  1) Community
Accenture has created a number of groups within the company that act as steering committees on community issues. These groups include the UK Charity Committee, the UK Foundation and the People Advocates Network.
These groups also liaise with our key external community partners to help shape our community strategy. In addition to our existing channels for volunteering and in response to requests from both our community partners and our employees we developed a new pro bono business programme in 2007. This now allows our people to make longer term sustained commitments to our community partners, helping them to deliver high impact community projects. 2) Environment
Accenture has an environmental steering committee (made up of senior executives) that meets quarterly with the corporate citizenship lead and the environment lead to agree on key environmental decisions and set the direction for the environmental strategy, and an environmental operations committee (key employees involved in our Facilities & Services, Procurement and Technology teams) that meets every month. We have recently launched a voluntary staff forum called the Carbon Footprint Community of Interest (CFCI) whose aim is to enable staff to reduce the carbon footprint of their project work. They share ideas and knowledge to develop tools and methodologies to turn idea into practical action. The CFCI is led by a steering group which works closely with the environment lead. All these groups have the opportunity to supply input and feedback into our decision making. In line with our strategic intent and as a direct result of growing interest among employees about our organisational carbon footprint we have now introduced a travel reduction programme. 3) Marketplace
Accenture UK have also developed and implemented a programme on supplier management, focusing on CSR criteria such as supplier diversity and environmental standards. In addition, we have been able to leverage our charitable work and have worked in conjunction with some of our clients to support charities and share knowledge. We frequently share our corporate responsibility principles and achievements with potential clients to demonstrate our aims and programmes in this area. In particular we are increasingly adding our CR credentials to proposals when bidding for client work. Corporate citizenship is also being profiled in our company annual report. In addition, we use our alliances with technology partners to share knowledge and ensure that our values and our principles are aligned. 4) Workplace
Accenture has appointed a member of the senior leadership team, Ismail Amla, as the overall people advocate lead for the United Kingdom. The people advocate lead has a team of representatives from each part of our business, known as the People Advocate Network. The objective of the People Advocate Network is to work together to drive forward initiatives relating to employee engagement and also to serve as a 'voice of our people' across all work areas. The People Advocate Network use the annual Global Employee Survey and specific employee 'pulse groups' (i.e. employee focus groups) within each work area to get feedback from the entire workforce, provide information on the initiatives taking place and to ensure the right issues are being addressed. Accenture believes that companies that will succeed in the 21st century are the ones that learn and adapt the fastest, value collaboration, and embrace diversity of thought, style and culture. In order to embrace diversity, networks have been set up in the areas of gender, ethnicity, enablement, sexual orientation, religion and belief, age, parents. These groups help to recognise, understand and nurture individual differences. Our recently introduced Shariah compliant pension funds and 9 months fully paid maternity leave are examples of how we respond to our employees' expectations and requests. To Top |