Deloitte’s Impact Week goes virtual for 2020

Impact Day is Deloitte’s flagship volunteering day in September each year, supporting many charities around the country. Due to COVID 19, and a change in strategy, the Deloitte team had to quickly reimagine the approach for 2020.

As Claire Bergin – Senior Corporate Responsibility Manager at Deloitte – put it: “This year we wanted to elevate our impact and had big plans in the pipeline, but when COVID hit we had to pivot”.

Claire and her team redesigned Impact Day to Impact Week. This offered more opportunities for people at Deloitte to get involved across Impact Week, while also providing an opportunity to connect people across the business and make them feel connected to the firm’s purpose at a time when everyone was working remotely.
For the team, the week was not just about volunteering on a particular day or week. Rather it was also for Deloitte’s people to think about their purpose and really delve deep to consider what matters to them and what gives them energy every day.

As Claire Bergin puts it: “We wanted to inspire our people to think about how THEY can make an impact that matters in the community for a cause or charity that resonates with THEM and combine that with the power of Deloitte”. This was done through a number of internal workshops and charity projects outlined below, in addition to inspiring webinars including Find Your Purpose, WorldClass volunteering and Global CR Insights.

As members of Business in the Community Ireland, Deloitte partnered with BITCI to leverage their relationships with charities throughout Ireland. BITCI partnered with Deloitte in mapping NGO and charity needs to Deloitte skills and services, securing and scoping of projects with the Deloitte team, and assessing the needs to be addressed in Deloitte webinars and information sessions. BITCI is also supporting Deloitte in evaluating the professional skills volunteering projects to acknowledge successes and identify any areas where an even greater impact can be made.
Deloitte also worked with some external facilitators, including IDEA who provided expert insights into the UN Sustainable Development Goals. IDEA delivered engaging and thought-provoking virtual workshops to Deloitte staff on personal responsibility, as well as government’s, corporate and wider society’s roles in helping to achieve the goals by 2030.

Deloitte’s bespoke professional skills volunteers were able to transition seamlessly to the virtual setup. This gave Irish charities a chance to have The Deloitte Academy Experience – access to Deloitte professionals to help them solve challenges and create solutions over the course of a single day. On Thursday 22 October, 2020, 18 project leaders and almost 100 volunteers led 13 charities through virtual workshop sessions. From digital storytelling, to financial management, to human capital and business chemistry, the teams have made a lasting impact for these charities.

Caption: Clients and Industries Team with Ronald McDonald House including volunteer CEO Marian Carroll working with them on their communications strategy

Ronald McDonald House Charities and Dublin Simon Community were just two of the non-profit organisations who benefitted immensely from participating in The Deloitte Academy Experience and the positive impact on their respective organisations can be gleaned from the following testimonials:

“The Deloitte team really gave us the opportunity to be an active part of Impact Day. They came up with some really wonderful ideas for our Communications Strategy, and about how we can share our story. It was an incredible contribution to what we are trying to achieve. But even outside the amount of time and resources that Deloitte undoubtedly put into the day, these were just really nice human beings to work with. We were blown away by what they were prepared to do for us”.
Marian Carroll, Volunteer CEO, Ronald McDonald House Charities

“For Dublin Simon, this was like winning the lottery, in that the professional expertise we got we would ordinarily really struggle to afford! I couldn’t speak more highly of the Deloitte volunteer project teams. They emphasised how the challenges we have are also shared by large multinationals. As for outcomes, Deloitte have built us a report and a plan with short, medium and long-term actions and recommendations … and Deloitte made it all sound achievable”.
Tracey O’Malley, Senior Human Resources Manager, Dublin Simon Community

In addition, a wider cohort of charities availed of expert workshops led by Deloitte. Over the course of Impact Week, BITCI was able to access its database to attract over 500 people from the not-for-profit sector to attend expert sessions on topics including payroll, digital marketing, advice for engagement in remote working, GDPR and risk management. The feedback from people and charities has been amazing and that makes it all worthwhile. The team is already thinking about what can be done to make next year an even bigger success.

Impact Week rounded out a very busy Autumn for Deloitte which also saw five members of the Deloitte leadership team signing up to participate in the Shine a Light campaign, under Covid guidelines. With generous donations from their people and the wider Deloitte family and community, a phenomenal €63,000 was realised for Focus Ireland.

Deloitte also piloted the “Time to Talk” volunteer programme with BITCI’S EPIC programme in the summer and were delighted to roll out another programme which launched as part of Impact Week. “Time to Talk” was a pilot programme linking Deloitte volunteers with participants in the EPIC programme. EPIC supports migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in Ireland to understand the Irish job market and find employment. Confidence in English is a key skill for finding employment and the “Time to Talk” programme was an innovative response to meet this need.

For the team at Deloitte it was a busy week of activities where they activated their purpose of “making an impact that matters in our community”.

As Claire Bergin concludes: “We are energised for 2021 and look forward to continuing to roll out similar events into the future and embedding our purpose of making an impact that matters every day”.

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