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Accenture employees lead the digital revolution
ill Morris, the Canadian President of Accenture, sits in a bright turquoise chair at the large circular table in the company’s Innovation Centre in Toronto waiting for a meeting participant to beam in from Ottawa on the video screen. “It was a great day when we threw out all the phones,” he says, gesturing around the phone-free, high-tech room.
“This is a really exciting time for us and our people,” says Morris, “because they want to change the way the world works and lives. We’re not just consultants, we implement all the way through,” working with partners including third-party technology suppliers.
“Nobody was using them. They were like museum pieces with long cords cluttering up the space. They were relics of a bygone era.”
From the video screen, Dave Telka, a Senior Manager in the Digital Practice who works with government and the private sector, chimes in to say that even late adopters are less technology resistant than in the past.
As one of the world’s foremost management consulting, technology, digital, strategy and outsourcing firms, Accenture is redefining the workforce. Many employees decide whether to work from the office, client locations or home, depending on their role and daily commitments. The dress code depends on their agenda. Morris is wearing jeans.
Both Morris and Telka are Accenture veterans with decades of service under their belts, and Apple watches on their wrists. In a LinkedIn post, Telka writes: “I’ve been talking a lot about wearables and how they will transform the way we work. How could I talk about this without actually field testing a wearable product?”
“This is a really exciting time for us and our people because they want to change the way the world works and lives.”
Accenture used wearables in an oil and gas industry solution to enhance safety for the field workforce, and has a platform for mobile payments that can be used with smart watches. In the realm of defence and public safety, it is exploring the use of wearables to oversee troop placement and vitals tracking.
– Bill Morris, President
The office is modern and sleek with electrical outlets everywhere, sit/ stand desks and “telepresence” meeting rooms, which can be booked from every continent.
Telka wasn’t convinced of the business benefits of posting on social networks, but tried it at Morris’s urging. At first, he was disappointed in the lack of reaction, but then people started bringing up his online work.
The CIO of a big government Accenture is setting an example department approached him on as it helps Canada’s biggest and public transit and announced, best-known organizations find 0897_8.25x1.625_CanTop100Empl_AccAd_live.pdf 1 10/16/15 “I’ve been reading your stuff2:07 on PM digital solutions to drive growth drones and GDP.” Colleagues and and transform businesses.
Accenture embraces workplace technology in every aspect of our business to connect people globally.
“DIGITAL DAVE” TELKA BEAMS INTO A MEETING WITH ACCENTURE’S CANADIAN PRESIDENT BILL MORRIS
3,476 full-time staff in Canada
61
charities helped last year
prospective clients commented on another post about how Telka’s kids talk to Siri on his watch. In a sense, Telka is building his personal “Digital Dave” brand alongside the Accenture brand. It’s a strategy the company encourages and which has appeal to younger employees, who want, in Morris’s words, “freedom and a feeling of control.” As much as Accenture encourages clients to use digital to improve services and engagement with clients and consumers, Telka adds that it’s also a factor internally in attracting and retaining employees. With some 4,000 employees in
5,875 staff volunteer hours last year
49
years, longestserving employee
Canada and 358,000 worldwide, Accenture offers a huge variety of opportunities. “Young people can roll on and off projects all the time,” says Morris. Accenture’s policies of allowing choice and control extend to its charitable and corporate citizenship efforts including the key Skills to Succeed initiative where employees can help charities and achieve the company’s goal of equipping 3 million people around the world with the skills to get a job or build a business by the end of fiscal 2020. “This new generation wants to work in a place that has purpose,” says Morris.