Corporate Social Responsibility
6 min read
KPMG in the UK is committed to putting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability at the heart of all that we do. We recognise that our social responsibility and commercial success are inextricably linked: people want to deal with organisations that make a positive contribution to the world.
The UK firm has achieved significant external recognition for its commitment, winning more than 20 national and international awards for CSR in the past two years. These include the Sunday Times Best Big Company for Giving Something Back for two years running, the Financial Times Corporate Responsibility Award and the Scottish Business in the Community Awards for Excellence’s Large Company of the Year Award; the firm was also placed top of sector in the 2007 Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index and was one of only 21 businesses to receive the 2008 Community Mark from Business in the Community.
Much as we take pride in the accolades we have received, we take greater pride in our achievements: the impact our work with refugees, the homeless and the disadvantaged has had and will continue to have.
Last year our total community contribution was £5.7m and 35% of our people volunteered in work time, contributing more than 38,000 hours.
Volunteering schemes and community projects which focus on employability, access to opportunity and environmental management are the foundation of our commitment to communities; these have, over the years, matured into an integrated programme aimed at building sustainable communities and adding value wherever possible. We strive to inspire and empower our people to contribute positively to local communities and the environment.
All our people can access 3.5hours of firm time per month to volunteer. KPMG focuses on education, social inclusion and the environment because those are the areas our people and communities have told us they care most about.
Each of our offices has a CSR Forum – a group of people from all grades of the business who are interested in CSR – who help implement the national CSR strategy, respond to local priorities and build strong partnerships with local community organisations. These Forums are a strong foundation on which we build local involvement, action and ownership.
Our ongoing projects include:
Reading and Number Partners: KPMG initiated Number Partners with Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership in 1999; an employee volunteering programme to help young people with their mental maths skills. Number Partners provides resources for Key Stages 1-3 and financial literacy games for KS4.
Most of KPMG’s offices are linked with a local primary school and, in some cases secondary schools with business enterprise specialisms, where volunteers visit weekly to help pupils with their reading and numeracy skills. Almost 300 of our people volunteered as Reading and Number Partners last year.
Partnership for Schools: In partnership with Clifford Chance and Morgan Stanley we support an innovative Partnership for Schools project with Clare College, Cambridge which aims to raise the aspirations of young people from Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney to apply for University. Volunteers from the three corporates provide mentoring support during application and all provide small bursaries to help young people with the financial barriers. More than 1000 young people have participated in the programme with 176 applying to Cambridge and 49 places offered.
City Academy, Hackney: We are the first professional firm to co-sponsor an Academy with the City of London Corporation. The school will specialise is business and financial services and will open in September 2009 - it will be a mixed and non-denominational school, teaching 11-18 year olds. It is located in Hackney and the building will incorporate many environmental features, making it a first class building for learning.
School Governors: KPMG is one of the top providers of volunteer School Governors – currently 225 of our people are volunteering as a School Governor with a number of these supporting a KPMG linked school.
Every Child A Reader: Every Child A Reader is a flagship project for the KPMG Foundation, involving a unique partnership between charitable trusts, business and government. The three year £10million initiative aims to show that, with the right resources, the literacy difficulties that blight many children’s lives can be tackled. The initiative is funding highly-skilled Reading Recovery teachers in primary schools to provide intensive help to children most in need. The results have been outstanding. Many pupils have accelerated their reading levels by as much as four times through the programme.
Working with the Refugee Council: this project aims to equip refugees with the necessary skills to find employment in the UK. It has been running since 2005 and specifically looks at supporting refugees who are qualified and experienced in the financial sector in their own country to find employment in the accountancy finance sectors in the UK. It does this by supporting refugees through the UK application and interview process, with KPMG volunteers helping refugees to write CVs practice their interview techniques, helping to increase their ability to find employment in the UK.
Project Compass: established by KPMG in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence and Business in the Community, Project Compass seeks to help homeless ex-service personnel – a group that make up a quarter of those sleeping rough on London’s streets - back into work, providing them with training, job coaches and work placements, in addition referring them where appropriate to other support agencies, such as Combat Stress.
Our Staff Charity programme: We are currently supporting Help the Hospices and our people will have given more than £1m during this two year relationship. KPMG is also working closely with Help the Hospices to reduce the carbon footprint of the UK’s 240+ hospices, through energy audits delivered by KPMG volunteers, in order that they may reduce their energy consumption and running costs.
This year we were the first Big Four accountancy firm to introduce a code of conduct for our suppliers, to help us spread best practice even further by ensuring that they meet high environmental, community and employment standards, reflecting the increased importance of the issue to our clients and prospective employees. Setting out ten core ethical principles across the areas of business conduct, labour conditions human rights and the environment, the document requires suppliers to reduce their environmental impact by developing and using environmentally friendly technologies across their business.
We are proud to have been the first in our sector to achieve accreditation to the demanding ISO:14001:2004 standard for all our UK offices; our environmental focus now is on reducing paper use, waste generation and the impact of our business travel and energy consumption. Over 95% of KPMG’s energy now comes from renewable sources, with recycled paper meeting 88% of its paper needs. KPMG has also pledged its support to the Prince’s Rainforests Project, which aims to draw people together from governments, businesses and NGOs to find practical solutions to slow tropical deforestation and combat climate change ahead of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in 2009. KPMG plans to use its expertise in bringing deforestation up the climate change agenda by engaging with the environmental media as well as corporate and city audiences.
