Support Organisation
The objective of our Support Organisation is taking care of supporting processes in an efficient and effective way so that our practitioners can fully focus on their client work. It provides the tools for our Talent journey, ensures that we maintain financial oversight, organises and maintains an effective and safe ICT-infrastructure, avoids liabilities and safeguards legal compliance, communicates effectively to and with internal and external stakeholders, provides insights on industry level, builds and protects our brand and reputation, rents and furnishes our offices, procures the goods and services that we need to run our business, reviews our internal reporting and processes, and much more. In short, our Support Organisation provides almost everything our businesses need to deliver high quality services to their clients.
The Support Organisation has a high added value for our strategy execution though a number of core activities by:
Providing (cost)effective solutions
The year 2020/2021 saw the implementation of SWIFT, our new global finance and engagement management system (based on SAP S/4HANA®). Consequently, on 1 April 2021, we have transitioned our financial processes to the Global Finance Service (GFS) organisation. SWIFT and GFS are important global initiatives that modernise our practice, finance, and engagement systems and processes. We worked hard to keep all Deloitters connected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by providing secure data access and online collaboration tooling allowing our people to thrive from their chosen location. To further increase the quality of our internal services, we have transitioned first-line IT support to the Global Contact Centre (GCC). With the introduction of SWIFT and GCC, we have adopted central service tooling that has been developed by DTTL (ServiceNow). Finally, our Data management team has become part of CoRe Data Management Services and is now a global team, operating from the Netherlands. The purpose of this team is to safeguard data quality between our prime engagement and ERM systems (Jupiter, Compas and SWIFT). By creating more unity in our international tooling and support, we not only reduce cost and increase effectiveness, we also enable international mobility which is a benefit for our people.
Safeguarding a culture of quality
We drive programmes aimed at further improving our quality culture in which we value quality over earnings. As a firm that combines audit and advisory services, we maintain high standards of quality and robust procedures regarding acceptance, independence, ethics and compliance. Over the years, our acceptance practice has shifted from a focus on compliance and ethics, to a process in which we determine whether we want to build a relationship with a specific client in light of our purpose and strategic priorities.
Keeping engagement high
Our Support Organisation – under responsibility of the Executive Board – has led the COVID-19 response from Deloitte. Many of our support departments have cooperated in creating a safe working environment for all our partners and employees, from lending out ergonomic office furniture to designing a response to various possible economic scenarios, from making sure there was a reliable VPN connection to secure sensitive client data to immediate care for vulnerable colleagues. The connection between our people, between our people and our firm and between the firm and our clients has been of paramount importance. After it became clear that working from home would continue for a longer time, the focus has shifted from enabling working from home to working from home responsibly, mindful of topics such as work-life balance, loneliness and combining parenthood with working from home. We developed programmes such as ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ and supported our people with nanny day care when kindergartens were closed as a result of the pandemic. We also introduced a fixed monthly financial compensation based on calculations made by Nibud (National Institute for Family Finance Information) as well as a one-off allowance for our people to be able to purchase ergonomic furniture and/or equipment to furnish their home offices. Through open communication, including online town halls, we have endeavoured to keep our people engaged and informed throughout the pandemic.
"A multi-disciplinary team under direct responsibility of our COO leads initiatives to reduce our CO2 emissions and compensate remaining ones in a meaningful way."
Addressing CO2 emissions
Deloitte’s ambition to become carbon neutral is part and parcel of the ‘Purpose and quality’ pillar of our Connect for Impact strategy. A multi-disciplinary team under direct responsibility of our COO leads initiatives to reduce our CO2 emissions and compensate remaining ones in a meaningful way. Employees from Talent, Workplace Services, IT, Procurement, Finance, and Communication have joined together and have developed a plan and timelines towards net zero operations. In the slipstream of this ambition, also other environmental topics are addressed. Examples of such topics include waste, water and biodiversity.
