Helping our clients become sustainable

A sustainable approach to business has increasingly become a strategic issue for our clients. They are moving beyond compliance to meet the growing expectations of shareholders and stakeholders.

Sustainability Services

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, we led the debate on the role of business in society with the launch of our ReImagining Business platform. Our research demonstrated that more than 76 per cent of global business leaders felt the value of their company should be measured by the positive contribution it makes to society as well as by profit.

We take the challenges our clients face in this area seriously. That’s why we’ve developed a framework to help our clients identify and articulate the societal purpose of their own business, embed that purpose throughout the organisation, and communicate it to the world. It’s also why we’ve invested significantly over recent years to expand our sustainability services offering for our clients, growing our business by more than 100 per cent over the past two years, through the acquisition of dcarbon8 and the sustainability team from within Drivers Jonas Deloitte, adding new skills and depth to our existing client services. 

"52 per cent of Deloitte Millennials surveyed in 2011 think that business, more than any other sector of society, will achieve the greatest impact on solving society’s biggest challenges in the future and half of them believe the primary purpose of business is Innovation and Societal Development”.

Steve Almond, Managing Partner – International Markets

Our sustainability team focus on the business aspects of sustainability. We help organisations with strategy and targets, implementation, reporting and assurance, and all these elements feed into the support we provide our clients on business growth, product innovation and resource optimisation. Our key focus remains that of finding sustainable solutions that add real business value.

This includes areas of non-financial assurance, carbon management, health and safety and social impact measurement. The core team of experts works with the wider practice to ensure that all the firm’s service offerings have sustainability principles embedded within them.

This year we have continued to provide advisory services on new strategic opportunities for a broad range of UK and international clients, and in particular have played a major role in helping LOCOG deliver its own sustainability agenda for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

 

  • Roadmap to sustainability: FTSE100 Retailer

    Our Sustainability Services practice worked with a major FTSE100 retailer to create a practical roadmap that will deliver dramatic and rapid results against challenging sustainability targets, including zero carbon by 2030 and 20 per cent energy savings with a return on investment in under two years, and assess how to deliver up to £200m savings over the next ten years.

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Driving the sustainability debate

As well as supporting existing clients, we believe our experience and expertise means that we have a broader role to play in shaping the debate on the significance of the sustainability agenda and the role of business in society.

We do this through thought leadership, input into policy consultation and secondments of our people to a wide range of roles outside of the firm.

In line with our own areas of expertise, the focus of our contribution has been on reporting, valuing and assuring social and environmental impact, and driving low-carbon transition and resource efficiency.

In particular we continue to play an active role in the evolution of international corporate reporting through our participation in the International Intergrated Reporting Council’s pilot programme, and our work with the UK Green Building Council.

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Our green journey

In 2010, we launched Our Green Journey with a set of environmental sustainability commitments to achieve by 2020.

Since then we have made significant progress in many areas, in particular in energy consumption. We have invested £2m in our estate this year, and through this and actions to engage our people, we have demonstrated an 9 per cent per FTE reduction in energy consumption in our offices and consequently, reduced emissions from energy consumption by 6 per cent per FTE.

In addition, we procured 62 per cent of our UK electricity from green tariffs, meaning it was sourced from renewable or low carbon sources and we intend to increase this to 90 per cent in the coming year.

Goal

To increase the amount of our UK electricity we procure from green tariffs to 90 per cent in the coming year.

However, like other professional firms, we continue to face significant challenges in balancing business travel with the needs of our clients operating in expanding global markets, while we have worked hard to reduce our internal air travel by 11 per cent per FTE this year, our increased global client presence has resulted in our overall emissions from travel rising by 2 per cent per FTE.

This must remain a particular focus for us if we are to meet our 2020 targets and we are already implementing strategies to ensure we get back on track. These include running engagement campaigns to encourage the use of video-conferencing and more carbon-efficient methods of travel, as well as further investment in improving the user experience of the video-conferencing system.

Also as part of Our Green Journey, we are concluding a landmark project in the Rubeho forest through the African Rainforest Trust. This is an ecologically distinct part of Tanzania, known as the 'Galapagos of Africa'. The Rubeho forest covers 3,550 hectares and the objective of the project is to conserve 500 tonnes per hectare of CO2 as well as help local communities earn a sustainable living from the Rainforest.

Contribution and impact

  • 9 per cent per FTE reduction in energy consumption.
  • 11 per cent per FTE reduction in emissions from internal air travel.
  • 2 per cent per FTE increase in emissions from all business travel.

Goals

By 2020, we will:

  • Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from business travel by 25 per cent per FTE.
  • Reduce GHG emissions from energy usage by 30 per cent per FTE.
  • Reduce water consumption by 20 per cent per FTE.
  • Reduce waste production by 20 per cent per FTE.

 

Carbon Emissions

 

 

Total emissions from energy usage (t CO2e)

 

 

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Procurement

Deloitte expects any prospective suppliers to comply with its policies on sustainability and ethical standards. As part of our tender process, we ask all of our prospective suppliers to demonstrate their sustainability awareness and performance through a formal assessment process. The results are used as part of the overall tender assessment.

As part of our Sustainable Procurement objectives we look to work with suppliers who reflect our organisational values and can assist us in maximising social value and minimising our demand for resources and any negative impacts of goods and services that we procure throughout the product lifecycle and supply chain.

In the coming year, we will go further in our approach to sustainability and will begin working closely with 20 of our key existing suppliers to actively help them improve their own sustainability performance through greater knowledge sharing and best practice.

This year Deloitte achieved Living Wage accreditation in recognition of our commitment to pay all of our employees a Living Wage. This includes not only direct employees but also those who provide contracted services to our firm.

Goal

  • In addition to all suppliers complying with our Sustainable Procurement standards, by May 2013 we will have worked closely with 20 of our key suppliers to seek areas where we can actively help them improve their own sustainability performance.
  • By December 2013 all of our service providers with staff working on Deloitte sites will have agreed to reward their employees in line with the UK Living Wage initiative.

 

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Enabling high potential

We take an active role in our local communities and particularly in supporting and unlocking high potential and leadership in improving people’s lives, widening prosperity and helping social progress.

Employment

Through our public sector business we responded to the government’s call to the private sector to consider its role in wider society to help address the social challenges of high unemployment. We are now supporting the delivery of public services directly to the people who need them most. Over the last year, we have helped tens of thousands of long-term unemployed people into work through our joint venture with leading employability services provider, Ingeus, as a prime provider of the 'Work Programme’, the Department for Work and Pension's flagship initiative to tackle long-term unemployment.

Contribution and impact

Through our joint venture with Ingeus, tens of thousands of people have made the transition to work from long-term unemployment.

We also choose to support high potential through a particular focus on social innovation, disability sport, national and local charity partnerships and education and skills development.

Social Innovation

In March this year we launched Deloitte Social Innovation Pioneers, supporting 30 socially innovative businesses right across the UK to grow their social and environmental impact. We believe that this highly dynamic and high-growth sector is in the vanguard of a movement that’s also seeing leading businesses re-connect their core business purpose with their impact in society. It provides an exceptional opportunity for us to use our business capability to deliver long-term social and environmental benefit, as well as enable us to learn from them on our own sustainability journey.

Alongside BP we are founding partners of Business in the Community’s arc project, helping to stimulate the creation and growth of financially sustainable social businesses and enabling them to provide employment opportunities for 1,000 people in East London over the next three years.

  • Tackling long-term unemployment: partnership with Ingeus

    In 2011, Deloitte entered into a groundbreaking partnership with leading employability services provider, Ingeus. In addition to the business potential, we saw an opportunity to create a lasting impact on the lives of the long-term unemployed. By combining the proven employability experience of Ingeus, with Deloitte’s expertise in delivering many of the public sector’s most innovative and challenging projects, we have achieved an enormous amount. In the last year, tens of thousands of people have already been supported into employment.

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Disability sport

One impact of the London 2012 Paralympic Games has, we hope, been to change public attitudes and personal responses to disability. We have been championing this for the past five years, and were delighted to witness the impact of our investment and support of disability sport coming to fruition during the Paralympic Games. Deloitte supported 75 of the ParalympicsGB Team at the London 2012 Games. Between them they won 23 medals and inspired thousands more across the UK to take up disability sports for the first time through Deloitte Parasport.

Contribution and impact

Through our support of SportsAid's Talented Athlete Sponsorship Scheme we have helped more than 500 talented athletes realise their potential, with 75 of the ParalympicsGB Team at the London 2012 Paralympic Games having been supported by Deloitte.

 

Total community contribution

Last year, in addition to helping raise over £1m through payroll giving, and over £1m through fundraising activities, we also provided over 70,000 hours of volunteer and pro-bono support (valued at more than £4.3m) to charities and local community organisations, an increase of more than 5 per cent on FY11. The total value of Deloitte’s community contributions for FY12, including our pro bono work and discounted charitable work, amounts to almost £12m, a 6 per cent increase on FY11.

Alongside financial support, our strategy has been to focus on critical issues where our skills and expertise can help create sustainable solutions. We believe this is how we have the greatest impact.

Our partnership with Help for Heroes, and the support we provided in the aftermath of the London riots in 2011, are exceptional examples of this approach.

"What has really made a difference is the range of support from different parts of the firm; from advice on strategy and management structure, to help improving financial controls, from running demanding and complex projects, to tax and property advice."

Bryn Parry, CEO and Founder, Help for Heroes.

 

Contribution and impact

  • Our total community contribution of almost £12m is up 6 per cent on last year.
  • We provided over 70,000 hours of volunteer time and pro-bono support to charities and local community organisations.
  • We helped raise more than £2m for our charity partners through payroll giving and fundraising activities of our staff and partners. Find out more about our Community Investment programme

Goals

  • To demonstrate scaled social impact through the growth of our 30 Social Innovation Pioneers.
  • We will maintain our total community contribution at the same level next year.

  • Repairing communities: The High Street Fund

    In the aftermath of the London riots in 2011, Deloitte helped to establish and administer the High Street Fund, which raised £3.5m to provide emergency hardship relief to the small businesses affected. Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, paid tribute at Deloitte to the “speed, compassion and generosity” that gave access to emergency funds for those firms affected by the riots.

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