The managing principal for talent development at Deloitte Services explains how and why the professional-services giant built its own brick-and- mortar learning center — and what conferences can apply from its approach to employee education.
By Susan Sarfati, CAE S
everal years ago, Deloitte LLP engaged its 55,000 U.S. employees and 2,800 partners in a discussion about how best to offer staff training — online or in-person.
This was no small matter. As the second-largest profes- sional-services network in the world by revenue — providing audit, tax, consulting, enterprise-risk, and financial- advisory services — Deloitte conducts four million hours of training annually. “We wanted to do something special and different,” said
William Pelster, managing principal for talent development at Deloitte Services. “We are actually in two markets — to serve clients and to attract talent. We had a great debate: Do
we want to develop our talent in a physical or virtual environ- ment?” The “bricks vs. clicks” debate, Pelster said, went on for two years. Deloitte conducted focus groups, surveys, and segment analysis among all its U.S. employees. “No matter how we sliced it,” he said, “people wanted a physical facility” for training and meetings. The majority of partners, who would personally foot the bill, voted to build such a facility, and it fell to Pelster — who serves as the company’s consult- ing global learning and talent development leader — to design it as a learning center. The end result is Deloitte University (DU), a $300-mil- lion, 712,000-square-foot, five-story building, which