Our Success

Case Study: Jo Malone of Deloitte talks about the benefits of their nationwide work with Newham, CIPs and Train to Gain.

We’re working hard to make Deloitte the firm for career and personal development – a place where talented people can do their best work, progress quickly, fulfil their potential and develop faster than they ever thought possible – irrespective of their background.

Deloitte turns this aspiration into a reality by, first and foremost, making it clear to our people that they themselves are responsible for driving their development. In return, we encourage and enable them to manage their development by placing at their fingertips a vast number and wide range of development opportunities – backed by an annual learning budget.

For example:

•        Our online Deloitte Learning Management System helps our people select and arrange a variety of training, from e- learning to classroom-based tuition

•        Our Books 24 self-learning portal places 1,000s of books at our peoples’ disposal

•        Our Knowledge Centres organise a wide variety of practical and relevant learning resources into one place

•        Our Language Labs help our linguists develop language-based networks and spread their knowledge

•        Among many other benefits, our brand new e-enabled Performance Management system provides accurate information about our peoples’ developmental needs – at the touch of a button

All of this is coordinated and delivered by a 70-strong team of learning specialists – all of whom are either embedded within different parts of our firm (for example, our Audit & ERS Learning team) or work within specialist firm-wide learning teams (for example, our Professional Education team). 

We looked particularly at the Train to Gain Level 2 NVQ's and found Business Admin, IT and Customer Services NVQ's were particularly relevant to the work that people in our Property & Corporate Services Department did at Deloittes, supporting the development of skills for staff that directly related to their jobs. The content was broad enough for us to fit the NVQs around many roles, including Switchboard, Postroom, Help Desk, Secretaries, and Floor Managers.  We have so far had 9 learners on IT, 14 for Business Admin and 7 doing Customer Services, we are just about to add a fourth in Team Leading for supervisors and will put 8 staff through this.  It was important to us that we could offer this training to all our Property and Corporate staff and develop the Train to Gain programme within the organisation if it was successful.  We have struggled to find new ways to offer training and inspire skills development in the past, particularly for staff who may have been doing task orientated roles for 10 years or more, the NVQ's offered us something that wasn't threatening and was easy to deliver in the workplace. Our initial programme has been a highly successful trial to measure the impact of Train to Gain, and has been significant for us. The programme has been offered to staff across London and dealing with one college for this, as opposed to several has made it far easier for us to access and engage with the Train to  Gain intiative.

The main benefit has been the safeguarding of our workforce in several ways.  We will be keeping the Train to Gain programme going despite the economic climate because one of the biggest benefits we have seen is that it makes staff feel more secure in their roles and valued for what are sometimes seen as repetitive jobs. We are basically reinventing the workforce, as staff develop we can see their competancies more clearly and can identify potential promotions. Employees are becoming much more motivated, some had forgotten how to learn, or had never gained any qualifications.  Seeing the way that the training is delivered (in the workplace, without interfering with their day to day work) they are realising the value of the skills they already have and this is inspiring them to learn more, which in turn is helping us upskill the workforce and increase their job satisfaction.  Now they understand how much they do, preparing their portfolios has given them a measure of the high quality of their work from an external source, important in roles where they don't get customer contact or feedback.

This is definitely the best thing we have ever done, with regards to training, before we would run a day course and once completed the file would go on the shelf and that would be it.  Now staff are being assessed on the job, they are motivated to do more and this has been one of the most significant benefit for us.

The main impact and benefit for the learners who have undertaken the NVQs so far is that the Property and Corporate teams have previously presented the greatest challenge to HR with regard to motivation.  Staff have generally been in their jobs a long time and have had no opportunity to gain these (and sometimes any) qualifications in the past.  Employees have surprised themselves more than anyone else and that has inspired an increased confidence and growing sense of positivity across the board, crucial in the current economic climate.

The main benefit to our employees has been that before the training they didn't realise what they were capable of, now they can see for themselves the reality of the skills they bring to their jobs, and the importance of that for the company.  They really have enjoyed the focus on them as individuals, through their one to one interaction with the assessors and being able to see how they can provide a better service and improve what they do has also helped them to grow in confidence.

The programme has been offered to staff across London and dealing with one college for this, as opposed to several has made it far easier for us to access and engage with the Train to  Gain intiative.

Managers have seen a significant change in staff, they are more interested in their jobs, more confident and are sharing ideas to try and improve the function of their teams or specific roles.

 

 

  • Newham College of Further Education
  • London Borough of Newham
  • European Union, European Regional Development Fund
  • London Development Agency
  • European Union, European Social Fund
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • Skills Funding Agency
  • European Investment Fund