‘If you look over there, you can see the new children’s hospital, which looks really impressive, the size of it,” says KPMG managing partner Ryan McCarthy pointing off into the distance as we look west from a terrace that runs the full length of the eighth floor of a new office block that the Big Four firm is putting the finishing touches to before it moves to its new headquarters in October.
We have walked, hard hats and hi-vis jackets in hand, from KPMG’s existing HQ on nearby Stokes Place, where the firm has been located since 1983. This move will allow KPMG to house up to 3,000 staff under one roof, reducing from 65 floor plates at multiple locations in Dublin to its new space at Harcourt Square.
There will be 2,500 official workspaces, but various other nooks, crannies and ledges mean it could host up to 3,000 KPMG workers on a given day if required, McCarthy says.
The professional services firm has spent more than €100 million “gross” on fitting out the office with the latest high-tech kit, an in-house “business school”, modern restaurant facilities for staff and guests, and flexible boardroom and meeting spaces, along with the usual array of desks and other office furniture, and brand new carpets. And two large terraces that offer magnificent views across our capital city.
It’s a “generational” investment and a significant statement by the firm to staff and clients.
As we arrive, large bins of rubble are being removed from the lift and heavy-duty construction work is still being undertaken on the upper floors.
As it happens, McCarthy is the only person with a dedicated office in the new block, where we plonk ourselves for a chat.
“That wasn’t my decision,” he says by way of defence. “It was decided before I took over.”
In a world of hot desking and hybrid working, other partners and directors will have to book an office each day, although McCarthy says there will be “enough for everyone”.
Before Covid hit in March 2020, McCarthy says staff attended the office on average 3.4 days a week, being off-site with clients the balance of the time. This figure is running at 2.3 days a week. “So we’ve lost a day [per week, in the office],” he says, adding that graduates are expected to attend four days per week.
From the autumn, he says KPMG will push for graduates to attend the office “all the time”.
“If the graduates are effectively in all the time, the managing teams need to be here all of the time, and the partners, too. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I would certainly like to get [the average] back to north of three days a week if I could.
“I don’t like to use that word mandatory but I certainly would be thinking more full-time than half-time, to be honest. If you’re 22,23 or 24, going to work every day, you can go for a pint afterwards and socialise and learn from brilliant people.”
This year, KPMG will hire up to 350 graduates, according to McCarthy. That’s down from a peak of 450 during Covid.
Despite this reduction, McCarthy insists that KPMG is the “biggest recruiter and trainer of trainee accountants and the biggest trainer of tax advisers”.
“I’m determined that KPMG will be a big recruiter of graduates. You can’t invest in tax advisers if you don’t train them.”
KPMG Ireland operates as an all-island firm, with revenues last year of €632 million.
Like many of its peers, for one reason, or another, it has trimmed its workforce in the past couple of years as the post-Covid boom in activity has dissipated.
Coming out of Covid, KPMG had “just over” 4,000 staff, he says, whereas now it has between 3,800 and 3,900. That’s a reduction of 5-6 per cent, which he puts down to “good management of the business rather than anything structural”.
But unlike some of its peers in the KPMG global network, the Irish firm has “no plans to let any partners go” and “no plans in terms of downsizing from where we are now”.
Which brings us to the impact of artificial intelligence on the firm. “There are technological changes and efficiencies that have happened over the past five or six years. And all of the professional services firms are using offshore delivery centres. It’s a balancing act, but I’m still keen on KPMG being active on recruitment.”
At present, artificial intelligence (AI) is deployed within KPMG at a variety of levels. Staff have access to Microsoft Copilot, while audit and other units have AI embedded into their workflow platforms.
“Some of that is proprietary stuff we develop ourselves and some of it with the help of others. A couple of weeks ago we announced a big global deal with Anthropic and we will make it available to our people and to our clients. There’s a huge amount going on.”
Trust is a huge issue with the deployment of AI, and KPMG was last week forced to take down a global report on thought leadership that included AI hallucinations.
“There was a global report, a piece on thought leadership that a number of firms put on their websites; we were one of them. A firm went and tested the veraci…
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