Deloitte launches £25m fund for employees to create their own startup businesses
Big four accountancy firm Deloitte today announced it had started a £25m internal investment fund to allow its employees to create their own startup businesses.
If their idea is chosen, employees will be given funding and allowed to work full time on developing their business ideas while receiving “incubator” support from the firm to turn their startups into a strong businesses.
Most of these will be held in the newly-formed business unit Innovation Investments, and will have reward models that Deloitte says will “ensure mutual benefit for the entrepreneur and the firm”.
The accountancy giant has created the initiative in a bid to keep its young talented employees, who have been increasingly leaving the firm to start up their own businesses.
Deloitte’s managing partner for innovation Simon Owen told City PM: “What we were finding was that levels of attrition were going up as young talented generation Y employees were looking to leave the company to do something exciting and different. So we thought, why can’t they do something different here and we’ll support them?
“The attrition argument is an important one in today’s so-called war for talent.
“We wanted to create this fund so that people can express themselves without necessarily leaving the firm.”
The firm had already received 60 proposals in the two weeks since the initiative’s internal launch, Owen added.