This starts, of course, with our almost 12,900 (full-time equivalent) employees and nearly 700 equity partners equipping them to make a material difference to our clients’ ability to succeed and grow. As one of the UK’s largest recruiters of graduates, and with nearly 2,600 people joining the firm in the last year (including experienced hires, but not including over 200 interns and over 300 foreign secondees), we play a significant role in the labour market. Equally, we develop and send out into industry, start-ups, government and the third sector, around 1,900 leavers a year who put their Deloitte professional training and accelerated progress to good use in every part of the UK and every dimension of the economy. Through our education and training we have an impact on the management community across British business. We regularly engage with our Deloitte alumni where we share industry insight, management thinking and business leadership approaches, keeping them up-to-date and investing in their learning and development beyond the firm, whenever we get the right opportunity.

Adding value to careers

Investing in skills and talents remains a key priority for Deloitte. In FY13, the Firm invested over £22 million on our people’s learning and education covering a combination of professional qualifications, and training courses – that’s an average of over £1,700 per average FTE employee. Over 200 of our employees also benefited from secondments, widening their experiences and networks in FY13.

Around 40 per cent of all our people (permanent and on short-term contracts) hold at least one professional qualification in a variety of areas covering accountancy, tax, actuarial services, surveying, IT and management and operations. Over 70 per cent of Deloitte people are also full- or student-members of professional bodies in the UK and overseas.

During FY13, over 3,400 of our people (over a quarter of all our employees in the UK) were studying for a range of qualifications across all our professional activities. In FY13 we recruited around 1,200 graduates, school leavers and students and many of our people have been sponsored to take professional qualifications – taking them to and beyond NVQ Level 4. A number of our more senior management are also studying for qualifications in FY13 reflecting the importance of continuous professional development.

Indeed, it is vital that our people’s knowledge and skills’ base remains current. One route to achieving this is through involving our employees in the provision of learning. Going forward, we have made the decision to expand our investment in the Deloitte University, and will be investing £1.5m next year, an increase of £1.2m.

In 2013 we delivered our first-ever Summer Audit Academy involving our whole Audit practice – with almost 2,200 people undertaking an intensive residential two-and-a-half-day learning event. Designed to energise and enthuse our audit practitioners, the event challenged them to step out of their comfort zone in a way they never have before and engage with our business strategy through highly innovative and impactful technical and business leadership learning. In addition, the event sought to engage our people with our business strategy in a new way, focusing on how to grow our business in an increasingly challenging market.

The benefit of a commitment to ongoing professional development extends beyond Deloitte and our people, to impact the wider economy (UK and overseas) as well. By developing our people’s skills and talent we benefit in the form of productivity improvements (in FY13 the average Deloitte employee produced around £122,800 in GVA compared to the national average of £50,000 per annum), more innovative approaches to problem-solving and better staff retention.

And, if one of our people decide to move on from Deloitte, the skills and experiences gained during their time at Deloitte can benefit other organisations in the UK and beyond. In FY13, around 1,900 of our employees left Deloitte to pursue other opportunities. Our analysis of alumni destinations (where data was available) shows our former employees taking a variety of options, ranging from FTSE350 companies and the not-for-profit sector to starting their own businesses. For those leavers who registered with our alumni programme, the most popular alumni destination for leavers was the financial services sector (24.2 per cent), followed by other professional services firms (23.6 per cent), but significant numbers also went into consumer business (12.7 per cent), technology, media and telecommunications (8.6 per cent) and public sector / not-for-profits (8.6 per cent). Many of these alumni were taking up senior-level appointments in which the skills and experiences acquired at Deloitte will be of enormous benefit.