Deloitte is to unveil a mentoring programme this week to boost engagement, just months after the firm has been forced to cut bonsues in wake of the recession, Personnel Today has learned.

Stevan Rolls, head of HR at the professional services firm, told the magazine the launch of the mentoring scheme would help to motivate and engage staff by recognising their skills and achievements at the firm. It comes after Deloitte has been forced to cut bonuses “slightly” on last year and “limit” pay rises due to the economic downturn.

Deloitte’s HR function has been developing the integrated mentoring scheme for the past four months but it will be launched this week through a new internal website, offering staff access to mentoring tools, guidance and case studies.

Rolls said: “We are like any other organisation – no organisation is throwing a lot of financial rewards at people at the moment, but what should still be on the agenda is recognition for individual contribution and that’s where mentoring can come in.

“Through mentoring you can recognise what people do and you can give people that time to recognise they are doing really well on a certain project and they can get the kudos for it.”

He added: “Now kudos doesn’t pay the bills but at the moment you can’t really be putting loads of money into massive bonus schemes, because that wouldn’t be a sensible thing to do.”

The mentoring scheme is also intended to improve the efficiency of Deloitte’s learning and development budgets during the financial downturn as staff will be encouraged to apply what they learn on official training courses through contact with their mentors.

Rolls said: “We focused on mentoring because we think it’s going to increase the value that we get from every pound that we spend on learning and development.

“Mentoring means that at the margin you probably save a little bit of money, but where the real value is, is in terms of making sure the money you do spend is effective and makes a difference.”

The Deloitte mentoring scheme will be offered in the run up to, and after, a big promotion, Rolls said.

He added: “We still paid bonuses [for last year]. We gave very limited pay rises, there were promotions, there were bonuses paid – but they might have been smaller bonuses than we have paid in previous years. Bonuses were down slightly on last year but generally speaking I think people understood the context, it’s a difficult market.”

Job sharing

Deloitte plans to increase job sharing at the firm this year in a bid to make posts more accessible for women, the HR chief has revealed. Rolls said only a handful of staff currently use job-shares, but added that the flexible working approach would help to retain more women at senior levels and could benefit some areas of the business by providing increased manpower. He said: “We probably don’t make enough of the opportunity to encourage job shares and we should look to find ways of promoting this in the business. Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday Email(Required) OptOut From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today and OHW+ - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box. Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ “One of the advantages of the job-share is that you could have two people sharing a job, working three days a week, and then you have an overlap day where clients can benefit from having two people in at the same time.” Deloitte will begin promoting job-shares to staff who already use flexible working schemes, Rolls said.