Initiative

Initiatives on gender equality

Summary of the initiative

Deloitte is one of the largest international organisations in the field of financial and business services.

The main objective is to create gender balance at all levels of the company so that all employees, men and women, are part of the target group. Several initiatives have been undertaken by the company in this regard: Creating awareness about gender diversity, Development & Advancement, Networking, Maternity Counselling, Flexibility & the Power of Choice, Clients & Markets. 

Special attention goes to women taking up managerial roles and the advancement of women into the pipeline for partnership.

At the beginning of 2013, Deloitte conducted an update of the firm’s strategy with a major baseline: Focus, Continuity and Execution. Over four years the company will continue to focus on the advancement of women into partnership and execute several diversity projects and plans. As the organisation has become more mature there is a need to increase the detailed monitoring of relevant data. This allows Deloitte to take a pro-active, more granular approach and discuss tailor-made solutions with the business units and service lines. The managing partners regularly discuss the specific needs of their business units and the actions, which are needed. In addition, diversity will be taken up in the key performance indicators of the managing partners and will be included in the specific business unit strategies.

For Deloitte, there is a positive evolution towards gender balance at all levels, compared to five years ago. In particular at the managerial levels in the organisation: female managers and senior managers both increased by 5% to respectively 44% and 34%. The proportion of female directors reached 25%. Thus one out of four directors is now a woman, compared with 14% only five years ago. And in the last three years, seven women have been promoted to partner, which is an encouraging achievement.

Deloitte was the winner of the Wo.Men@Work Award in 2012.