Our people

The Great Resignation made it clear that it is critical to focus on talent. Retaining talent and creating a positive experience can be a challenge for businesses, but it’s our biggest opportunity. At Deloitte New Zealand, we’ve embarked on a journey to rethink our end-to-end talent experience, based on our experience over the past few years. Witnessing our peoples' ability to rise to the challenge over the past year has been inspirational. We’ve had to problem-solve, adapt, and change how we do business.

Supporting our peoples' wellbeing throughout these turbulent times has been our central focus. We’ve launched a firm-wide programme called Inclusive Talent Experience (ITE) to support our peoples' health and wellbeing and to improve our people’s experience at Deloitte.

We want to ensure everyone feels enabled to grow and develop, in line with our ALL IN diversity and inclusion strategy. We’re embedding a culture across all levels of the firm to empower people to be themselves and thrive at work. ITE is about creating the right environment so our people can progress and grow in our organisation and beyond. It’s creating a pathway for the future that enables new flexible and inclusive ways of working.

DXFlex is a framework that enables our people to create a better balance between work and life. It helps our teams think flexibly about the hours they work, beyond the traditional 9-to-5. It’s about everyone being able to reframe the different ways we flex our Deloitte experience, redesign work, and enhance performance and wellbeing simultaneously.​

DXFlex has five guiding features:

•  A new mindset
•  Empower and trust
• Wellbeing at work wherever the work is
• Stay connected
• Challenge bias

We have several types of ‘flex’ that relate to when, where and how our people work. These types of flex help us to navigate our time at Deloitte and outside of work. They enable us to have rich conversations about how we need to shift our ways of working at different moments in our lives. Whether it’s rearranging hours to fit in study time or planning to have an extended break from work, DXFlex is a collation of policies and guidance on how our people can make work work for them.​

We’re pushing the reset button on the perceptions and pressures of ‘value-add’ time. Puāwai means to grow or bloom. The hours spent learning, coaching, building culture and developing others are highly valued. We see this as an important part of how people spend their time at Deloitte, alongside the time spent delivering to clients, shaping up new projects and client work through business development activities.

Puāwai time recognises the many ways in which our people add value in their roles – whether that's for Deloitte, our clients, or personally. It enables us to plan and track the time we spend growing our team and welcoming new starters as well as developing ourselves and building a positive culture and community within Deloitte.

We often think of our physical, mental, and spiritual health as part of our wellbeing, but what part do our finances play? Our relationship with money and the control (or lack thereof) we feel we have over our financial future can impact our overall health.

To help our people take action when it comes to personal financial wellbeing, BNZ has put together educational sessions. These virtual sessions are available to anyone at Deloitte who wants to learn more about financial wellbeing. There’s no requirement to be a BNZ customer and the sessions are purely educational – there are no strings attached. There are seven sessions in total, covering topics including budgeting and saving, managing debt, and protecting our people and their whānau.

Josh Chamberlain, a manager from the firm's Enabling Areas says, “these sessions have given me the insight and confidence into how my partner and I approach the next stages of our life, as we look to build a family and home together”.

Our people and communities play a vital role in supporting the firm to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment for all. We want everyone to feel they can be themselves and thrive at work – it’s why we developed our ALL IN strategy.

We have Hourua Pae Rau, our Māori peoples’ community; our Pacific peoples’ community, Pås Peau; and NZ StandOUT, our rainbow community.

We also regularly come together to celebrate cultural events, raise awareness and learn about the diversity within our communities. This year, we’ve celebrated and connected over Matariki, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, Eid, Wear it Purple Day and Pacific Language Weeks – to name just a few.

At Deloitte, we recognise that supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our people is critical. We strive to create a culture that enabling our people to be their authentic and productive selves today and into the future.

Our leaders understand this and their roles in creating a supportive, stigma-free workplace. We’ve implemented a range of initiatives to help our people maintain good mental health and wellbeing and to get professional support (through EAP Services) when they need it. The COVID pandemic brought fresh challenges, which as an organisation, we tackled with a variety of initiatives. For example, we shared mental health tips on combating winter blues and how to stay physically healthy during lockdowns. One of our clients, Hummingly, provided a free downloadable Pandemic Pack with 30 ‘all-star’ cards that help support personal mental and emotional resilience.

We stayed connected through virtual quizzes, regular Bravos and team check-ins. Leaders rang individuals to check in on how they were feeling, and we talked about the trials and tribulations of working from home with children. The pandemic presented a challenge, but through a mix of connection and practical initiatives, the Deloitte New Zealand team supported each other.