Our commitment to well-being and giving back quality time

More than a year ago, we closed our offices as a result of the mandated lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. Back then, we didn’t fully understand the long-term impact this and the pandemic would have on the well-being of our people.

“Exhausting”, “challenging”, and “a grind”. This is how so many of us would describe the past year. And while this year promises to be better, we know there will still be challenges ahead. So, we have decided to give our employees more paid time off.

In February, I argued here that leaders need to redesign work to better support the well being of their people following the release of our 2021 Global Human Capital Trends report. I received much feedback on that article, some positive and some negative – all of it welcomed.

While our firm is working hard to build a people-first culture with our next normal in mind for work in a post-pandemic world, there’s no getting around the fact that it hasn’t always been this way. So, in response, critics and allies rightly asked for evidence that Deloitte was truly putting people’s well-being first.

Let me assure you that we are working hard to redesign the way we operate with well-being as a driver for productivity and performance. As an example, last week, our Chief Culture and People Officer, Van Zorbas, let our people know that they will have nine more paid days off in 2021.

We want our people to truly disconnect and recharge when they are away from work, so we’ve also identified more opportunities for our entire firm to shutdown or slowdown throughout the year. By lowering the overall activity of the firm, our people will be able to turn off their phones, shut down their computers, and not have to dig themselves out from under a mountain of emails when they return.

But we all know that having more vacation time doesn’t necessarily mean we feel enabled to take it, so our leaders will be working with their teams to identify and remove barriers to taking critical rest breaks while ensuring we can continue to deliver for our clients and communities. In addition to bringing new employees on board more quickly to ease the workload, we are also promoting ‘meeting free’ Friday afternoons to help reduce the pressure heading into the weekends.

As Van said in his note to the team, “We want everyone to experience our people-first culture shift and that means taking time during the year to rejuvenate and help maintain wellness. We know it’s not only the right thing to do, but necessary to keep you feeling healthy and able to maintain a better work life balance.”

Looking ahead to our next normal, we will reimagine where and how we work together through a hybrid model as part of ongoing improvements to how we work. We might not be able to control everything that comes at us in the coming year but one thing we can do as leaders is give our people more control of their time to rest and recharge.

AV