Our school leavers programme, BrightStart, is continuing to grow as an important source of entry-level joiners with 51 school-leavers recruited this year. We also made the decision to expand our Summer Vacation Scheme, and will be giving over 300 university students the opportunity to gain valuable work experience, which will help to shape their future career decisions. The number of internships we offer has more than doubled in the past year – up from 150 in FY12.

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  Military Transition Programme

  We launched the Deloitte Military Transition and Talent Programme in November 2012. This was part of a drive to diversify our own talent pool and to assist the transition of ex-military personnel into new careers, as the Armed Forces faces significant changes over the coming years. We have already had over 200 people attend one of our military Insight days.

In November 2012, we launched the Deloitte Military Transition and Talent Programme and have worked with our previous charity partner, Help for Heroes and Headley Court, on the recruitment of wounded ex-service men and women. This initiative is not only enabling Deloitte to access a pool of individuals with niche skills and strong leadership qualities, but also supports people in making the transition into new careers during a time of big change in the Armed Forces. This year, over 200 people have attended one of our first three military Insight days.

Recognising the value diverse backgrounds bring to our firm is another key part of supporting high performance. It enables us to have a much better understanding of our clients’ needs, but most importantly, to look at things from many different perspectives and ultimately provide better solutions.

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  G8 Young Summit – Steve Hoy

  Nine colleagues from Deloitte were given the opportunity to attend this year’s G8 Young Summit in May, in recognition of their personal commitment to innovation at Deloitte. Steve Hoy, a Manager in Enterprise Risk Services shares his experience of the G8 Young Summit with us.

Increasing the proportion of women in senior grades at our firm is one area on which we have particularly focused this year. “Women in Leadership" is our firm-wide commitment to retain, develop and grow the number of senior women at Deloitte. In the last year our Executive made the commitment that Women in Leadership was itself a strategic priority that is an enabler of success across all of our entire business. We have also shown leadership through our participation in the Pearls initiative⁹, the ICAEW Women in Leadership Programme and as one of the founding members of the 30 per cent Club, which was set up to bring more women onto UK corporate boards. Since its establishment in 2011 over 60 senior women have also taken part in the  Deloitte Academy ‘Navigating the Boardroom - Women on Boards’ programme as another practical step to help broaden talent access and to enhance the leadership contribution of women as role models in the workplace.

In our own leadership team, women now hold 21 per cent of Executive roles. In FY13 we reached our goal of achieving 25 per cent female partners at Board level, and we remain committed to our goal of achieving the same at Executive level by 2020.