3. Social impacts

3.1 Employee value proposition

­­

Impacts

For many of our employees, Deloitte is the starting point of their careers. On an annual basis, some 2,000 students and young graduates are given the opportunity to join our firm as practitioner, working student or intern. Through learning on the job, teaming, and continuous training and education, we facilitate both personal and professional growth. 

Our people work on a wide variety of assignments with both emerging and leading Dutch and international companies, as well as government and public sector. We believe that making an impact by helping clients solve complex challenges provides our people the opportunity to further develop, which in return strengthens their sense accomplishment. 

During their careers at Deloitte, our people are offered a growth path that can eventually lead to them becoming a partner or director in the firm. At the same time, many of our recruits find their way to successful and rewarding positions outside Deloitte. We believe that the insights and experiences gained at Deloitte over the years can be leveraged in their new job environment, creating a positive impact on their employer’s organisation and business environment.

Governance

We aim to create a culture that supports our people to achieve their full potential by focusing on their strengths. Our approach to performance is designed to give our people a better career experience, moving away from annual appraisals to regular conversations that provide continuous feedback and support throughout the year. 

We want to create an environment where people feel they have purpose; they belong and can learn, develop and grow every day. We aim to achieve this by supporting our people through ongoing coaching and creating opportunities for them to identify, use and build their strengths. 

We distinguish four roles in our approach to career development: 

1. The Business Leader is responsible for the performance management decisions and leverages performance data to make operating decisions within the team. The Business Leader plays a prominent role in the Talent and Business Reviews and uses the input received from Team Leaders and Coaches to take reward decisions at the end of the fiscal year;

2. Every employee has a Coach to help them identify, grow and leverage their strengths, and work towards their long-term career goals. Coaching increases engagement and retention. It provides continuity, assisting team members in identifying and understanding their strengths, forming a holistic view of performance across engagements or projects and influencing career decisions and opportunities;

3. The Team Leader is responsible for the performance and general wellbeing of the people who work for them. Teams Leaders will have regular check-ins with their Team Members to understand what's going on in their teams and to assess their team's strengths, how to divide work and get the best from their people and deal with any issues early on. They are the first point of contact for performance conversations throughout the year, helping Team Members to understand their performance and providing pointers on how they can further develop and improve;

4. The Team Member receives day to day support from their Team Leader, who is accountable for setting clear expectations about the work they are doing and with whom they have regular check-in's. They receive regular feedback on their performance during check-ins, focusing on developing strengths along with supporting those areas they may need to develop. Team Members have access to a coach to help them understand their motivations and barriers.

Activities in 2022/2023

In 2021/2022, we implemented our new Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Part of our EVP is the 'Experience Ambition' that aims to articulate what we stand for and offer as an employer.  

The fundaments of our EVP are passion for purpose, true inclusion, and continuous personal growth. Through the moments that matter most to our people, and their everyday interactions, we are committed to providing an exceptional human experience and a career that is personalised and meaningful. This is made tangible through seven ambitions (the Employee Ambition). 

1. ‘My impact is recognised and rewarded’ | A culture of recognition with fair and transparent total reward

Our recognition of impact is based on the following elements in each performance cycle:

Performance: 

In order to recognise the performance as delivered throughout the year, we assess several performance indicators including how our Shared Values haven been observed in the performance as demonstrated. Our Shared Valued articulate the expectations we have towards one another and define how we, as stewards of Deloitte, should behave. They provide common ground to unite us across cultures and geographies, and importantly, they help us to earn the trust and respect of our key stakeholders.​  
Performance indicators track the performance shown towards qualitative and quantitative goals as set by the Business, which are linked to strategic objectives, e.g.: 

• Impact on projects (by Snapshot Indicator - employees’ performance as measured in question 1 and 2 of the snapshots compared to other employees’ performance in the Business in which the employee is employed); 

• Impact on the firm (business development and industry); 

• Impact on talent (people development and I&D); 

• Impact on finance (including utilisation, revenue managed/sold, direct/indirect hours);

• Impact on quality. 

Profit sharing is based on performance as determined for the past year. 

Development:

Deloitte clients and practitioners expect the very best. Deloitte Talent Standards provide clear role expectations for a globally uniform level of quality from all professionals. Global consistency enhances personal performance and ensures a consistent, exceptional Deloitte experience. Global Talent Standards have been developed to be used by member firms as guidelines in the employee lifecycle. The standards entail: 

• Leadership capabilities: Leadership “must haves”, by level, that apply across Deloitte;

• Professional capabilities: Professional capabilities specific to each core service;

• Technical capabilities: Capabilities that involve the application of specialised knowledge, skills, and abilities specific to a Service Line within a core service.

Assessment of the growth in capabilities determines the individual salary growth percentage.  

Future development

Personal attributes for future development show the employee what potential they have for growth in the short to medium term. Together with the promotion criteria, they inform if and when the employee is are ready for a next step. Personal attributes predict a leader’s ability to learn and adapt in new environments based on how they think, react, and interact when faced with change and complexity:

• Personal attributes are the foundations that underpin a leader’s ability to acquire the capabilities needed to master the challenges of complex work environments; 

• Personal attributes cannot be developed as easily as capabilities, so they provide the means to identify high-potential candidates and to understand the suitability of leaders for roles at all levels; 

• Some personal attributes may be more important than others depending on the role. This allows for flexibility in configuring leadership roles and diversity of leaders across different roles based on their strengths. 

Promotion criteria are set in the Talent Standards. The promotion criteria define the requirements an employee should meet as a minimum for promotion to the next level. We expect employees to have the capabilities, show performance as required for the current job grade, and demonstrate behaviour and skill set of the next job grade prior to promotion. 

2. ‘My leadership is trusted and transparent’ | Authentic, inspiring and inclusive leadership, with open and honest communication

Throughout the year, we capture the individual performance delivered in so-called snapshots. For this purpose, we use a standardised tool (iRPM). Via regular check-in conversations between the Team Leader and the Team Member, the performance feedback is also discussed. The snapshot is just a way to confirm what has been discussed. As a result, performance snapshots are consistent and correlate with check-in conversations. Individual performance snapshots are confidential, but a Team member will be able to see an aggregated view of the their performance snapshots in a scatterplot every three months. In case the Team Leader has added comments to the snapshots, this will be visible to the Team Member fourteen days after the Team Leader has completed the snapshots. Before these fourteen says have passed, the Team Leader will discusses the feedback with the Team Member in person. Both the scatterplot and snapshot comments are also visible to the Coach of the Team Member in order to support them in their development.  
 

The HR Business Leader is responsible for helping the Team Leaders and Coaches in fulfilling their roles and support them - amongst others - by providing a learning curriculum relevant to their roles. HR Business Leaders will frequently assess if Team Leaders are showing possible bias in the snapshots and feedback they provided. With this analysis of their data, they can start a conversation with the Team Leader to share their insights. This should result in clear and transparent snapshots and feedback to Team Members in the long run.  

For learning/leadership skills see paragraph 3.3 (Learning and development).  
 

3. ‘My performance is supported’ | Goals are personalised, with ongoing coaching and feedback supporting the development of strengths

Leadership and professional development are about continuous learning, not only through formal education, but also through environment, experience and exposure.  We provide our colleagues with multiple learning options, so they can adjust their learning journey based on their personalised needs and preferences. We offer and support cross-border collaboration and provide access to international developmental opportunities. 
 
With the growth portfolio (GP), the Team Member has the opportunity to create and communicate performance objectives, career aspirations and plan for development.

• In the development part of the GP, the Team Member reviews and assesses the applicable talent standards and identifies the capabilities they would like to develop during the financial year;  

• In the performance part of the GP, the Team Member reviews the strategy of Deloitte, their Business and their team.

• In the future development part, the Team Member describes their career aspirations and the support they need to fulfill this aspiration.  The learning catalogue helps to navigate to the required learnings.  

Several times per year our employees have a conversation with their Coach and the base of this conversation is the Growth Portfolio. The coaching conversation is an essential part of future development and helps employees to drive their performance and development. A coach helps to identify and develop areas of strengths, connects feedback, and examines and understands the context of the performance and development.  
 
To become more effective and satisfied at work, Team Members need a good understanding of their impact on others and the extent to which they achieve their goals in their working relationships. Direct feedback is the most effective way to gather this information and to learn from it. By providing and receiving direct feedback, we facilitate growth in line with personal needs, stimulating the Team Members to reach their full potential and to never stop growing. In addition to receiving direct feedback, we have introduced the My Feedback tool. This tool supports receiving 360º feedback in order to incorporate this in the Growth Portfolio. Intentionally, this is not part of the reward, performance and development evaluation, but solely there to help the employee to receive feedback for their own development.  

4. 'My work is meaningful and challenging' | Work that is challenging that also has a social purpose and a greater meaning

To live up to our promise of ‘my work is meaningful and challenging’, we approach this from multiple angles: 

• Understanding what is meaningful to our employees;

• Articulating the impact of a project    

• Actively asking our employees about their experience after finishing a project. Did they experience the project as meaningful and energizing? 

• Contributing time to the Deloitte Impact Foundation 

5. 'My development and growth opportunities are wide ranging'| Continuous learning and development with varied career options supported by talent mobility 

Please see paragraph 3.3 hereunder for an overview of our approach to Learning and Development. 

6. My health and wellbeing is a priority | Mental health and wellbeing are prioritised, and individuals supported to be themselves 

Please see paragraph 3.4 hereunder for an overview of our approach to Wellbeing. 

7. My work environment is positive’| Inclusive, flexible and professional working environment

We have implemented hybrid working model principles:  

1. We connect in person when it matters; 

2. We provide inspirational collaboration & meeting spaces;

3. We make good use of virtual working, in an inclusive way;

4. We leverage innovative, collaborative technologies; 

5. We prioritise well-being;

6. We travel and commute less, to reduce our carbon footprint;

7. We trust employees to decide where tasks can best be performed.

To facilitate these principles, we offer various tools to facilitate employees working from several locations. Work location guidelines are applicable to help employees make the right decision in choosing their work location. As a rule of thumb, we encourage our employees to work from home on average for two to three days per week. We encourage flexibility because it supports our employees in finding an optimal work-life balance and reduces CO2 emissions as a result of commuting to the office or other locations.  

Adequate wages 

As part of our EVP, we put in place a new reward programme that contains different reward elements, such as salary, allowances, variable pay, and benefits: a package where flexibility (choices), fairness, equality, inclusiveness and trust, clear expectations, and open communication are the key principles. In addition, our rewards package contains several provisions to promote wellbeing and connection in the broadest sense. 

Within Deloitte we have three reward groups; Audit, Advisory and Internal Services. Within these reward groups, we have defined different job grades, based on the Hay guide charts. All our current and new positions are mapped in accordance with the Hay system. This provides a clear job grade and bandwidth structure for our employees. 

Every year a benchmark is performed to compare our salaries within the Big4. As a result of this benchmark, on an annual basis, we determine  what our minimum and maximum bandwidths are per job grade and per reward group. As a result of last year’s benchmark, we raised the bandwidths with at least 3%. Higher percentages were granted for some job grades in some reward groups where the benchmark required us to do so.   

Almost all employees are part of our regular annual salary increase. Employees who joined on or before March 1, are awarded a salary increase per October. We evaluate the growth in development for each employee after the end of the financial year (May 31). In this evaluation we grant a salary growth percentage matching the growth in capabilities. For employees who joined the firm after March 1, we evaluate if we need to increase their salary to receive a salary comparable with their peers. Most of the new joiners, therefore, were also granted an increase per October 2022. Of course, due to the minimum wage changes per January 1, 2023, we raised the salaries of colleagues who would be receiving conflicting salaries per that date. 

Social security

Unemployment benefits

Deloitte pays the legally obliged premium for unemployment insurance. This means that all employees are insured in the event they lose all or part of their income through no fault of their own, if they have worked for at least 26 weeks of 36 prior to their unemployment. The duration of the unemployment benefits depends on the time that the employee has worked. 

Sickness

Employees of Deloitte Nederland receive 100% of their income during the first year of their absence due to sickness. In the second year they receive 70% of the sickness hours and 100% of the hours worked. 

Injury and disability

If an employee is ill for more than two years, Deloitte will stop paying salaries and the employee can apply for a (partly) compensation baeed on the Dutch Act on Work and Income according to Work Capacity (Dutch: Wet Werk en Inkomen naar Arbeidsvermogen (WIA)). To cover the potential drop in income, Deloitte has taken out a collective disability insurance. This insurance applies to all employees with an employment contract with Deloitte and is governed by the Social Insurance Acts (SVW).  

In case an employee falls ill, they will be paid by Deloitte for 104 weeks. In the first year they will receive 100% of their gross salary, in the second year 70%. When they are absent due to ill health for more than 104 weeks, they will have to deal with the WIA. Three scenarios are possible: 

•  If they are less than 35% incapacitated for work, there is no arrangement. 

• If they are between 35% and 80% incapacitated for work, they are included in the Partially Incapacitated for Work Scheme (WGA).

• If they are more than 80% fully and permanently incapacitated for work, they will be placed in the Income Provision Fully Incapacitated for Work (IVA). 

Deloitte has taken out a collective WGA disability insurance against income loss under the WIA. It concerns three insurances: 

1. The AOV hiaat: this insurance gives a 70% income guarantee up to an income capped at the maximum WIA wage limit of € 58,307 (reference date January 1, 2021).

2. The AOV supplement: this insurance gives, taking into account the percentage of disability, a supplement of up to 5% to a gross annual income capped at the maximum WIA wage limit.

3. The AOV excedent: taking into account the percentage of incapacity for work, this insurance provides an additional income supplement of 75% capped at a gross annual income of up to € 150,000.

Deloitte has set the insured salary for its employees at 12 times the gross monthly salary including vacation allowance with a maximum of € 150,000 per annum. In addition to the legally required employer contribution, Deloitte pays one third of the employee premium. The employee pays the rest of the premium themselves. 

Maternity leave

If a Deloitte Netherlands employee is pregnant, they are entitled to a total of 16 weeks of leave. These are divided as to 4-6 weeks before the due date and 10-12 weeks after delivery. During this period the employee receives 100% of their salary. An employee is entitled to 20 weeks of leave in case of twins (or more).

For pregnancy leave, maternity leave and paid parental leave, there is an entitlement of 100% of the last-earned salary (this also applies to any TAB or personal allowance granted). It does not affect the accrual of vacation days or allowance, entitlement to the lease car scheme, profit sharing or any other employment conditions (e.g. laptop, phone). The pension accrual and the premium contribution for both the employer and employee part are continued in full during this period. 

Parental leave 

In addition to this pregnancy and maternity leave new parents can also apply for paid parental leave. Legally, parent are entitled to a period of 26 week unpaid parental leave. UWV will compensate parental leave for a maximum of 9 weeks (9 times the working hours per week). This compensation amounts to 70% of the salary, with a maximum of 70% of the maximum daily wage (maximumdagloon).  

Leave for rainbow families 

Deloitte Netherlands has inclusive leave policies for parents, to create a more inclusive workplace for LGBTIQ+ employees at Deloitte. All parents at Deloitte should be able to take leave to take care of their new child or children. Therefore, we have more extensive policies than the rights defined in the legal framework on additional birth leave, parental leave, care leave, special leave and urgent leave, accommodating to 'rainbow families'. With the phrase 'rainbow families', all family forms other than the traditional one biological father + one biological mother families are meant.   

Retirement

The pension scheme implemented within Deloitte Netherlands is a defined contribution agreement [premieovereenkomst]. A defined contribution agreement entitles the employee to a defined contribution that is used to build up the pension capital.  

On the retirement date the pension capital is used to purchase:  

• a lifelong retirement pension;  

• a lifelong partner’s pension in the event of death after the retirement date, amounting to 70% of the lifelong retirement pension.  

Defined contributions are invested according to Life Cycle Investment profiles. The defined contribution is used to purchase investment units of investment funds. The number of investment units multiplied by the daily rate constitutes the pension capital in the individual participant account at that time. 

Our pension provider, Aegon Cappital, deliberately and actively considers the impact of environmental, social and governance criteria ("ESG criteria"), particularly in the areas of human rights, weapons, health and the environment. Based on their code of conduct, our pension provider enters into an active and critical dialogue with companies whose conduct or products do not comply with the set norms and values in order to prompt a change in behaviour ("engagement"). If they do not comply, there are two options: the pension provider can can exercise their right to vote, for instance during shareholders' meetings, or they can exclude those companies from all active investments. The exclusion list of our pension provider also includes a number of countries. Government bonds and other government loans are also excluded as investment. 

Aegon Cappital has been awarded the Golden Medal for their sustainable and responsible pension investment policy. Aegon Cappital is also compliant with Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR; green level - article 8). 

Deloitte employees are informed through specific organised webinars, personal information in their individual pension portal, and general information on the Aegon Cappital website. The Executive Board and our Works Council speak regularly with the Head of Investments about the sustainability policy, experiences and goals.  

Engage for Change Initiative 

To stay connected to the changing needs and expectations of our employees throughout their time at Deloitte, we have developed Engage for Change that was first launched in October 2022. It is an NSE driven, deliberate focus on harnessing our employee feedback to influence the choices and actions that we make to continually improve. 

We collect employee feedback throughout the cycle from hire to retirement. Recurring surveys help us identify the areas of importance to our employees. The key is to use these surveys to better understand the driving factors that influence our employees’ experiences, and more importantly, to inform the actions that are taken as a result. 

The Engage for Change platform will be used to capture feedback on the following:  

• Joiner experience (gathering feedback after the first 90 days)  

• Contribute surveys (every quarter to measure the continued experience)  

• Leaver surveys (to capture the reasons for leaving)  

Survey questions have been designed and agreed upon by all geography working groups. They are aligned with the NSE Employee Value Proposition and are consistent across NSE Geographies. The question set is deliberately short, with space for free-text responses. The survey platform has the functionality to ask additional geography- or business-specific questions. It can also be used for other surveys (e.g., Global Talent Experience Survey), thereby channeling many of our survey requests through one platform for a more consistent end-user experience. 

All data gathered will be available to leaders within the business to get real-time insight into the experience of their teams and act accordingly. We operate on a ‘Voice, Understand, Act’ basis and discuss results with business leaders and HR to ensure positive changes can be made based on the feedback. 

Some of the results so far: 

• The first quarterly survey, sent out to the entire DNL population in October 2022, reached a response rate of 32% and in January 2023 a staggering 49% (+17%). In the April 2023 survey, the response rate amounted to 39% (-10%);

• The newly introduced Employee Net Promoter Score, how likely employees would recommend Deloitte as a great place to work, has a score of +17; meaning that there are more promoters (26%) than detractors (9%). The ambition is to decrease the number of detractors while increasing the number of promotors; 

• ‘Choices around flexibility’ and a ‘respectful supportive and inclusive work environment’ are by far the best-ranked topics, evidencing our investment in our Employee Value Proposition that focusses – amongst other things – on 'being the true you'. 

Results

Table 06: Turnover by gender in reporting year

Table 07: % of employees receiving regular performance & career development reviews*

* Our partners are not part of the regular performance cycle. For partners we maintain a performance management system that is also used to determine their annual profit share and that takes into account such aspects as quality, integrity, inclusive leadership, commercial performance and relationship management.

3.2 Inclusion and diversity

­

Impacts

Deloitte has a moral, corporate and societal obligation to be a diverse and inclusive organisation: diverse in reflecting the clients and society we serve, and inclusive to ensure that all employees and partners regardless of their gender, cultural background, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, neurodiversity or disability, can be their authentic selves and fulfil their potential. Welcoming diversity and enabling colleagues to thrive enables Deloitte to leverage the well-researched and recognised business benefits of inclusion and diversity:

According to our insights, organisations with inclusive cultures:

• are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors;

• are 70% more likely to capture new markets;

• see a 59% increase in innovation;

• are 62,6% more likely to see increased profitability and productivity;

• generate 2.3 times more cashflow per employee.

Governance

Over and above our moral obligations and the business benefits of Inclusion and Diversity (I&D), we have a corporate responsibility to address the growing inequalities that are destabilizing society. The Global SDGs challenge us to use our corporate position to influence the socio-political and corporate landscape within the Netherlands by challenging government, our clients and supply chain to reflect the vision of I&D we adhere to.

It is our mission to have an all inclusive workplace by 2027. This is an evolution we are working on, on a daily basis. A substantial culture change is needed. For this reason, we take a holistic and systemic approach, where diversity, equity and inclusion are fully integrated across the organisation's internal and external business activities. After spending decades on putting targets in place, facilitating employee resource groups, organising bias trainings and implementing inclusive leadership programmes, we now expand our efforts by:

• Focusing on data and measurement in order to have better insight in the representation of different groups, understand our employee experience, and measure progress;

• Holding our leadership accountable to be inclusive and to be leaders who are courageous, curious and compassionate, and thus are able to humanise the workplace;

• Fostering psychological safety to create a culture where people feel free to speak up and be themselves;

• Changing the system to allow a broader definition of success. Culture may seem to be all about people, but it’s the policies and processes that drive their behavior. Changing culture therefore takes time, strategic choices and bold moves. 

With a committed Executive Board and Executive Committee, we believe in shared ownership and boosting entrepreneurship. All our colleagues play a role in a successful I&D strategy. Therefore, we encourage our workforce to speak up about I&D in keynotes, roundtable discussions, and initiate internal activities. These gamechangers advocate I&D from intrinsic motivation, regardless of their job level or business unit. Next to that we have a strong and committed I&D governance model, with councils and ambassadors, contributing their time, energy and knowledge on a structural basis. Within Deloitte Netherlands we have five internal I&D Employee Resource Groups: Deloitte Women's Network , Neurodiversity Network , Proud at Deloitte , Cultural Diversity Network and the Young Board. These groups provide valuable feedback and input on our progress and are a crucial voice to co create an equal system. 

This governance structure is led by our CEO and the Executive Board, and includes:

• Business Leads who are responsible for driving, amongst other initiatives, our gender diversity targets within their Business, and holding partners accountable for promoting Inclusive Leadership;

• I&D Ambassadors who are, both within the business and our I&D Councils, responsible to set and execute a Business specific I&D plans, aligned to our corporate ambition;

• Employee Resource Groups, including the Deloitte Women’s Network, Proud (LGBTQ+), Neurodiversity Network, the Cultural Diversity Network and our Young Board, who represent the employee voice, and provide subject matter guidance of topics relevant to their target audience;

• A dedicated central I&D Team committed to setting and executing a company wide I&D strategy and plan, by working in close collaboration with all relevant stakeholders.

The focus for 2022/2023 has been on embedding I&D in daily practice. This included facilitating open dialogues among our people and leaders through initiatives such as reverse mentoring and our Inclusion and Diversity curriculum. Our Inclusive Leadership programme has been embedded into our Leadership Development programmes, so that all Directors and Partners in the organisation have received comprehensive training on what it means to be an inclusive leader at Deloitte. This has also been cascaded down to all Managers and Senior Managers in the firm.

We realise, though, that inclusive leadership sometimes means challenging the status quo or holding colleagues to account, and this can be hard if psychological safety is lacking. Moreover, people of under represented groups can feel included but still don’t feel safe to be different, to contribute or to challenge ideas. This is why we decided this year to introduce psychological safety as a strategic pillar to our I&D policy. We have a dedicated team working across functions to embed psychological safety in our processes and systems. We have implemented several initiatives to foster psychological safety in our ways of working.

Furthermore I&D has been embedded in our event management process in line with our Panel and Proposal Promise, which strives for a ratio of 40% male, 40% female and 20% other visibly different individuals in account teams and all internal and external panel events. We have also introduced new policies to equalise the parental policies for primary and secondary careers and rainbow families, and support the needs of transgender colleagues in the transition process. These policy changes have been driven by the insights gained from our voluntary Diversity Measurement Survey which exposed the demographics of our workforce and sentiments of inclusion and belonging.

We have maintained our focus on proactively monitoring our gender representation across the organisation in line with our targets for female headcount, recruitment, retention, and promotion in our quarterly I&D reports. While we see top line improvements in gender diversity in overall headcount, we have been challenged by rapid growth across the business, particularly in areas such as technology where female talent appears hard to find. We have addressed these challenges by diversifying the recruitment team, broadening our search, investing in new partnerships, piloting new recruitment methodologies, and revising our vacancy texts.

Results

We acknowledge that we are at a critical point of our I&D journey, where changes are being experienced by colleagues throughout the organisation. In fiscal year 2023, Inclusion and Diversity remained a strategic focal area for Deloitte. We worked hard in order to remaining a thought leader, we learn and develop each day for being that truly inclusive workplace in 2027. We do this because we believe this is who we want to be, fostering inclusion and leading the way. Last year this was not only acknowledged by our workforce and clients in several surveys, like the increased inclusion score in our NSE engagement survey, but also by winning the M&A award for best diversity firm.

Many steps were made on the path towards an inclusive workplace, to mention a couple:

• All (Senior) Managers were invited to go through our Inclusive Leadership training;

• All leadership participated in our Psychological Safety Programme;

• We embedded the significance of People Skills in our Performance and Reward process.

Table 08: Gender diversity (status per May 31)

Table 09: Job category by age in 2022/2023 (average for financial year)

Gender Pay Equity Analysis

Global Talent has developed a robust, consistent analytical methodology, to provide visibility and assurance on gender pay equity across multiple member firms. As part of our zero tolerance approach to gender pay inequity, in 2022/2023, Global Talent conducted this Gender pay equity analysis at our request using a multi-variant regression model to identify statistically significant gender pay and performance bonus differentials between employees doing very similar or the same work. The analysis identified zero salary cohorts with statistically significant differences for gender pay equity and zero performance bonus cohorts with statistically significant differences for gender pay equity.

Going forward

In 2023/2024, we will continue to build a workforce that is a representation of society, creating access to equal opportunities for everyone, and work towards a culture where everyone can be their true selves. We will do this via a data driven approach amongst others through increased monitoring of the diversity of the workforce and our gender targets. In the upcoming years, we want to move from a programmatic level to a leader-led and integrated level of DE&I, via Bersin’s I&D Maturity model. This means focusing on leadership commitment and training and addressing systemic barriers in the next fiscal year. New aspects include the addition of the "E" of equity in our communication, meaning from I&D to DE&I. We remain our focus on sustainable gender balance, and drive further progress in embedding our plan into daily practice by fostering psychological safety, pay special attention to unconscious bias and inclusive leadership, and inclusive processes and policies.

3.3 Learning and development

­

Impacts

Deloitte is a knowledge rich firm. The value we create is driven by our talent, using their intellect. We acquire knowledge and experience by recruiting top graduates and experienced hires. To be able to offer outstanding value to our clients, we further develop their knowledge and skills, and aim to keep our talent’s skills and knowledge up to standards through our formal and informal learning curriculum. We actively share our insights to elevate public knowledge and understanding of the complex challenges that we work on. By engaging in continuous learning, our professionals are able to develop themselves further, advancing their careers and strengthening their employability, elevating their impact.

Deloitte relies on renowned academic institutions to educate our future and current professionals and business leaders. Our external costs invested in learning and development amount to €4.2 million. In addition, the time spent on learning activities by our people results in an additional cost of almost €20 million. These costs help our employees develop, and prepare them for their future careers within or outside Deloitte. From our Strategic Impact Assessment, we know that the social impact from our learning & development activities is significant, making it a material topic. In addition, we see it as our role to participate and actively contribute to the academic world and lead the debate: 271 of our professionals are internally registered to hold additional positions in universities and colleges.

Knowledge is not only a key input for our business model, it is also a key output. As an organisation, we partner with knowledge centres on a variety of complex topics. Examples of such partnerships are our associations with Singularity University in Eindhoven and Nyenrode University in Breukelen. Through our partnerships, we are able to further develop content that is mutually beneficial to both the universities involved as well as for Deloitte.

Through our ‘Future of’ agenda we create ecosystems to which we input our knowledge and insights for the benefit of our clients and society at large. Frequently, we publish in-depth articles to enrich public knowledge around current themes. Recent examples of such articles are our publication “Food and Energy: Addressing sustainable goals together” and a series of articles on decarbonisation of transport.

Deloitte actively participates in think tanks such as the Working Groups of the Dutch Chartered Accountants Association and the Foundation on Auditing Research (FAR), to advance professional standards. Furthermore, we cooperate with universities to jointly develop and transfer valuable academic insights to our client base.

Governance

The Learning & Development (L&D) team consists of almost 30 employees organised in business teams and cross-business teams. The team is led by the NL Learning Lead. Each sub-team consist of one L&D Manager and several (Jr) L&D Professionals. We collaborate with many stakeholders, such as Deloitte University EMEA, NSE Learning Team, the GlobalLearning teams (per Business), local Talent teams and Business stakeholders and external vendors.​ The L&D lead reports to the CHRO of Deloitte NL and to the Director L&D of NSE.

In our vision, learning is a continuous development approach that comprises formal education as well as environment, experience and blended-learning opportunities. ‘Never Stop Growing’, an important pillar within our Employee Value Proposition, underlines the importance of offering continuous learning and development opportunities with varied career options supported by talent mobility for our professionals.

Our vision is to grow leaders for the future, build world class capabilities for maximum client impact and consistently deliver an exceptional development experience for our people. The opportunity for the future is to improve the impact on our client engagements, to enhance the talent experience of our professionals and optimise learning investments and resources. Therefore, in 2022/2023 we have continued to focus on the future of learning and the technology landscape.

The future of learning is a learning environment that includes a learning culture and the right use and mix of live in-person, virtual and digital learning. Our new Deloitte University Europe campus in Paris which will be opened end of 2023, will play an important role in our learning experience, offering a mix of in person, digital and virtual modalities.

We will explore further, new innovative technology to improve and enhance our learning programme to create a professional and leadership development experience that caters to the requirements of today's professionals, is uniquely their own, and is integrated into everyday life.

To cater to this view, we have implemented a global learning platform (CURA) that meets our professionals in their moment of need to provide personalised client, industry and skills-based knowledge as well as social networking and collaboration opportunities. CURA is a learner-driven content curation system that brings personalised internal and external content to the Deloitte professional. This innovative platform creates learning opportunities and supports the personal and everyday learning experience.

Activities in 2022/2023

The Learning & Development team has three strategic ambitions supporting our Employee Value Proposition, specifically Never Stop Growing: ​

1. Enforcement of our Learning Culture ​

2. Upscaling to a World Class Learner Experience​

3. Development of People Leadership capabilities​

In 2022/2023, the Learning & Development products and services towards our business include, amongst others:​

1. Learning needs analysis and strategic advice to the business on the best learning solution​;

2. Curricula management (i.e., keeping our professional, leadership, industry and technical curricula up to date)​;

3. Design, development and deployment of high-impact learning interventions, including faculty development​;

4. Yearly L&D processes, such as the DU EMEA nomination and L&D budgeting process​;

5. ​Delivering strategic Learning & Development plans per business for 2023/2024.

The most important activities in 2022/2023 are related to continuous improvement of L&D projects are:

• Learning culture​: we have assessed to learning culture of Deloitte Netherlands. Based on the outcomes, a strategic transformation project L&D 2.0 has started to improve the learning culture;

• Learning technology and learner experience​;

• L&D impact and measurement;

• L&D branding and communication;​

• People leadership capabilities: focus on delivering a early career programme and a coaching curriculum to strengthen leadership skills at all levels.

Results

The introduction and execution of the aforementioned activities has yielded an increase in training hours per FTE to 99,6 hours/FTE (2021/2022: 89,8) while total investments (including external costs) increased to €11.9 million (2021/2022: €8.5 million). We believe this investment is key to supporting our people in their growth and ability to make a positive impact.

Table 10: Average training hours per FTE

3.4 Wellbeing

­

Impacts

For many people, having meaningful work in a positive and stimulating work environment contributes significantly to the quality of life. By paying attention to topics such as inclusiveness, work-life balance, physical fitness and mindfulness, we aim to keep our people happy and healthy. There are considerable positive impacts when people are physically and mentally fit: in general, productivity is higher, and attrition and absenteeism due to illness lower.

Unfortunately, our high-performance culture can also have a negative impact at times, for example through excess workload, stress and pressure to perform. This is first and foremost an impactful situation for those directly involved but also comes at a cost to Deloitte and society. As a consequence, Deloitte is hugely committed to promoting wellbeing in the workplace.

Governance and activities in 2022/2023

Our approach to wellbeing has five main focus areas:

1. Mental health | We recognise that mental health influences the quality of life of our people. In a performance culture like ours, and a world dealing with climate change which can cause anxiety and stress, it is therefore important to stay focused on the topic of mental wellbeing. In order to promote good mental health, we offer various tools and tips that our people can use to stay connected and engaged, and maintain their mental balance.

2. Physical health│ Deloitte has a Company Fitness Scheme that offers employees the opportunity to exercise at a relatively low cost. Two of our offices offer in-company fitness (Amsterdam and Rotterdam) and we have arrangements with external sports clubs throughout the Netherlands for fitness outside of our offices. In addition, our Deloitte FIT programme and app offer our people challenges and the possibility to try out new sports, stimulating our people to connect with each other through sports.  

3. Illness and recovery│ When an employee is absent due to illness for a longer period, a self-directed treatment plan is drawn up. This means that if an employee becomes ill or incapacitated for work, the manager and their employee make customised arrangements. They are supported in making these arrangements by the Case Manager Health, as well as the Occupational Health and Safety Officers for medical advice. The Case Manager Health plays an important central and coordinating role in the deployment of external professionals, such as company doctors, labour experts and other external providers who can assist in promoting employability.

4. Working from home│ We are convinced that hybrid working - where our people make conscious decisions as to where they work - is here to stay. Working from home is an integral part of hybrid working and has proven benefits for work-life balance. We feel it's very important to be able to work in a good and ergonomically sound way, both in the office and at home. To ensure that our people can operate in an ergonomically sound manner whilst at home, we have created a once every seven years personal budget for every employee to set up their home office in a responsible way. In addition, every Deloitter is entitled to a monthly allowance to compensate them for the additional costs of working from home. Finally, through our webshop, we offer technical peripherals and accessories to make working from home easier and more comfortable.

5. Financial health | In the changing economic environment, we understand that the topic of financial health is getting more important. An individual’s financial health influences their physical and mental health, and concentration. Deloitte is committed to support employees in maximizing their financial health by creating an environment in which financial stress and health is an approachable subject, providing support for colleagues experiencing financial uncertainty or financial stress and offering resources for those seeking information or interventions.
   
   

All employees with a contract with Deloitte Netherlands are covered by Deloitte’s Health and Safety management System. Thankfully, in 2022/2023, there were no fatalities as a result of work-related injuries and work-related illness.

Results

We have seen an increase in absenteeism during the COVID pandemic, with an increase from around 3% annually to just over 4% in 2021/2022. In 2022/2023, there was a slight decrease in absenteeism due to illness from 4.1% in 2021/2022 to 3.7% in 2022/2023. If we look at the national (CBS) figures, this decrease was not visible in the Specialist business services sector of which Deloitte is part. The analysis by the occupational health and safety service showed that the share of absenteeism due to psychological complaints also decreased slightly by 3 percentage points to 62%.

The percentage of absenteeism due to accidents has remained stable over the past years and is equal to the reference. There were six cases in total and only one accident related to Deloitte that resulted in monitored sickness absence. Most of the accidents resulting in absence are due to private, traffic and sports situations.

The proportion of work-related absenteeism accounts for 28%. This is almost twice as high as in the reference group (consultancy companies), as measured by our healthcare service provider 'Zorg van de Zaak' (15%). Work-related absenteeism is mostly of a psychological nature: mental/psychological factors account for 82% of all work related absenteeism within Deloitte.

The percentage of absenteeism due to psychological complaints decreased by 3 percentage points to 62%. Despite the decrease, it remains higher in comparison with the reference (48%).

Table 11: Sickness leave

3.5 Social impact and social return

­

Impacts

As an external auditor of both financial and non-financial information, we help build the trust that is necessary to facilitate informed decisions on financial and non-financials transactions, e.g. decisions to invest, divest or grant a government subsidy. Through our advisory work, we enable organisations to better understand their business and operating environment, thereby creating value for their stakeholders. We believe the societal impact of our assurance and advisory work to be greater than the revenues received.

We realise that, increasingly, we can only tackle complex challenges in partnership with others. To this end, creating effective ecosystems is a fundamental principle of our ‘Future of’ agenda. Together with our partners, we want to find solutions to social challenges around food, energy and mobility. In addition, we want to help our clients transform their business models to more responsible ones. 

The social contribution of Deloitte is completed by the Deloitte Impact Foundation and our activities on social return. 

Deloitte Impact Foundation

Via the Deloitte Impact Foundation, Deloitte is committed to performing pro bono work and giving back to society via a large variety of societal initiatives for NGO’s, non-profits and start-ups. We believe that we can make the most difference by sharing our employees’ core competences, knowledge and network in societal initiatives to make an impact in the fields of education & employment (WorldClass), sustainability and inclusive society.

Governance

The Deloitte Impact Foundation is part of the Corporate Strategy Office (CSO), which sits in the Executive Office of Deloitte the Netherlands (DNL). The CSO is led by the Chief of Strategy for Deloitte NL, who leads the strategic direction of DNL. As part of this team, the Deloitte Impact Foundation needs to ultimately report back to the Executive Board – responsible for the strategic and policy frameworks and objectives, monitoring the implementation of policy, and the collaboration between the different markets and businesses.

The Deloitte Impact Foundation itself consist of various layers of responsibility and is constructed in the following manner:

• On the highest level, the Foundation is led by the Deloitte Impact Foundation Board comprising of a chair (a member of the Executive Board) and two members. Together, they are responsible for defining and maintaining the strategic direction of the Deloitte Impact Foundation. They also grant approvals for employee-led initiative submissions. Each member is responsible for one of the three themes the Foundation focuses on (i.e., WorldClass, Sustainability, and Inclusive Society).

• The Advisory Board consists of colleagues from various levels and businesses across Deloitte. They advise the Deloitte Impact Foundation Board on the strategic direction of the foundation. Additionally, they provide an advice on each initiative submission, after which the Deloitte Impact Foundation Board makes a final decision of approving or denying the submission.

• Following these (strategic) decisions, the Deloitte Impact Foundation PMO team governs the strategy roll-out, communication, day-to-day activities and all activities related to employee engagement. The team is led by the Director of the Deloitte Impact Foundation. The Director ensures these processes to run smoothly, and guards the governance code and positions the foundation to be more visible and fitting towards our regulators, clients, public and people.​

The Deloitte Impact Foundation aims to use 1% of Deloitte Netherlands’ direct hours for pro bono work, translated in a target of 78,296 hours for this year. Every year a new number of hours will be determined based on the 1% of Deloitte Netherlands’ direct hours. The Deloitte Impact Foundation likes to see an increase per year of employees involvement in its projects, this year is a target set for 1,000 employees.

Pillars

To amplify the impact of our Deloitte Impact Foundation, we concentrate our efforts on three key areas and are working together with partners in ecosystems:

• WorldClass | A global Deloitte initiative with the ambition of supporting 100 million people worldwide by 2030;

• Sustainability | Through our sustainability-related initiatives we protect our natural environment by addressing the root causes and effects of global warming and degradation of land, water, and air. This focus area aims to support future generations on our planet to live in a healthy and sustainable environment;

• Inclusive society | This broad theme allows our colleagues to start employee-led initiatives that are close to their hearts and contributes to an inclusive and diverse society. These initiatives provide support for challenges related to the quality of life in the Netherlands such as concerning poverty, safety, health, loneliness, and/or happiness of Dutch inhabitants.

There is a two-way approach in place to run initiatives within these three key areas: via employee-led initiatives and via top down programmes. The employee-led initiatives aim to encourage every Deloitte NL employee  to get involved in causes that are close to their hearts. Each employee can spend 1% on average of their working hours to start or join initiatives that create societal impact. The top-down programmes are the WorldClass programme and the Financial Health programme, which are large programmes that run for a longer period of time and to which more employees across Deloitte can devote their time:

• In the Netherlands, our WorldClass programme focuses on improving the equality of opportunity of vulnerable young people in education, especially in primary, secondary, and middle-level vocational education in the larger cities of the Netherlands;

• The Financial Health programme, a top-down programme of the Deloitte Impact Foundation’s pillar ‘Inclusive Society’, is working with VNO-NCW, SchuldenLabNL, ING, Her Majesty Queen Máxima and about 30 organisations to launch a national coalition (November 29, 2022) on financial health (Nationale Coalitie Financiële Gezondheid or NCFG). In this coalition employers (including Deloitte) vow to take a comprehensive approach to support their employees in their financial health.

Process

Via the platform “Make an Impact”, the Deloitte Impact Foundation invites colleagues to either join an open vacancy, or to start their own initiative. To stimulate the involvement, we work together with a changemakers network that is represented in all of our businesses. The changemakers are the first point of contact for our colleagues.

To join an initiative, colleagues can search for vacancies in initiatives through the platform. Some vacancies require a motivation text that needs to be reviewed by the team or activity manager, who will get notified via the platform and will reach out to approve and share the DIF-hours code related to the project.

To start an initiative, colleagues are encouraged to find a cause they care about which fits the Deloitte Impact Foundation criteria (e.g., primary scope must be the Netherlands , alignment with the themes, impact should be clear) and to fill-out the Application Template with their project details in order to apply via the PMO team. All applications are assessed by the Advisory Board within 4-6 weeks. The applications are assessed during the monthly Advisory Board meetings in which the Advisory Board provides their preliminary advise, to ultimately be approved/disapproved by the Board.

Impact, risk and opportunity management

A risk for achieving the 1% target is the availability of time due to the pressure of client work. 

In terms of reputation risk, pro-bono work does not differ from client projects. This means that pro-bono initiatives are assessed via the same process as other client engagements:

• All initiatives must have a sponsoring Deloitte partner involved, who is responsible for the execution and quality reviews;

• All initiatives and partnerships are checked for possible independence issues by RRL before continuing the approval process of the initiative;

• An engagement letter is required. This has to be approved by the sponsoring partner of the function leading the initiative;

• The initiative contributes positively to the Deloitte brand (e.g. it does not convert people’s faiths, does not involve any sort of activism - religious or political - and cannot fund criminal - or any illegal – activity).

Results

In 2022/2023, Deloitte Impact Foundation engagement has grown both in hours, projects and employees compared to 2019/2020, based on hours written in SWIFT.

Deloitte Impact Foundation hours

• 2020/2021: 17,767​

• 2021/2022: 36,284​

• 2022/2023: 39,413

Number of projects

• 2020/2021: 86

• 2021/2022: 96

• 2022/2023: 107

Number of employees involved

• 2020/2021: 469

• 2021/2022: 790

• 2022/2023: 1,020

Social return

Since 2011, the public sector has been using its purchasing power to help people with a distance to the labour market to find work. This means that as a supplier to the government, in appropriate tenders for work and services in access of €250,000, we must also involve people with a distance to the labour market when performing the engagement. Since early 2018, in order to create more social impact, there has been more flexibility within the social return obligation and the new working methodology ‘Maatwerk voor Mensen’ (Tailor-made for People) has taken effect: the social return obligation can now also be fulfilled in other places than directly through the engagement concerned, and under different circumstances. All parties agree that maximum social impact can be created with customisation, cooperation and leveraging existing supplier initiatives. This is called SROI 2.0. 

Central and local governments encourage linking social return as much as possible with the contractor's own objectives and those of the government. The reasoning is that in this way one can shape social return from one’s own strengths and skills, and hence is better motivated to do so with enthusiasm. Social return can also be applied to existing initiatives.

Deloitte has long been committed to socially relevant issues and fully embraces the government's social return programme. Deloitte has even started its own programme to tie in with this: Together we make impact entrepreneurship great. This programme has its own programme director. The programme director is responsible for the structural assurance of social return, determining in advance in which contracts social return will be deployed and, after awarding the contract, ensuring the proper implementation or requirements. The director consults with clients to ensure that social return budgets are spent according to their demands, as they have various requirements and wishes on how they prefer to achieve social return.

The programme consists also of initiatives such as social buying and social hiring, which reflects on our own organisation and enhances our social footprint. As a result of contracts obtained until 2022, on an annual basis, next year a minimum of €1.2 M has to be allocated as fulfilment for social return obligations. To manage all current and future obligations in combination with all the social initiatives we have in place, we have built an integrated cross-functional dashboard and we report our status and achievement internally twice per year.

Examples

­

Programme Scaling Social Enterprises

Launched end of 2019 during the national Impact Days, we started with seven social entrepreneurs to support them pro bono with our full breadth of services to achieve their strategic growth objectives in 2020. The rationale behind this programme is that if they succeed in scaling up, they will increase their workforce. As a minimum of 30% of their workforce consists of people with a distance to the labour market, we jointly create a more inclusive society. Secondly, besides the labour participation effect, some of these entrepreneurs built their business on circulair economy principles as well. Since the start, this programme has grown and now includes 14 entrepreneurs. Our objective is to ultimately support a maximum of 20 social entrepreneurs. Based on a recently conducted survey under participating organisations, their average growth in revenue and in number of employees is around 20%. So far, more than 100 Deloitte employees contributed to this programme and have spent around 3000 hours covering all kinds of issues.

‘City Deal Impact Ondernemen’

This city deal objective is to mitigate barriers in the eco-system to strenghten impact entrepreneurship in general, and stimulate developments to increase the ‘brede welvaart’ (broad prosperity) from a labour participation perspective as well as sustainablity. From the start onwards, we are one of the participants, and we are coordinating one of the three tracks.  

Central Government programme ‘Maatwerk voor Mensen’

Deloitte is one of the pioniers since the start of this programme. Together with other parties in the ecosystem, we created twelve jobs for people with a distance to the labour market and we are currently running a programme to educate 30 people of which 20 will graduate with a certified diploma. The ultimate objective is that as they move up in their careers, the subsequent vacancies will be fulfilled by new jobless people with a distance to the labour market.

Social Buying

From a purchasing perspective, increasingly we aim to select impact entrepreneurs in our procurement choices, also for example when we organise events. A good example is the replacement of the monitors in our office ‘The Edge’ in Amsterdam. We selected a supplier with a large proportion of employees who formerly had a distance to the labour market, who ensured that up to 99% percent of the replaced monitors would be refurbished or reused for spare parts.

Cooperation between caterer and impact entrepreneur

Recenlty we concluded a five year agreement with an impact entrepreneur and our caterer to create learning positions at our office restaurant in ‘The Edge’ for 15-25 people per year and thus give them a headstart to find a regular job.