Inclusion at Deloitte

Our Inclusion strategy

We want all our people to experience a culture in which they can thrive and feel truly at home. Our personal, people-first environment is becoming more diverse every day, and with that, it's important that opportunities are provided to everyone, and collaboration and progress come naturally.

Fostering inclusion is one of Deloitte’s core values, and we have a well-established inclusion strategy. This strategy is overseen by our Inclusion Council consisting of 12 representatives across the business, and is further supported by our employee resource groups (Inclusion Networks) and external partnerships.

Inclusion Networks

To achieve our aim of having a truly inclusive culture it is important that we encompass the full diversity of voices at Deloitte and that everyone sees themselves represented. When you join Deloitte, you can join one of several employee resource groups also known as our Inclusion Networks: the LGBT+ and allies network , the Gender Balance network, our Parents and Caregivers network and our Multicultural network (MCN).

Accelerating gender balance

We’ve recently refreshed our gender balance strategy to build a balanced leadership pipeline for the future. We have committed to achieving 30% female partners by 2023 and 35% female partners by 2025, up from 25% in FY21. Given that our graduate intake is approximately 50:50 male:female, we are are focused on driving this balance across our business as our people progress through their careers. We have made significant progress in working towards this ambition over the past decade, with our proportion of female partners rising from 13% in 2011 to 27% by June 2021.

You can read more about our gender balance strategy and the corresponding priorities here.

In addition, we know that women are particularly underrepresented in STEM fields. We’ve also joined the CWIT (Connecting Women in Technology) network and became platinum sponsors of iWish – both of which are specifically aimed at encouraging more women and girls into STEM fields. We partnered with iWish to launch our first STEM-focused Transition Year programme for young females earlier this year. Finally, we’ve enrolled in the STEM Teacher Internship (STInt) Programme, in which we host pre-service STEM teachers for an internship, empowering them to gain skills and invaluable experiences of the many careers and opportunities available within STEM industries.
 

Celebrating cultural diversity

23% of our people come from 62 different countries. An inclusive culture is critical to their integration and sense of belonging, as evidenced by a Photovoice study among our people. Our Multicultural Network’s objective is to celebrate the diverse cultures within Deloitte Ireland, provide support to those moving to a new country/culture, and to build awareness around issues of importance for ethnic minorities.

The network was officially launched in 2020 and has been a great enabler of cross-business connectivity within the firm, with a healthy membership of over 200 people on our MS Teams channel. Events so far have included language exchange programmes, a quiz night, a speaker series, and monthly connectivity coffee morning.

LGBT+ allyship

The LGBT+ network at Deloitte aims to ensure that the focus of LGBT+ inclusion goes beyond Pride celebrations once a year - continuously informing and educating our people, supporting those who need it, and making a positive impact on LGBT+ causes in our community. The committee has also formally set out the supports available to transgender employees at Deloitte, resulting in the formation of our Transgender Employment Policy, developed in collaboration with our People and Purpose team and Inclusion Council.

Supporting working parents

Managing the demands of work with those of caring for others can be challenging at the best of times, as evidenced by our Photovoice study amongst working parents. Periods of lockdown without childcare or a normal routine put even more pressure on working parents and caregivers.

We’ve worked with Bright Horizons to put in place a selection of virtual back-up care sessions to supplement home schooling and after-school routines. We’ve also re-evaluated and expanded our parental leave policies – most notably, introducing a formal sabbatical scheme to to support our people with caring responsibilities during Covid - and ran a series of workshops and webinars aimed at checking in on and supporting caregivers. We have also recently introduced a Parents and Caregivers network as part of our Inclusion Networks which aims to provide support and a peer network on an ongoing basis.

Disability and accessibility

To publicly demonstrate our commitment to supporting and including people with disabilities, Deloitte (in Ireland & globally) signed up to the Valuable 500 pledge to take real action to include people with disabilities before January 2021. A recent project we’re very proud of is our Inclusion Passport - a place where people can document what supports or reasonable accommodations would make a difference to their ability to thrive both personally and professionally at work. This provides a framework to work through the variety of supports that people may benefit from and an opportunity to negotiate and agree these once, rather than for each assignment and manager someone is working with.  

Mental health resources

There are mental health supports for our people whether they are experiencing a short-term mental health challenge or are managing a longer-term mental health condition – including our employee assistance programme, dedicated Mental Health Champions and drop-in clinics.

May is dedicated to mental health at Deloitte. During May we arrange several presentations and activities to promote the importance of mental health and to remind people of the support available.

During the initial 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, we ran a ‘Navigating Uncertainty’ wellbeing initiative with Dr Maria Quinlan to support people in making sense of the changes to their lives and in managing their wellbeing during that time. During our grad campaign, we also donated to Pieta House to support youth mental health instead of our usual yearly spend on merchandise.

Inclusive recruitment

In Ireland, we aim to lead the way on Inclusion by ensuring all of our people processes are inclusive, from hiring to promotions. To achieve this, we have regular reviewsto identify any potential barriers to inclusion that need to be addressed, as well as continuing to foster inclusion internally .

Our current initiatives include:

• We’ve included an optional pre-application diversity questionnaire in our application process. This survey has allowed us to flag whether our application-to-offer ratio is lower than average among certain cohorts and tweak our hiring process or add additional supports as needed.
• Our Development Internship Programme, piloted in 2020, supports those in the international protection process or in direct provision in Ireland. In September last year, we welcomed our first participant in the programme and this year we are delighted to have developed the programme further and are welcoming a number of people across areas of our business.
• We continue to partner with DCU Access to support students across socioeconomic backgrounds to gain an insight into the career paths available to them at Deloitte.
• We partner with the FIT tech apprenticeship programme as an alternative and inclusive source of talent for our software development roles. Students participate in part-time work and study, and take on software developer roles aimed at developing technical skills, ultimately completing the ICT associate professional apprentice course.
• We’re active members of INvolve, participating in their cross-company mentoring programme for minorities.