Posted: 09 Apr. 2019 7 min. read

Nurturing a New Way of Working: Deloitte named most family-friendly large employer in Scotland

Last month, Deloitte was named winners in the Best Large Private Sector Employer (250+ employees) at the Scottish Top Employers for Working Families Awards run by Family Friendly Working Scotland.

Family Friendly Working Scotland create and support working change in Scotland that builds economic success and improves the lives of families. The awards are unique in their focus on highlighting employers who have created genuinely family-friendly working and business cultures.

I am delighted that we received this recognition as every day at Deloitte my colleagues and I challenge ourselves to do the right thing, and that is as equally important when it comes to how we engage with everyone in our business, as it is to how we engage with our clients. Winning this award reflects the work done by people at every level of our firm to make our working culture one that helps everyone get a balance between work and home life that is right for them.

Our family-friendly working culture, recognised by judges at last month’s ceremony, includes a wide-range of formal and informal support which is available to every Deloitte employee in Scotland. This support includes a Working Parents Transition Programme, offering pre-parental leave coaching sessions, five monthly coaching sessions on the return to work, access to one-to-one external advice on child raising issues and emergency backup care, funded by Deloitte, up to ten times a year. We also have an industry-leading Return to Work programme supporting people who have been out of the workforce for an extended period as they return to a professional career and a Time Out initiative allowing employees to take up to four additional unpaid weeks of leave.

Research shows flexible working makes good business sense and it is certainly already helping to ensure that we keep talented people. We have increased our retention rate among mothers. 92% of women and 95% who have taken part in our Working Parents Transition Programme stay with us. Attrition rates for female colleagues at manager level and above have decreased to below the firm-wide average, while our Return to Work Programme has to-date enabled 37 women to re-enter the workplace.

It is imperative that employees can balance their home commitments while progressing their careers and we will continue to work to make sure our working culture is one of the most family-friendly in Scotland.

Deloitte is an accredited Living Wage Employer, a signatory to the Scottish Government’s Business Pledge and supports the Scottish Government’s ‘Fair Work Convention’, which places opportunity, fulfilment, respect, security and employees having an effective voice, at the heart of good modern work practice.

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Key contact:

Stephen Williams

Stephen Williams

Partner

Stephen’s experience over the past 30 years has always been exclusively with retail financial services clients. Stephen is a member of the Board of Deloitte NSE, Chair of the UK Oversight Board and is the Chairman of Deloitte NSE's own Audit & Risk Committee. Previously Stephen worked on secondment for the EBRD in Eastern Europe, and spent 6 years in South Africa where he worked with local financial institutions. His present external audit clients include a number of regulated banks and other retail financial services businesses; including a number with an international presence. He also leads a number of propositions in the Challenger bank space, and leads a number of assurance and advisory projects in this space; including internal audit arrangements, regulatory advisory work, and work on assessing corporate governance and risk management frameworks. Recent other projects in which Stephen has been involved include: leading a HM Treasury CCA investigation resultant from a significant redress programme, leading the reporting accountant work on the IPO of a now listed bank; leading the due diligence on behalf of a number of investors into a failing Building Society, and Undertaking a number of S166 reviews on behalf of the regulator in relation to corporate governance and risk management at Challenger Banks.