Thousands of young people are set to benefit from a new workplace training programme created by Deloitte.

The Deloitte Employability Initiative has committed £2m funding over a five-year period to help 16-19 year olds develop the skills, attitudes and behaviours required to secure and sustain employment. The courses are the firm’s flagship community education programme and are currently being run at 34 colleges across the country. 1,600 students are already participating with the figure expected to rise to 50,000 by 2011.

The initiative coincides with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s recently published annual learning and development survey which revealed that 66% of respondent organisations feel that new employees lack both communication and interpersonal skills.

Stevan Rolls, HR director at Deloitte said: “If the UK is to remain competitive internationally we need to increase the skills levels of all employees. Big businesses have a responsibility both to their employees but also to the wider community to improve skill levels and the Deloitte Employability Initiative is part of our commitment to skills improvement.”