Diversity & Inclusion at Deloitte Central Europe

Our vision

At Deloitte, we want everyone to feel they can be themselves and to thrive at work, in everything we do, every day.

This can only be achieved by providing a workplace culture characterized by inclusive everyday behaviors and built on a foundation of respect and appreciation for diversity in all its forms.

We are committed to supporting and empowering all of our people in achieving their full potential and to delivering our purpose to make an impact that matters, each and every day. At Deloitte, we know how important it is that all of our people can live and work freely and peacefully as their true, authentic selves, and we are united against any form of social injustice. We are focused on providing everyone with equal opportunities to grow, develop and succeed in an environment where we hold each other accountable at all times.

Our Diversity and Inclusion priorities

We believe that an inclusive culture, underpinned at all times by respect, provides the foundation for a diverse and vibrant organization. We also understand that diversity requires deliberate action when it comes to the way we work. Whether through embracing the power of allyship, or by making our talent processes conducive to gender balance, we are taking clear and consistent action to achieve the aspirational diversity goals that we have set ourselves.
Our Diversity and Inclusion agenda is thus focused not only on ensuring that all our people respect our values and understand the importance of an inclusive culture empowered by inclusive leadership, but also on designing and implementing targeted interventions aimed at achieving our aspirational diversity goals.

Respect and Inclusion is the foundation of Deloitte’s ALL IN Diversity and Inclusion strategy and places a deliberate and clear focus on our everyday culture – a culture that stands against discrimination and all non-inclusive behaviors, and champions respect for diversity in all its forms. Building on this important foundation are interventions and actions centered around three ‘pillars’: working towards gender balance, fostering LGBT+ inclusion and supporting mental health.

For each of these pillars, we continue to develop leading-edge programs, develop practical guidance and bring our ALL IN priorities to life internally and externally through clear thought leadership and insights.

Working toward gender balance

Deloitte strives to make gender balance the norm in all parts of our organization.
We’ve set ambitious aspirational goals for our firm and have developed consistent interventions spanning the entire career lifecycle - from recruitment, promotion and succession processes, to mentoring, sponsorship and agile working. We also know that leadership needs to be accountable for delivering the change needed – gender diversity is high on the radar of the Deloitte Central Europe CEO and leadership team and is a regular agenda item.

One of our key programs aimed at achieving gender balanced teams is WAVE – sponsorship program for high potential women. It was launched at Deloitte globally under the stewardship of Deloitte’s Global Chair, Sharon Thorne. Deloitte leaders across the world were challenged to personally sponsor at least one woman into leadership. Through increased sponsorship of women we aim at accelerating the progress towards gender diversity at each organizational level, and build the pipeline of the future leaders to meet our ALL IN aspirational goals.

We believe in the power of education, hence we provide various learning opportunities dedicated to Diversity and Inclusion for all our staff. Yearly, in March, we organize Diversity & Inclusion Week – series of webinars focused on different dimensions of diversity. The event is aimed at creating a safe space to discuss the topics such as the impact of unconscious bias, female leadership, LBGT+ issues, mental health, cross-generational cooperation and more.

We promote inclusive leadership to ensure that fair processes are in place. We provide our leaders with different learning opportunities, eg. Inclusive Leadership Virtual Labs to increase the awareness of the impact of their behaviors on the level of inclusiveness in our work culture, as well as provide them with tools to act with integrity.

Our focus on gender does not end at our own organization. Through a number of our WorldClass societal impact program projects we are working to positively impact the lives of women and girls around the world outside our organization. Stories of this impact are included in our yearly CE Impact Report.

We lead SheXO Club that has been operating since 2011 and is addressed to women holding managerial and executive positions. We have established it bearing in mind personal and professional development of business women. The Club provides an opportunity to regular exchange of thoughts, development of leadership skills and networking.
 

Fostering LGBT+ inclusion

Deloitte’s shared values are at the heart of everything we do. Living these values, which include ‘take care of each other’ and ‘foster inclusion’, is essential in enabling everyone at Deloitte to feel they can be themselves at work, without fear of discrimination or prejudice.

We started with supporting women and LGBT+ community, however we encourage all our employees to participate in building programs and networks aimed at promoting diversity and visibility of underrepresented, minority groups.

We want our LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans and more) professionals to feel confident in being who they are and empowered to thrive within Deloitte and within the societies Deloitte serves. We believe that a core component of a truly inclusive culture is whether LGBT+ colleagues feel they can be open about their identity and this is an important aspect for any organization focusing on making meaningful progress on inclusion.

This is why we have endorsed the UN’s Standards of Conduct for Business in Tackling Discrimination against LGBTI people (the LGBTI Standards). Many of our actions to further LGBT+ inclusion are aligned with core areas of the UN standards, including respecting human rights, eliminating discrimination and providing support. This includes a focus on allyship and ensuring that all our people are enabled to learn about the experiences of members of our LGBT+ community, eg. at the webinars dedicated to LGBT+ issues.

We believe the power of ‘allyship’ is a critical element of LGBT+ diversity, whereby our people support the rights and wellbeing of their LGBT+ colleagues. Allyship isn’t just passive support, but part of our everyday actions - visibly and vocally supporting LGBT+ people inside and outside of Deloitte.

We have an active LGBT+ and Allies network to support our LGBT+ professionals, create a safe space for discussion, as well as promote Allyship mindset.

In June 2020, we have organized our first ever virtual Pride event with the involvement of our leadership, as well as the members of LGBT+ community from different CE countries and on different career levels.

Externally, and in line with the UN LGBTI standard to act in the public sphere, Deloitte is proud to be a member of the Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality.

Supporting Mental health

We believe that supporting mental health is a critical element of inclusion and are working hard to address the stigma that still too often exists within our societies on this issue. As a responsible organization, we recognize the importance of good mental health – and the need for our people to know where and how to seek support when they are facing mental health challenges.

This means enabling our people to feel able to raise any concerns around their mental health without fear of stigma. It also means helping our people to spot the signs of mental health challenges, to ask ‘Are you okay?’, helping them to know how to respond when someone says they aren’t, and making sure they feel supported in reaching out for help.

We provide psychological support to our leaders and staff, as well as organize some educational events dedicated to belonging and mental health, such as Mental Health Week.

Globally, we are proud to be a founding member of the Global Business Initiative, a business-led coalition being established to advocate for, and accelerate, positive change for mental health in the workplace on a global basis.