How Accenture's retention strategy meets all working ages
The proportion of our workforce in the over-50s age group is starting to increase, and we are seeing multiple careers within time with one company.
Our age diversity has also increased as we have diversified the ways we bring skills into the company, with acquisitions complementing the more traditional graduate recruitment route.
These changes intersect with our broader diversity aspirations.
We have set bold goals to and we are well on our way to achieve gender parity – for those whose gender is binary – by 2025.
This means we need retention strategies that are relevant to the full spectrum of working ages and must consider how we support people in the later stages of their career (for example, returning to work after a career break).
In the UK, to support older workers, we have removed menopause exclusions and added neurodiversity support to our insurance as we see incidents of adult diagnosis increase.
We have a partnership with Carers UK to provide support for both people with a non-standard parenting responsibility and those who manage them.
We also have back-up care for parenting and caring needs.
Globally, when rolling out new benefits, we look to ensure that support is available for loved ones as well as employees themselves – something that is more likely be a consideration for older workers.
Our financial health offering is available to up to five friends or family members.
One of the drivers for launching this was the absence of formal financial education in most countries and the risk this presents if people do not plan for later life.
In terms of engagement, we take a mixed approach, incorporating blanket communications as well as engaging people based on their communities or projects.
Rather than just giving people homework, we recently had success using available time in people’s diaries to walk through signing up for the benefits that work for them, so they come away from sessions feeling they got meaningful value.
