Hear from
Jackie Henry

Jackie Henry
Managing Partner for People & Purpose

At the heart of everything we do as a firm is our commitment to building an inclusive workplace where everyone can be their true, authentic selves. And our diversity networks play an important role in helping us to do this.

Allyship is important to us at Deloitte, and some of my standout moments of this year have been watching our people come together to support our networks. To give you just a few examples: this year, many of our colleagues joined the ‘Fast And The Curious’ fasting challenge for Ramadan with our Muslim network, marched in Pride parades across the UK with our LGBTQ+ network ‘Proud at Deloitte’, joined our Hindu network for Monday Meditations throughout Diwali, and joined our black network for our annual Black History Month cook along.

This year, our priority has been investing in our people, prioritising their well-being, and making sure they have the support they need through important moments in their lives. I'm particularly proud of the changes we've made to some of our people policies, including enhancing our parental policies, introducing paid medical insurance for all colleagues and better support for colleagues experiencing menopause, miscarriage and bereavement.

Another highlight for me has been the work we've done to help build sustainable futures and deliver on our WorldClimate ambitions, including through the launch of Clause Zero, a sustainable delivery clause in our client engagement letters and contracts and through our continued partnership with the Earthshot Prize.

And finally, we have continued to deliver for our 5 Million Futures social impact strategy, which this year has seen us partner with over 90 charities and schools. We've helped communities as they face an increased cost of living, donated 6000 of our refurbished laptops to schools and charities, and helped to empower underrepresented groups to deliver employability skills through our partnerships with Blueprint for All, Scope and Young Woman's Trust.

At Deloitte we are committed to listening to our people and we are pleased to see a record response to our most recent People Experience survey. Our people's feedback has already helped to directly inform some of those changes we've made this year and will now help us to identify the areas of focus for the coming year, which will include a continued review of our inclusive and flexible policies to support our people's wellbeing, investing in learning and skills, and continuing our commitment to inclusion through mentoring and sponsorship programmes.