Fair access to work

The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer found that gaining access to education and training was marked out by UK society as the most important issue for business to address.

At Deloitte, we are responding to this issue by focusing all of our societal impact on making a difference to one million people, including young people whose futures would otherwise be more challenging. We call this five-year strategy One Million Futures and our aim is to help one million people get to where they want to be through raising aspirations, improving skills and developing leaders

Fair access to work is the second in a series of Deloitte One Million Futures reports which aim to address the challenges faced by many people in the UK in accessing education, training and employment. It provides practical steps for how we can overcome these barriers to the benefit of our society and economy.

What Deloitte is doing about this important social issue

We were selected as a Social Mobility Business Compact Champion in 2014 and worked with a variety of companies to implement a set of practical changes that would begin to address the issues of social mobility. In 2015 we introduced contextualised academics which allows us to recognise that for example, 3Bs at A Level in a school where most students achieve 3Ds, is recognised as exceptional performance.

We also use school and university-blind recruitment, ensuring that our recruiters do not consciously or unconsciously favour those who attended a certain school or university, so that job offers are made on the basis of present potential, not past personal circumstance.

Each year, we welcome around 200 school students from schools serving low-income communities to participate in our ASPIRE work experience programme which gives them an insight into a range of career opportunities open to them.

Since 2013, our Deloitte Acccess programme, in collaboration with Teach First, has provided support to over 10,000 students in partner schools through mentoring, employability workshops, enterprise challenges and other interventions tailored to the needs of the participating schools.

We aim to improve social mobility and support a fairer society by giving young people from under-represented groups the ambition skills and opportunities they need to access professional careers. We do however recognise that we are at the start of our social mobility journey and are looking at a variety of new ways in which we can tackle this important social issue.

Our Talent Tool

We firmly believe that it’s not where you’re from that’s important; what counts is where you’re going.

Use our Talent Tool to find out what key skills are needed for your dream job. If you don’t yet have a ‘dream job’ then our Talent Tool can tell you what the top career paths are for your degree and your skillset.

If you are a business looking to employ – find out the top skills needed for that role.