Helping to address the digital divide

Millions of people around the UK are unable to achieve their full potential or access essential goods and services because of a lack of digital inclusion. We are helping charities and individuals thrive in an increasingly virtual world by building digital skills, making connections, and providing access to technology.

Now in its third year, Deloitte Digital Connect is a programme, run in collaboration with the digital charity CAST, which aims to help charities scale their impact. Last year, to achieve this ambition, we led workshops, coaching calls and mentoring sessions for digital leaders of charities to help them build capacity and capability within their organisation. Over 90 per cent of those who attended said they have benefited from taking part in the programme, learning to develop a digital strategy.

Our commitment to help bridge the digital divide doesn’t stop there - we are helping to support the wider ecosystem around digital inclusion, driving change. Over the course of last year, we conducted a report encouraging businesses to donate their repurposed laptops to those in need, we offered recommendations to the House of Lords Select Committee on addressing the digital divide, we worked with the Digital Poverty Alliance to help quantify the cost of digital exclusion and we provided FutureDotNow, an organisation of industry leaders, with a project manager to help with their report on the digital skills gap in the UK workforce.

We also helped those without digital access get equipment they need to join the digital economy - donating over 6,000 of our refurbished laptops to schools and our partner charities in the last financial year. Many of the schools loaned laptops to students while others became a shared resource, multiplying their impact and reach many times over.

Employability skills

Access to well-paid work is one of the cornerstones of social mobility. Working with four national inclusion charities, we help to create and sustain programmes that enable underrepresented groups to develop key employability skills and progress on their path to employment.

Now in its third year, as a part of the firm’s Black Experience we continued our support for Blueprint for All’s bursary programme which supports 40 students from Black, Asian or minority ethnic communities and low socio-economic backgrounds whilst at university. The scheme is providing funding to students as well as mentoring, skills workshops, and opportunities to apply for our undergraduate work experience opportunities.

Last year, we supported Blueprint for All to develop and build an award-winning digital career development hub for young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The project enabled the organisation to evolve into a hybrid, more responsive partner to the communities it serves, resulting in one of the charity’s most significant digital transformations in its 25-year history.

For Scope, a disability equality charity, we supported their mission by helping them develop and implement a new 10-year strategy. Additionally, we provided recommendations to grow and improve their jobs board for disabled people looking to enter the workforce. 

We have also provided targeted support to Just Like Us by sponsoring their most recent study, Positive Futures, on lived experiences of LGBTQ+ young people which was recently featured in our award-winning Green Room podcast. Our sponsorship of the research sits alongside the wider support we provide, including a variety of pro bono projects.

Finally, our newest partnership with the Young Women’s Trust has seen us support the creation of a new professional network service for young women in low paid jobs or unemployment.

Tackling the cost-of-living crisis

When the cost-of-living crisis hit last year, we collaborated with our network of charities and school partners to help ease the burden by providing support in three specific areas.

We made unrestricted donations to each of our 28 charity partners and 30 partner schools to support them with vital costs like staffing and heating. We provided an uplift of 10 per cent on all contracts with societal project partners to match inflation. At Christmas, we donated £75,000 to Scope, passing on the savings made by reducing our office temperatures to drive down our carbon emissions.

We know that this alone is not enough to stem the crisis, but we will continue to do our part and explore how we can further help with the economic challenges that lie ahead.

A month of volunteering in a year of positive impact

Finally, to round-up a year of activity focused on impacting futures for the better, we held our annual employee volunteering initiative, Better Futures Month. A month-long activity, it encouraged employees to use their 3.5 hours of volunteer time to help any one of our partner charities. Over 1,200 employees volunteered their time in a range of activities from mentoring calls, running skills sessions in schools, to cleaning up their communities and cooking for those hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis.

We didn’t stop there. The war in Ukraine has dramatically changed the lives of many Ukrainians who sought refuge in other countries including the United Kingdom. Working with Ukrainian Students Union and BecomingX, we launched Steps for Success, which offered virtual one-to-one employability skills sessions to Ukrainian students and refugees.

To date, as a part of our Better Futures Month, over 300 Deloitte volunteers have been matched and they have spent time sharing their experiences on CV writing, interviews, digital skills, and tips to access the UK job market. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. 87 per cent of refugees and students said the session increased their confidence in finding a job in the UK with 96 per cent recommending others to take part.

Many of our Better Futures Month volunteers also spoke about what a positive difference this made to their wellbeing, and how they are keen to volunteer again and give back more to society.

Local impact, global ambition

All our initiatives in education, digital skills and employability are focused on our ambition to create a fairer society. By 2030, we want to create five million better futures and contribute to our WorldClass ambition of impacting 100 million futures globally. 

It is an ambitious target, but we are on track to achieve it, thanks to the effort of our people and partners who are committed to making an impact that matters, every day.