Business advisory firm Deloitte today announced it is providing more than £2million through the Deloitte Foundation to boost the employability skills of young people in the UK.  The funding will create a new generation of 800 Deloitte employability trainers over the next five years who will teach employability skills to 80,000 college students across the UK. 

The learning initiative will focus on developing the combination of attitudes and behaviours employers are looking for such as self management and business awareness that are the key to success in employment.

John Connolly, Senior Partner and Chief Executive of Deloitte commented: “Over the past five years we have helped hundreds of young people from disadvantaged communities and this initiative will extend our reach further. 

“How the UK grapples with the skills challenges of global modern economy is a critical issue for all employers. Many young people are leaving the education system without the personal and social skills the workplace requires and this is a concern to significant numbers of employers.  We hope our initiative can start to change this by enabling colleges to add employability skills training to a wide variety of vocational courses, thereby helping students to acquire the skills and the qualifications to increase their success in the work place and meet the needs of employers.”

The initiative has involved appointing five teacher training centres to train college staff to teach employability skills.  City College Norwich, City and Islington College in London, Bradford College, Solihull College and a consortium led by Blackpool and The Fylde College with South Cheshire and Runshaw Colleges will be the first Deloitte Employability Centres.

Further Deloitte Employability Centres will be appointed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2008. 

Employability issues covered in the Deloitte course include:

• Culture of the workplace
• Roles and responsibilities of managers and employees
• Team working
• Formal and informal channels of communication
• Customer service
• Presentation skills
• Giving and receiving feedback

“We are proud to be working with Deloitte on this initiative”, explains Frank McLoughlin, Principal of City and Islington College, one of the largest FE Colleges in the country.  “Employability skills are vital for students if they are to succeed in securing and sustaining employment, and we know that this is an area that needs to be added to the curriculum.  We are keen to play our part as a Deloitte Employability Centre in helping to train the next generation of college teachers to deliver these courses.”

Richard Stone, Director of Community Investment at Deloitte, commented:  “More than 500 young people have now benefited from this training and many of them are now successfully employed in some of the UK’s largest companies.  In order to ensure that many more students benefit from this training in the future we are providing significant resources in building the capacity of FE Colleges across the UK to deliver these courses.”

Ends

Notes to Editor
The investment by Deloitte in this key area of training builds on five years of award-winning work by its community investment team who have led the design and delivery of pilot courses in employability skills, with support from major corporate partners including HSBC, Vodafone, Morgan Stanley and News International, as well as development funding from the Department for Education and Skills.

The funding is being made through the Deloitte Foundation. 

The 2006 annual CBI survey reported that some 30% of employers consider that entry-level recruits lack an understanding of the workplace and the softer skills needed to succeed in the world of work.

Case study: A case study of a student who completed the employability skills pilot is available on request.

About Deloitte
In this press release references to Deloitte are references to Deloitte & Touche LLP which is among the country’s leading professional services firms, providing audit, tax, consulting and corporate finance services. Deloitte & Touche LLP is the United Kingdom member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (‘DTT’), a Swiss Verein whose member firms are separate and independent legal entities.  Neither DTT nor any of its member firms has any liability for each other’s omissions.  Services are provided by member firms or their subsidiaries and not by DTT.  Deloitte & Touche LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.  The information contained in this press release is correct at the time of going to press.