Different life experiences make for stronger teams
Building a firm that’s open to everyone means valuing everyone’s background.
Research from The Bridge Group shows that, in 2020, 89 per cent of senior roles in financial services were occupied by people from professional backgrounds (defined by parental occupation at 14) - nearly three times higher than the UK working population.
In addition, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds take 25 per cent longer to progress and be promoted compared with those from higher socio-economic backgrounds.
One of our main priorities is building an inclusive firm that’s open to everyone, in which everyone can be themselves. That means valuing everyone’s background in the same way as we value their ethnicity, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation.
“Paying attention to and valuing people’s different life experiences is the best way to build strong teams, right across Deloitte,” said people and purpose managing partner Jackie Henry.
“It’s helping us to bring a diversity of ideas and perspectives to our work, which is so valuable to our clients and helps us to make the biggest possible impact.”
Supporting Social Mobility
To support social mobility in our firm, we’re sending out a clear message: if you have the drive to succeed and want to work at Deloitte but aren’t sure whether our firm or professional services is right for you, think again.
We were one of the first firms to introduce school and university-blind recruitment, with an inclusive selection process, and a focus on assessments being more about candidate ambition and potential.
The disclosure of information about our people’s diversity is also important, enabling us to track and monitor progress against our diversity targets and inclusion ambitions. We collect and publish detailed anonymised data on the ethnicity and gender of our people – and with around half of our workforce already disclosing information about their background, we are working to increase our disclosure rates from 50 per cent to 70 per cent this year and use this better disclosure of data to review the progression trends of our current workforce.