Deloitte’s Employability Initiative Gets New Boost in the UK

Deloitte has been supporting the Employability Initiative since 2001.

In London it called again for major UK employers to “help champion skills training and tackle the chronic shortage of “employability” skills.”

In an event, attended by senior business leaders, government and education providers, and who will join the firm in championing and supporting this type of training for all young people.

Here’s the facts straight from the Deloitte press release:

“Deloitte has an exceptional commitment to the support of education in the workplace, exemplified by its flagship Employability Initiative. Working together with nine regional Deloitte Employability Centres, Deloitte aims to train a total of 800 teachers to deliver employability courses, reaching 40,000 students across the UK, helping them develop the skills, attitudes and behaviours they need to secure and sustain employment. The firm has invested £2.6 million in the initiative to date, with a further £1.2 million planned in 2012. Deloitte’s total commitment to educational projects exceeds £1 million each year.”

But here are some interesting aspects of this effort:

First, it seems ironical and somewhat counter intuitive that while we are in the middle of a global economic turmoil with raging unemployment that college graduates do not have the requisite employability skills to make effective entrances into the business world and immediate contributions to their jobs.

Second, we recently saw PwC and E&Y both start making inroads into the student population. PwC recently launched its “Recession-proof your job search” initiative aimed at undergraduate seniors to help them identify and locate the right jobs for their skills and goals; and E&Y gave as an example $400K to Bentley University to start freshmen on accounting and finance courses and make changes to their curriculum. All these Big4 firm efforts indicate that there is some kind of underlying issue with the quality of personnel entering the workforce and in a selfish way the Big4 firms.

Finally, Sir Mike Rake is Chairman, UK Commission for Employment and Skills, who spoke at this event also supported the Deloitte initiative. But he was, as many may recall, the Chairman of KPMG International from 2002 to 2007, which is creditable firm crossover for an illustrious Big Four alum!

Kudos to Deloitte to jump start this in the UK with major public and private support.

We’ll check around to see what the last Big4 firm KPMG is doing on this front.