An Open and Honest Point of View about Deloitte Mobility

Wendy Song
Financial Advisory | China to The Netherlands (Long Term Assignment)

I was an Associate Director from Deloitte Beijing FA team and started my new role as business developer of Chinese Service Group in the Netherlands via Deloitte International Mobility Program since November 2019, focusing on the communications between China and Netherlands, as well as providing helps for any potential clients and opportunities, such as Chinese companies going outbound to the Dutch market or Dutch companies investment in the China market.

Culture in Deloitte offices

The Amsterdam office is also called “the Edge”, which is famous for its sustainability and innovation. It looks stunning to me not only because of its stylish outlook, but also considering it is currently the greenest building in the world.

Talking about office cultures, I could tell coffee break or coffee meeting is popular here. It plays an important part in Dutch company culture. People always use it to build relationship or expand their social circles. Deloitte Netherlands has a relatively inclusive culture, too. All staff, regardless of seniority, has no pressure to come forward with their ideas in the meeting. Partners would always encourage junior staff to speak up for themselves. In general, the work atmosphere is relaxing and pleasant. Work-life balance is also quite well-maintained here.

Working with Chinese clients

As part of the Netherlands CSG team, I am being allocated to the International Tax Service team since our Netherlands CSG leader is a tax partner. The team normally assists Dutch companies or multinational companies’ Dutch operations or holdings with filing tax returns and international tax planning. As a member of CSG, my daily work is to communicate among Dutch firm, China firm and other NSE member firms, expand the Chinese market and maintain relationship with Chinese clients, explore and develop market opportunities, etc. Since joining the Dutch firm, we have visited some Chinese companies’ subsidiaries, China Embassy and China investment promotion agency in the Netherlands to improve our market eminence.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we started to work from home since early March. Many virtual activities have been held in order to make people feel connected, such as virtual coffee breaks and virtual Friday drinks with BYOB (Bring Your Own Beer, of course). Our Partner even organized a group work-out session to help us keep fit. I think this kind of activity is very important and necessary to deliver information which makes people feel not isolated during the quarantine period.

Basically, this is a brief overview of my experience in Deloitte Netherlands so far. I have learnt a lot from different colleagues from various cultural backgrounds and am looking forward to having a more fruitful experience in the following months. Hope this special period will be over soon and we can get back to our normal life, I am also looking forward to the remaining of my new journey ahead!