Responsible business: The impact of our people

This investment in our people plays an important role in being a responsible business and supporting a sustainable society, from the work we do every day with our clients, to our outreach programmes that support the communities in which we operate. Our responsible business strategy is also a key factor in how we attract, develop and retain top talent and provide fulfilling careers for our people.

For example, Deloitte volunteers gave more than 40,000 hours of their time to community projects during FY15, and this year we have raised £1.7 million in support of a range of charities, including £913,000 for our National Charity Partners. Our support for these charities goes much further than purely fundraising; we use our expertise to help them address some of their biggest challenges, from identifying the men most at risk of prostate cancer, to working on the long-term strategy for dementia and helping Mind get its services and support out to the people who need it most.

Women in leadership

Gender diversity at leadership levels remains a challenge for many businesses but there is an ever-increasing understanding of the issues that hold women back in the workplace and the ways in which we can best tackle them. While the issue of the gender pay gap has seen increasing public attention in 2015, Deloitte has been focused on this for some time. For us, the main cause of the pay gap is a gender imbalance at our more senior grades – something that we are rectifying.

Although Deloitte’s gender pay difference stands at 17.8 percent (around 1.3 percent below the national figure), when looking across the organisation as a whole the pay gap between male and female employees at each grade is significantly lower at 1.5 percent. We are working to balance this, but we believe that without a representative share of female employees at senior levels within our organisation our gender pay gap will never truly be equalised.

In FY14, we set an ambition that 25 percent of our partner group would be women by 2020 and 30 percent by 2030. In support of this ambition, we implemented a range of initiatives to increase the number of women we recruit (at both an entry and experienced-hire level) ensuring that development opportunities are clear, relevant and bespoke to the individual, as well as providing a working environment that enables women to balance a successful career with family life.

For example, we launched a return-to-work placement programme designed to help women who have been out of the workforce for more than three years to return to work. We also introduced the Working Parents’ Transition Programme to provide coaching for those returning from maternity, paternity, and adoption leave. This helps individuals and team leaders manage the transition into parenthood alongside challenging career choices.

Attracting and retaining the best talent: Our culture

Our working culture is a significant factor in our ability to attract and retain the very best talent. This year, we have focused particularly on helping our employees to work in an agile way.

Through WorkAgility we provide our people with choice around when, where and how to work. WorkAgility is founded on three key principles: trust and respect, open and honest communication, and judging on output - rather than presenteeism.

WorkAgility includes our Time Out scheme, which enables employees to take a four-week block of unpaid leave each year, at a time that suits both them and the business. Time Out received a special award for Innovation in Engagement Practice at The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2015 awards, and Deloitte was placed in the 25 Best Big Companies to Work For list. Time Out also received the Best for Innovation Award at the 2015 Top Employers for Working Families Special Awards.

Respect and inclusion at Deloitte

This year, we have made significant advances in our respect and inclusion agenda, including running workshops for all partners to increase awareness of gender and diversity issues and the importance of a respectful and inclusive working environment.

We created a short film — entitled ‘Ask Yourself…’ — aimed at helping everyone at Deloitte think about their personal responsibility to address unconscious bias, treat people with respect and judge them on the value they bring.

Developing skills to support social mobility

Employability and skills development are issues close to our heart, as well as being strongly aligned to our core business. Our Deloitte Access programme raises aspiration, supports achievement and provides opportunities for students in low-income communities. The programme sees Deloitte volunteers run workshops that help young people build employability skills, such as CV writing, interviewing and presentation techniques. The workshops also cover innovation and running a business as well as teaching them about working in, and leading, teams.

In collaboration with Teach First, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to end inequality in education, we have engaged over 1,000 Deloitte volunteers to support more than 3,000 students. Through this programme we are working with 14 schools from across the UK.

This year we were recognised as one of 12 Social Mobility Business Compact Champions by the Department of Business Innovation & Skills for our work addressing social mobility and for hiring more young people from a variety of backgrounds into our business. We have introduced a new selection process nationally that now focuses on a candidate’s future potential as much as previous achievements. As part of this recruitment process change, we are also looking for candidates with a broad set of skills, such as creativity and an innovative mindset, as well as leadership potential.

Building skills and fostering entrepreneurship

As part of our efforts to inspire the next generation of business leaders, we have worked in partnership with the London Business School (LBS) through the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Institute has established an annual programme to recognise and support the efforts of LBS’s emerging entrepreneurs - the Founder Awards. The founders of 11 enterprises — all final-year MBA students — won a place in the School's Incubator for a year and a package of support to help them launch their businesses. Winners in 2014/15 ranged from a mobile-only app that helps users discover and book London’s best restaurants in 60 seconds, to an online marketplace where IT users can find accredited local IT experts to help them solve IT or technology-related problems.

Investing in business leaders

As part of our investment in future business leaders, we continue to support our Next Generation, Transition Labs, Deloitte Academy and Women on Boards programmes. These programmes are highly regarded by some of the UK’s largest organisations and, in particular, our Next Generation Chief Finance Officer programme is regularly recommended to future CFOs by headhunters. The Next Generation programme is designed to offer clients unique insights into the CFO role and its requirements through peer networking sessions and intensive workshops. Its success has inspired us to set up programmes for chief information officers, chief procurement officers, tax directors, and most recently, chief HR officers.

The Transition Lab is a personalised and dedicated one-day workshop that helps an individual frame their priorities, assess their talent and identify different approaches to managing complex stakeholder relationships. To date, we have helped over 200 C-suite executives achieve successful transitions to new roles.