Professional services firm Deloitte has launched a £10m training academy that will offer free advice to HR directors and other senior executives who are swamped with regulation.
The Deloitte Academy, which was launched yesterday (Monday) at the company’s headquarters in London, will offer a programme of technical training, support and guidance on management and governance issues to directors of publicly-listed companies. A full programme of events will start in January 2006, with e-learning courses also available for remote training.
Martin Eadon, Deloitte’s chief operating officer, said the academy was not a money-making venture, but a way to help directors keep up with an ever growing body of complex legislation.
“Business leaders are faced with an unprecedented volume of change,” he said. “These changes are not going to go away so directors are going to have to deal with them and at the same time remain competitive.”
Susannah Haan, senior legal adviser at the CBI, said directors needed all the help they could get as they were snowed under by the weight of regulation from the British government and Brussels. To cover international financial reporting standards alone, one CBI member hired 100 extra people, she said. And the new Company Law Reform Bill has 886 clauses for directors to get their heads around, she added.
“These people have to run their business as well,” Haan said. “Shareholders and investors are asking if directors are being forced to spend too much time on complying with regulations and not enough on growing business.”
Although Deloitte will not charge company directors to attend the academy, Eadon did admit that the scheme was not strictly an act of
philanthropy, as it would be very important in building the company brand as the “pre-eminent professional services provider”.
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HR director-level courses on offer
- Executive remuneration strategy
- Pensions regulation
- HR strategy
- Operating and Financial Reviews
- Corporate governance and regulation
- Evaluating board performance
For more details of the courses go to www.deloitteacademy.co.uk
