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Corporate training is never fun… right?

After a trip to KPMG’s Florida training facility in June, I’m not so sure.

The Big Four firm has built a $450 million training facility in Florida, called Lakehouse, where it runs skills development and leadership programs.

KPMG flies all client-facing employees to Lakehouse on the company dime about once or twice a year, while others visit when they get a promotion or for leadership training. Lakehouse, which can house 800 guests, is full almost year-round.

But this is no quaint cottage with sundecks and canoes. KPMG’s Lakehouse is a sprawling, glass-panelled building that stands tall amid the steamy Lakeland.

Once past security, a vast horseshoe driveaway leads up past a manmade lake lined with fountains.

Beyond the air-conditioned lobby are sleek classrooms, an 18-hole putting green, gym facilities, and a constant stream of free food.

An intern once described it as being like if Google and a 5-star hotel had a baby, said Sherry Magee, senior director of client and community relations at Lakehouse.

More than a training center

Magee, who showed me around the 55-acre property on a golf cart, said KPMG began considering constructing its own property around 2013, after deciding that it was spending too much renting hotel spaces.

The company chose Orlando for its sunny weather and because it was a two-hour flight away from around 75% of offices at the time. KPMG bought the land in 2016, and Lakehouse opened in 2019.

The firm still runs training and company events in local offices.

When I visited Lakehouse, three groups were using the property: midlevel professionals, 225 summer interns, and some of KPMG’s most senior US leaders.

The mix of college grads and sharply suited leaders walking around with backpacks and studying in classrooms brought me right back to my university days — I felt like I was walking through an extravagant college campus. The mix of people on the grounds also highlighted one of the facility’s key functions: bringing together everyone from across KPMG’s 80 US offices to network, learn, and play pickleball in the Florida heat.

Before they had Lakehouse, employees could leave hotels and separate themselves, Magee said.

“A partner would go to a presentation, stop by for 10 minutes at their social hour, and then go out to a steakhouse. Not anymore,” Magee said.

There’s even a Lakehouse app. Guests use it for travel logistics, scheduling, and access; it also provides a full roster of who is on the property at any time, letting you know who you have the potential to run into.

While some clients are invited to Lakehouse “to show it off,” the property is intended primarily as a “cultural home” for KPMG employees, said Jason LaRue, a partner and head of talent and culture. No children or spouses are allowed to visit.

Coming to Lakehouse “really does inspire more collaboration and more camaraderie, because we’re not only in a conference room learning, we’re out there playing basketball,” said Rema Serafi, KPMG’s vice chair of tax and a member of the firm’s eight-person management committee.

“Do you play basketball?” I asked Serafi.

“I don’t play basketball,” she said with a smile, “but you will find me at the gym every morning.”

Living the values and winning the talent war

Company-owned facilities are an effective tool for recruitment and retention, Julie Schweber, the lead specialist on HR knowledge solutions at the Society for Human Resource Management, told me.

It shows employees that the company values them and is committed to creating opportunities for career growth, she said.

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“A strong culture is often a common thread among the most successful companies,” Schweber said.

While most people assume salaries are the key to retention, Schweber said the top three reasons employees stay with their employer are investment in professional development, direct supervisor relationships, and a non-toxic workplace.

Magee said that winning the talent war is part of the reason KPMG invites interns to Lakehouse.

“We want them to choose KPMG,” she said. After a development program held at Lakehouse this Spring, KPMG found that offer acceptance rates were 40% higher among college students who visited Lakehouse, compared to those who didn’t, Magee said.

Bill Latshaw, business consulting research director at the International Data Corporation, a global market research firm, has visited Lakehouse twice for analyst gatherings.

Latshaw said that having everything contained in one space is preferable to sending staff out to hotels shared with the public.

“Compliance is extremely important for Big Four companies. So, from a risk perspective, you’ve got your people on your desert island. If someone does something stupid, it’s on your own property.”

A Lakehouse experience

Now for the perks.

Before a day of training, Lakehouse guests can hang out in the gym or cycle around the property. During my visit, a group had met at 7:15 a.m. for a charity walk to fundraise for a local LGBTQ+ organization.

In the evenings, guests can gather at one of multiple bars for karaoke and pool, join a candlelit yoga class, take part in a salsa-making competition, or chat around a fire pit.

If Lakehouse’s karaoke-sports bar, The Landing, isn’t your vibe, you can head to its wine bar, Blend, instead.

Everyone, from the CEO to interns, stays in the same style of bedroom when they stay on-site. Services staff constantly stock Lakehouse’s multiple food stations and man the free Starbucks.

As Magee proudly told me on the tour, guest satisfaction is high. In a survey guests fill out when they leave, with the option to respond anonymously, 97% say their Lakehouse experience was excellent or very good.

While staff are unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them on company property, all staff I spoke to at Lakehouse seemed genuinely impressed by the facilities.

“I was in awe when I first got here. I’ve never been to a place like this,” said Evelyn Nunez-Alfaro, a tax intern based in Seattle.

“It’s nice to have a company that’s willing to fly you somewhere and then come to a beautiful place like this,” said Nathan VanderKlugt, an audit intern in San Francisco. “It’s nothing that I would expect from a training facility.”

There’s one perk at Lakehouse that was mentioned in nearly all my conversations. As Becky Sproul, a KPMG audit partner, put it: “They get excited about the food.”

Around the corridors of Lakehouse, multiple stations offer chocolate chips, quiches, chickpea snacks, free drinks, and fruit.

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Lakehouse guests head to the canteen area, called “The Exchange,” for meals where there is a limitless variety of dishes to choose from, like bang bang shrimp, sushi, salmon, pasta alla vodka, hot apple pie, beignets, and soft-serve ice cream.

I ate at “The Exchange” during my visit, and can see why the food creates so much buzz. For breakfast, I went for a healthy fruit and nut yogurt bowl, and at lunch, my salmon fillet with Mediterranean salad was perfectly cooked. Later, I tried Lakehouse’s much-desired soft serve.

I asked three other sources at KPMG what they thought about Lakehouse, allowing them to retain their anonymity to speak freely.

“For a lot of people, it’s the highlight of their year,” said one employee.

The downside of a Lakehouse visit is that employees often “have to be in work mode” all day and don’t really get a chance to recharge, the person said. They described it as “introvert hell.”

A second KPMG employee said that though they’d had mostly good experiences at Lakehouse, they wished that the facility wasn’t located in Florida, as it raised some travel concerns for members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Coming to Florida for training isn’t compulsory, but most employees want to visit, Magee said. She emphasized that employees are transported directly from the airport to Lakehouse and that they try to schedule trips on weekdays for employees with families.

Lakehouse isn’t the first of its kind

Almost 100 years before KPMG’s basketball courts and free Starbucks coffee, the oil company Shell set up a riverside club outside London that later became a training facility, while McDonald’s set up its Hamburger University in 1961. Corporations like Apple, Disney, and Walgreens all have their own dedicated bases for staff training.

Among the Big Four, Deloitte has a similar property to Lakehouse.

Deloitte launched Deloitte University in 2011 near Dallas, Texas, and describes the facility as “part learning center, part ranch-style retreat.” The firm’s global branches have followed suit and built similar facilities in five locations.

Jonathan Gandal, a managing director at Deloitte, told me Deloitte University cost $300 million to build and hosts about 75,000 people a year across the company’s employees and clients.

IDC’s Latshaw, who has visited both Lakehouse and DU, said the experience was similar at both facilities.

“In both cases, Deloitte or KPMG, picked me up from the airport. It made it dead simple for me. I didn’t have to worry about any of the logistics, which, from a harried consultant point of view, is lovely,” Latshaw said.

PwC and EY did not directly respond to questions about why they have not invested in similar facilities.

Yolanda Seals-Coffield, the chief people and inclusion officer at PwC, told me the firm is “intentional about creating in-person opportunities” through trainings, volunteer events, intern programs, and milestone celebrations.

“Each year, we facilitate thousands of gatherings across our offices, client sites, and off-site locations,” she said.

“Every year EY US brings together thousands of professionals at key moments in their career journey to foster meaningful connections and to fuel their personal and professional growth,” an EY spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that each of the events is held at “dynamic locations across the country” and is a “unique experience.”

Don’t expect your company to follow suit

So, should we all be petitioning bosses to ditch the next company sports day for a tropical retreat?

Schweber, the lead specialist on HR knowledge solutions at SHRM, says Lakehouse-style properties aren’t becoming more commonplace as “it’s a pretty expensive endeavor.”

“I don’t see it in today’s market and economy. Organizations aren’t going to say, ‘Hey, let’s go ahead and start a state-of-the-art facility down in a beautiful oceanfront in Florida or a bayfront somewhere.’”

Some companies, once willing to foot the bill, have even closed specialist learning facilities. General Electric, Salesforce, and Boeing are among the firms that have shut or sold training bases in recent years.

KPMG declined to comment on how much annual maintenance costs at Lakehouse are, but Magee said that owning the property is budget-neutral to what they previously spent on training. KPMG made global revenue of $38.4 billion in its last financial year.

In today’s economy, pickleball in the local park and a beer may be all most of us can hope for.