Stories of our impact

A steer in the right direction

Our junior advisory board gets to work!

During summer 2017, we began our search for rising stars to join our first junior advisory board. Now, after drawing together some of our best future talent, the group is successfully supporting our UK Executive and bringing fresh, diverse views to the table.

Steer was set up in September 2017 and the group’s 12 members range from Associate to Associate Director level and from across all service lines. For them, it’s not only a chance to influence top-level thinking, but a valuable opportunity to explore their own potential and champion initiatives that develop others.

Here, member Amanda Ruddiman, Assistant Director in our Corporate Finance Advisory practice, shares her thoughts...

Top topics…

During its inaugural year, the group chose to focus on the following subjects: embedding purpose, strengthening our culture, innovation, delivering diversity, becoming borderless and attracting and retaining top talent.

“I wanted to get involved as I saw it as an amazing opportunity to talk directly to the Executive on grassroots issues. It was also a chance to meet lots of new people from across the firm.

“Members have a variety of skills and experience, but we share the same goal – supporting the growth and development of Deloitte. From our first meeting, we knew we had a really engaged group.

“The concept is underpinned by the firm’s desire to create a respectful and inclusive environment and, already, we can see the value the Executive puts on the group’s voice.

“In the first nine months, we’ve provided feedback on how the firm’s strategy on diversity is reaching our people, discussed the future of work and how it might impact our service offerings, and given our views on Deloitte’s purpose and what we should be doing to live it every day. We’ve also looked at new talent initiatives.

“We can support the Executive’s overall objectives by generating ideas that place Deloitte’s strategy and purpose at the centre of everyone’s working day.”

Amanda Ruddiman, Steer member

Helping voices to be heard

“Our discussion is always energetic and thought-provoking; we challenge each other and have different points of view. But it’s not only our opinions we want to take forward – we want to make it easier for people across the firm to give feedback.

“Steer is a channel that people can use to communicate with the Executive about their day-to-day working life, and it helps the Executive understand how initiatives are being received. This leads to constant evaluation and makes sure everything is being done to help our clients, people and society.

“Establishing Steer and making it a success is important as it shows our leaders are dedicated to listening. This has been such a positive experience, both for us and the Executive, and we hope that, in the future, we can extend it further across the Deloitte North West Europe network.”

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