Bigger and bolder goals for Sustainability Award Winner Accenture

Commitment to sustainability

We believe that a commitment to sustainability needs to be at the core of every business. In line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, we define sustainability broadly to include environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, from transitioning to a zero-carbon economy, to human rights, to inclusion and diversity.

Our approaches align with climate science, taking meaningful actions to reduce our environmental footprint, which helps to decrease our impact on our clients’ emissions. These commitments include achieving net-zero emissions by 2025, moving to zero waste, planning for water risk by 2025, and investing in a low-carbon future. As a global business, we ensure our recruiters have the knowledge and tools to balance their strategic priorities with a sustainable method of sourcing talent.

We also work with our clients from strategy through to execution to tackle their greatest sustainability challenges by reinventing their businesses at scale. And we encourage our suppliers and our people to take eco-positive actions, embed sustainability into all our products and services, and operate as an ethical business – helping to create a more sustainable world for all.

To hold ourselves accountable, we signed up to the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance (SRA) pledge to ‘Review, Reduce and Report’.

Early talent

Our Early Talent team work hard to ensure that sustainability is at the forefront of our agenda, from recruiting strategies through to candidate assessment centres and specific programme initiatives. We have ambitious and impactful sustainable goals; goals we share with the students we engage with.

Changes

In 2021, we introduced a sustainability sub-team within Early Talent who reviewed our current processes and helped the business implement thoughtful changes. We identified both quick wins and longer-term efforts with accumulative impacts. One of the first considerations on our agenda was adopting a digital-first approach for events, balancing in-person and digital attendance.

When doing in-person attendance, we ensure we operate in the most sustainable manner possible by enacting the following changes:

• Replacing all brochures and leaflets with QR codes
• Reducing the creation of merchandise by replacing promotional items with edible items from local suppliers, where relevant.
• Making climate-smart travel decisions and sourcing volunteers for in-person events from local offices to minimise the environmental impact from traffic.
• Ensuring all suppliers value sustainability, aligning with Accenture’s wider goal to build supply chains that are more sustainable and more inclusive.
• Including sustainability sessions run by the business into our insight days and internships, raising awareness of the work we do as an organisation, as well as building student awareness of key topics in the world of sustainability.
• Continuing to host our assessment centres virtually – reducing the carbon footprint of applicants travelling into our offices and prioritising accessibility.
• Offering elements of our internships virtually, now offering a hybrid model.

Our future plans

We will continue to implement new sustainability-focused recruitment initiatives into our strategy, such as a green coding hackathon and sustainability sessions in our insight weeks, and internships through sustainability focused programmes. 

To reduce travel miles and the environmental cost of merchandise, recruiters are encouraged to continue our virtual-first approach, make climate smart decisions, and allocate themselves to their nearest university location. We encourage everyone to use small, ethical, local businesses for new joiner activities, welcome gifts, or any other promotional materials. 

We also incorporate sustainability training into the Early Talent team’s learning and development strategy through Accenture’s Sustainability Quotient modules, to ensure the longevity of our ambitions.