Leadership Transition and commitments to climate change

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Responsible Leadership

Creating value for society is slowly but surely becoming a key decider of commercial success. Today’s business leaders must also deliver value in terms of sustainability and trust (societal impact) as well as organizational performance (profit) and continuous innovation (growth). Is this realistic, and what new leadership qualities are needed?

Accenture’s 2020 research, Seeking new leadership, aimed to find out through extensive surveys of company executives and stakeholders. The findings show that companies combining top-tier innovation, sustainability and trust, outperform their peers and deliver more value to shareholders, proving that making a profit can go hand-in-hand with social responsibility. As organizations put sustainability and equitability at the heart of their organizations, they will need a broader range of leadership skills and attributes. The most valuable leadership qualities for the coming decade can be grouped in the Five Elements of Responsible Leadership:

Leaders and leadership teams that are able to balance all five elements will be better positioned to not only meet shareholder but also societal expectations, and they will be equipped to take the bold decisions needed to address this decade’s greatest challenges.

One of these challenges is climate change. It’s not something that lies outside of the business. Every business operates within the boundaries of its natural environment and can only be sustained in a healthy environment and flourishing society.

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It takes a stakeholder’s approach to understand the impact a business has on its employees, customers, partners, broader communities and the natural environment. Humility will be an important characteristic in building this understanding because no single business has all the solutions. Climate change is a very complex and urgent challenge facing all of humanity, so it will take humble leaders to reach out to other leaders and other stakeholders in society to bring each other’s expertise, technologies and other capabilities together in order to achieve meaningful change.  And this is only possible when business is driven by a purpose: its unique reason for being and the value it brings to all stakeholders.

Accenture puts sustainability at the heart of its mission

Accenture is committed to playing a leading role in the change to a low-carbon economy. With new commitments to sustainability, a 360-degree value approach to achieve meaningful change and by the appointment of a Chief Responsibility Officer and Global Sustainability Services Lead, Accenture is taking a bold approach. Responsible Business practices will be embedded across every area of the company to have a positive impact with clients and wider communities. Accenture has diverse capabilities it can bring to the table, from designing net-zero, circular supply chains and roadmaps to reducing the carbon footprint of IT, cloud and software, Inclusion & Diversity and reskilling workforces. 

From industry-leading commitments to local climate actions

At group level, Accenture is making an industry-leading commitment to net-zero emissions by 2025, a move to zero waste and a plan to reduce water risk. These environmental commitments will accelerate the journey towards Accenture’s science-based targets that have been approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative since December 2018: reduce absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 11% against its 2016 baseline by 2025.

Accenture’s decision to move its new Brussels office at Gare Maritime in October 2019, was driven by the opportunity to design its office with the latest renewable energy technologies. Features include energy from solar panels, geo-thermal cooling and heating, water recuperation, eradication of single-use plastic, and advanced waste management with other tenants.

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As signatories of the Circular Purchasing Green Deal, Accenture Belgium is including circular purchasing methodology in its procurement strategy. This is the most visible in its office furniture: furniture from the former office is either re-used, refurbished to match the new design, or offered to employees and third parties, so extending the lifecycle of these qualitative goods to a maximum.

Climate action needs collaboration across the entire value chain to reduce emissions collectively. Early October, Accenture joined the Belgian Alliance for Climate Action (BACA), a new movement of leading Belgian organizations committing to climate action, initiated by The Shift and WWF. By joining this Alliance, Accenture will be able to share best practices with organizations who are formally committing to the Science Based Targets Initiative and engage in dialogue on carbon reduction with suppliers, employees, clients and ecosystem partners. Aligning operational thinking with a societal cause such as climate action creates more robust and long-lasting relationships. At the same time it can strengthen the supply chain resilience of all organizations, by identifying new operational efficiencies and innovation.

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Want to know more about Responsible Leadership at Accenture? Contact Magali Frankl.