner level.

Read about diverse clients, diverse people

Managing change

Despite tough economic times we’ve continued to develop and consolidate our approach to people management across the combined KPMG Europe LLP group.

Read about managing change

Safeguarding talent

We are committed to retaining our talent wherever possible and have been determined to learn the lessons from the last recession, where many professional services firms cut jobs heavily only to regret it later.

Read about safeguarding talent

Challenges ahead

2009 was undoubtedly a challenging year for us and our clients.

Read about challenges ahead