1. Could you tell me a bit about yourself and what your role is as the global giving lead for Accenture? 

I focus on the ‘S’ in ‘ESG’, and that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. The ‘S’ stands for the social and community impacts based on where employees live and work, and where Accenture has a presence to be able to benefit the community beyond, of course, offering employment and opportunities for people to progress. My role is essentially to work with non-profit organizations, multilateral organizations, or even quasi-governmental organizations to invest our charitable giving funds into initiatives and programs that run in various countries or regions based on which partners they’re working with globally. This is to help youth, women, or people with disabilities overcome their specific challenges. A lot of them could have had interrupted education, for example, so what we do in terms of helping them is connecting them to opportunities so that they could learn skills themselves in areas where there is a demand in terms of employment or in future areas. This includes digital AI fundamentals and fostering a growth mindset for the future. Also, older workers who have been retrenched and are looking to re-skill themselves into getting back into being relevant for the job market. That’s on the employment pathway and the other bit is more about entrepreneurship. In other words, how could we help organizations support entrepreneurs around the world in terms of either starting a new business or growing their existing businesses and increasingly developing social entrepreneurship?

2. Are there any specific issue principles that are particularly emphasized in your particular role?

I will talk about this in two respects: one is Accenture’s own ESG model and approach in terms of what we do with our own employees, facilities, supply chain, vendors’ procurement, and all of that. These aspects get deployed across our company in terms of what we do in terms of our footprint on the environment and our responsibility as a business to do things in the most sustainable way. This could translate to meeting certifications and standards for our office locations, travel policy, for example, to make sure that we are very conscious about how we utilize resources like water and technology.So, what are we doing with recycling and upcycling in the most responsible way? There are entire themes embedded within our business to support our corporate functions essentially to look after all of this. Now, that is internally right, and of course, as a result of all this, we end up providing standardized reporting. We’ve signed up to the UN Global Compact, we put out two communications on progress, we also report into the GRI, the Global Reporting Institute. GRI is another one, then there are a host of other environmental specific related standards and certifications that we go for. So, this is essentially what we do internally so that we can share externally as to what it is that we do year on year.

When we look at it as services and consulting offered to our customers, from a consulting standpoint, we have different lenses that we look at it from. By and large, we are divided by industries and functional areas. It’s more of an enhancement of the consulting services versus a whole new consulting area if you see what I mean. Every piece of consulting now, so if you’re doing process consulting or change transformation work for a client, ESG will be part of that. It’s not a separate thing because you are really looking to serve that client to transform themselves to be more responsible businesses. In other words, we are trying to embed ESG knowledge and insights into probably every offering where it’s relevant and also then look at how we might specifically work with the public sector, how might we work with the non-profit sector as well in terms of putting all of this in place. What does this mean in terms of upskilling our own people into the area of saying that okay, if you’re looking at retail as a sector that you are specializing in or FMCG, what are those things that you need to be aware of as a consultant walking into a client in terms of the ESG requirements for their industry and what is the opening platform for that industry? So, I think that’s the way we are approaching the whole ESG space and the opportunity.

3. How do you stay informed about changes in the regulatory environment and their potential impacts on business ethics for instance?

I think there’s a lot that happens at the COP level. For example, there’s a lot that is happening now in the run-up to COP28 in Dubai. So, there is that macro context. For example, there have been recent discussions and negotiations about the loss and damage fund. This is what the developed countries should and must give towards loss and damage being incurred due to climate change by the lower developing countries and the islands, specifically the ones who are bearing the brunt of climate change. The loss and damage fund was essentially devised as something that countries would pay into, which would then help to offset and alleviate the burden that is being faced by smaller nations who are facing the brunt of it. This will have a knock-on implication downstream to the way businesses will be and the way regulations might look like in those countries, including the countries who are being looked at and expected to pay into the fund, and also then the countries who are getting impacted and will need to use those funds. As far as my own job is concerned, I think the main thing that I end up looking at is a lot about what we could do from a blended solution perspective. In other words, if I could use my charitable dollars alongside, say, impact investing dollars from another company who is looking at impact investing as a model to scale, then could I be really helping an entrepreneur who’s a green entrepreneur, who’s got a green business, to scale that business to an extent that they’re going to be able to get commercially funded, like run a series A fundraising? It’s not entirely clear; that leap is quite a big leap to make. A lot of the focus right now is, I mean, we still haven’t seen a critical mass of entrepreneurs leapfrogging in that way to be able to launch fundraising at that level and be able to get funding from external investors. So, I think that’s been one of the insights we’ve seen.

Also, what I’ve realized is that the non-profit sector is still on the journey to understand what this combined world looks like. Because as of now, they’re still focused on getting social investments in place, the traditional grant-making programs work on the ground, but increasingly people are talking about blended finance. For example, being able to combine two or more sources of funding to be able to provide patient capital to solve some of the more intractable problems. But I think unless there is actual regulation that nudges companies and not-for-profit organizations and other key players to actually then make those behavioral changes and make those changes in the way they decide on what is value for money or what’s of benefit, unless that at a very country level, I think it would always be a lagging thing. So yeah, I mean, I think there is not a straightforward answer because some of these regulations are all interconnected. They all have an impact on something else which happens. So, there’s a plethora of things. But I think to start with, it’s really about country-level commitments to the climate. What does that really mean? Is it about conserving? I mean, what is the balance in each country about whether conservation or restoration, for example, or what is that like? Even in Singapore, for example, it’s a fine balance, right, in terms of saying conservation versus restoration versus some other way of combating some of the climate changes that they’ve been facing.

4. Does Accenture have a specific framework for reporting its ESG both internally and externally? how does it communicate its ESG performance to stakeholders?

So, we do have an ESG matrix, and there’s a materiality matrix as well. In other words, for each of the aspects, like electricity, water, basically what we use and how we are calibrating these various things, there’s a set of metrics that are put in place and constantly revised, updated, and refreshed. Then there’s materiality as well, which is assessed in terms of what would have the most material impact on our footprint in this world and what that really looks like. We have an entire team which is essentially focused on doing this for the entire company, and that breaks down into people at different country levels as well. We usually end up reporting annually, and these are essentially what we call a 360-degree value report. If you google it, you will find our last year’s report online, so please feel free to take a look at it. There’s an entire ESG section at the end of it with lots and lots of data around our travel, our offices, our utilities, which is what we put out every year. These are essentially internally audited as well before we actually put it out there. And of course, increasingly, there are non-financial disclosures which we do as well with the support of our external auditors. So, this has now become part of our ongoing audit as well, a financial audit which now includes non-financial as well.

5. Are there any programs that encourage employees to contribute to ESG-related projects?

I would say yes, but ESG-related projects get divided up into the ‘E’ part of it and the ‘S’ part of it, by and large. The ‘G’, of course, is part of more than just employees and volunteerism. Let me share a little bit about the ‘E’ and the ‘S’ part of it. We work with an organization that powers our internal volunteering leadership platform, and a variety of social initiatives get contributed to by our employees. Now, that could be via employee giving, so you pledge a certain part of your salary every month or every year, or whatever that looks like. You could be participating in volunteering initiatives which could be to mentor, coach, or help young people who are looking to get skilled and getting into jobs. Or, you could be working with organizations to do an environmental initiative, for example. We also have virtual volunteering where we work on, for example, World Environment Day. There are global campaigns that are run in the run-up to Environment Day, global campaigns that are run up to Humanitarian Days. We work with organizations that are looking to map areas that have been affected by, say, a natural disaster. So, mapping a place to understand where humanitarian assistance needs to go and to be able to map and give those mapping outputs back to the organization. Then, they can give it to the humanitarian organizations who would then be able to arrange for the logistics to reach this community which has been cut off as a result of whatever, an avalanche or an earthquake or something like that. So, there are various ways in which volunteerism is leveraged in both the environmental and social space.

From a governance perspective, I think equity, inclusion, diversity, and ethics are a big part of every employee’s life. You’ve got to be continuously refreshing your ethics and compliance knowledge, and we’ve got various extensive curricula that every person has to do a refresher on every few months. We’ve got mandatory training on that, anti-corruption, and all around that governance space. Respect for the individual, how you treat your colleagues, how you treat confidentiality, privacy, what does good privacy look like in terms of the way you create solutions, your design principles, so there’s a whole host of that. I think, which to my mind, sits in that governance space in terms of how we do as a business in these things and how we are responsible to make sure that we are safeguarding privacy, safeguarding, and operating with integrity and ethics across the board.

6. Having a presence in more than 120 countries, are the initiatives standardized, or do specific regions place greater emphasis on ESG and sustainability in Accenture?

Well, I think the approach isn’t standardized, but we do have a unifying set of goals across the company. However, that might look slightly different in the way it’s playing out in parts of Europe versus parts of Asia. But overall, it is one set of goals and the North Star, and within that, there are different nuances that happen. I think it is also very much related to the regulatory compliance that is needed. For example, if you want to call it the cost of doing business, India might have specific regulations and compliance needs that might not be necessary in another place. Whereas GDPR, which is an EU-wide data protection requirement, is mandatory in the EU and the UK, but it’s not necessarily mandatory elsewhere in the world. Even though Accenture has chosen to take on GDPR as something that they would do uniformly across every country, regardless of what is needed. So, I think it’s a combination of what we think should be globally observed, even if it’s not locally mandated in some places. But then again, there are very unique mandates in place in specific places. For example, in India, India has a two percent CSR law which basically says that any company which is beyond a particular size and is listed will need to give two percent of its profits to socially responsible initiatives. This is a very India unique specific thing that we have to uphold. But do we do this everywhere, like a two percent of our revenues or whatever? Not necessarily, it varies. So, I think those are the examples I would pull out in terms of what is a globally adopted thing versus something that’s locally mandated. 

7. How do you believe in general also the scale and the structure of a large company versus a startup may influence the priority towards reaching carbon neutrality and do you think that there is some correlation between or some emphasis for large companies to reach carbon neutrality over startups?

At the end of the day, size does matter. The size of your business, where you’re operating, and the footprint you generally have, versus maybe a startup which does not, make carbon neutrality much more complex for you to reach as a bigger company than as a smaller organization. Let’s keep startups aside and just talk even about SMEs, like not such big companies or local companies. It’s far more controllable, I would think. But on the other side, it’s interesting that bigger companies also have the wherewithal to put in place various structures, supporting structures, and infrastructure to be able to track and report back on saying, “Okay, here’s what we’ve done. This is what it is.” They’ve got the power of that data behind them to be able to say that they’ve done this or not done this. Whereas, maybe smaller organizations don’t have that much bandwidth and they’ll have to dig into reserves to be able to not only achieve carbon neutrality but also to track and monitor it in order to be able to report on it. So, I think there are push and pull factors on these fronts. It might be easier to do, but is everybody savvy enough to be able to track it the way it should be tracked? Because that can be quite time-consuming and effort-intensive. I see that not everybody can have a large team sitting down and crunching data.