Deloitte’s commitment to gender equality: 5pp more women in technology roles within the next year, 30% in leadership by 2020

In celebration of International Women’s Day and as a member of the Advance Women in Business initiative, Deloitte Switzerland expands its ambitions to not only achieve a 30% female leadership by 2020 but furthermore to increase the number of women in technology roles by 5% within the next year.

The benefits of gender-balanced leadership teams are well known: higher productivity, more innovation power, longer-term business impact and sustainability in workplaces. For this year’s International Women’s Day, more than 60 CEOs and leaders in Switzerland have united under the Advance Women in Business initiative to publicly commit to concrete gender equality goals.

Deloitte Switzerland is proud to have set a high and tangible goal to promote female leadership and support female leaders – and to have already achieved visible results through various initiatives such as tailored learning and development programmes (e.g. Women Tech Boot Camp), internal coaching and networking events.

“Gender equality is important for businesses to attract and retain the best talent. In 2017, we committed to increase our senior female leadership by 10 percentage points to 30% by 2020. One year into our pledge, we have already seen an increase of 4 percentage points. In addition, Deloitte Switzerland has now also committed to increase the number of women in technology roles in our organisation by 5 percentage points within the next year,” says Simon Owen, CEO of Deloitte Switzerland.

Deloitte sees the advancement of women as a strategic priority - by attracting and retaining the best talent, it can deliver the best service to its clients. The topic of gender, however, is not the only focus. For example, the discussion surrounding work-family balance also requires having men on board, as family has long since ceased to be a women-only domain. Deloitte believes that serving our increasingly diverse, global and complex clients we need to bring diverse multidisciplinary teams to deliver excellence and innovation. To make this happen, skilled people and inspiring leaders should be given equal opportunities regardless of their gender.