Deloitte is investing $1.4 billion in learning and development for its employees, especially in improving their technology and leadership skills.
The initiative, known as Project 120, uses real-time sensing technology to identify and anticipate emerging needs among Deloitte's U.S. employees. The project is named after an estimate of the top speed of thought, believed to be up to 120 meters per second. Project 120 will include personalized learning and development pathways to develop critical technology and leadership skills among the firm's growing employee base to meet the market demands of the future. Deloitte will use the funds to improve its tech and leadership curricula and expand its Deloitte University facilities, including new and future academic and business collaborations.
"It's about betting big on our people," said Eric Dingler, chief learning officer at Deloitte's U.S. firm. "Deloitte has a track record of doing that, and we're doing it again, and also to set a new standard in L&D. At its core, the fundamental element of Project 120 is to shift from static, curriculum-based learning that occurs at a moment in time, often separated from when people need it, to more dynamic development experiences where we're able to customize it to the individual, and to deliver a lot more of it in the flow of work."
One element of the investment is going to the Deloitte Technology Academy. "That's about advancing tech skills ahead of the market," said Dingler. "With that, we're going to build out a skills-based development engine to reskill and upskill thousands of professionals in leading-edge technologies."
Another element focuses on leadership development. "We want to make leadership skills available to everyone, and we want to do more," said Dingler. "Historically, we've invested heavily in leadership to drive business performance. We want to continue that. But now we want to double down on focusing on the human potential of people so they can thrive today and in the future of work."
A third element is Deloitte University, which the firm sees as a brand differentiator and a hallmark of its employees' growth experiences. "If I were to sum it up, Project 120 is about Deloitte making a commitment to be an educator, not just an employer," said Dingler.
Deloitte is planning to invest even more than $1.4 billion in the project over the next three years.
"We see Project 120 as a three-year transformation journey," said Dingler. "The $1.4 billion represents our investment in this fiscal year. We're in the process of planning out the future. We're in year one right now of Project 120. I don't know the exact amounts, but we do expect continued investment. We're spending a lot this year to build out some of these elements, and we're just now launching the process of planning for the next fiscal years."
Project 120 is already delivering over 1 million hours of training on future applications of technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud, cyber, data analytics, 5G and quantum computing through the Deloitte Technology Academy.
"Deloitte's Tech Academy is focused on the marketplace technologies that Deloitte needs in order to serve our clients and professionals to thrive in a tech-enabled world," said Dingler. "We know that today it's not simply enough just to keep pace with technology adoption. We're using Project 120 and standing up Deloitte Tech Academy to envision the tech skills that markets are going to demand five or 10 years from now and then designing the learning experiences to incorporate talent now."
Given the war for talent, Deloitte has been hiring employees who may not have the most advanced technology skills right now, but are highly qualified in other ways.
"Because it's a competitive market for talent out there, we developed a foundational computing curriculum," said Dingler. "Within eight months, we curated a lot of it. That has over 300 different learning pathways, so it's not one size fits all. It's highly customizable. Those experiences consist of both formal learning programs, sandboxes where they can play, mock project experiences they have to do, and assessments. Over this immersive experience, it's more than just formal learning. We're actually getting them ready so they can immediately go do that work."
Within Deloitte Tech Academy, there's already a Cloud Institute, a Cyber Academy and an AI Academy, and it's expanding into data and analytics, quantum, 5G and more.
"These are all technologies we're going to need to serve our clients' increasingly complex business problems," said Dingler.
Training will be both in person at Deloitte University facilities and remote at employees' desks.
"These development experiences that we're designing and curating are multimodality, multichannel and, as much as possible, always on," said Dingler. "We know that there's been a sea change in employees' expectations of companies today. If you look at our recent
Deloitte is splitting up the training to make it more convenient and accessible to employees so it doesn't interfere with their other work.
New surveys
In separate news Thursday, Deloitte released its fourth-quarter
The proportion of CFOs who feel pessimistic about their companies' financial prospects increased to the highest levels since the second quarter of 2020. Revenues and earnings expectations both dropped. More CFOs cited a potential recession as a major constraint on their companies' financial performance goals, a departure from the findings of the previous survey in the third quarter of this year. While domestic hiring growth expectations continued to slip further, CFOs indicated they still plan to hire more people than they lay off.
Deloitte Tax also released a
Tax compliance and regulatory compliance were cited among the top challenges for organizations. The respondents also cited labor concerns with immigration, right-to-work laws, day thresholds and eligibility criteria that could expose their organizations to tax and legal risks.
