The gulf between Deloitte‘s top executive and its average UK worker grew sharply this year, with Richard Houston earning 93 times the firm’s median employee pay.
That ratio stood at 65 times just twelve months earlier, underscoring how quickly the gap has widened inside one of Britain’s largest professional services firms.
Houston, who heads Deloitte’s newly formed EMEA division, took home £7.1m in the most recent financial year, up from £4.9m the prior year, a rise of nearly fifty per cent.
The EMEA structure, which Houston led the creation of, now oversees Deloitte operations across more than 80 countries following a significant restructuring completed this year.
On top of his base earnings increase, Houston also received a separate “one-off award” granted under a long-term incentive plan, which the firm said covered broader European performance criteria.
The pay report stated that the award “had a number of strategic and financial performance metrics,” including recognition for his contributions to the firm’s wider European operations.
The sharp rise in executive reward arrives against a backdrop of falling overall staff numbers, with UK average headcount dropping by 1,360 to 15,904 during the financial year ending in May.
That reduction was driven in part by targeted redundancies, including a move in June to cut nearly 200 roles within Deloitte’s UK audit practice, attributed to persistently low staff attrition.
Rather than compulsory layoffs, the firm offered workers the option to leave voluntarily, with a spokesperson stating: “we have taken the decision to offer voluntary redundancy on enhanced terms to some of our people in the impacted areas. We do not take these decisions lightly and will do everything we can to provide support to those who are considering this option.”
Deloitte is not alone among the Big Four in managing workforce costs this way, with rival KPMG also having offered enhanced redundancy terms to UK staff earlier this year as it sought to reduce its own headcount.
Houston spent seven years running Deloitte’s UK business before his promotion in June to the EMEA chief executive role, a position created specifically as part of the firm’s cross-regional reorganisation.
Despite the reductions elsewhere, Deloitte announced last week plans to create up to 100 jobs across the North of England through the launch of a new specialised regional deals unit.
The firm declined to comment further on executive pay beyond what was disclosed in its published pay report.