While Accenture rapidly rotates its business to “the New” – digital, cloud and security-related services – corporate citizenship remains central to its vision to improve the way the world works and lives, from closing employment gaps to advancing client sustainability to accelerating gender equality in the workforce. Now, the company is gearing up to issue its 2016 Corporate Citizenship Report, which will spotlight its social and environmental impact across a range of areas. In part, the report will focus on Accenture’s flagship Skills to Succeed initiative, which is on track to equip more than 3 million people with workplace and entrepreneurial skills by 2020, and on its commitment to ethics.
“When it comes to being ethical, accountability and transparency are our steadfast principles – they’re the foundation on which we build trust with our clients, our people and our other stakeholders,” says Chad Jerdee, Accenture’s General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. “Our efforts to maintain and shape an ethical culture, including our Ethics & Compliance program, are key to how we do business and help us remain one of the world’s most ethical companies.” The company launched Conduct Counts in 2014, an ethics training initiative that reinforces global standards of behavior for employee conduct that are culturally sensitive and locally relevant. Since the launch, Accenture has maintained employee completion rates in the high 90th percentile.
This year marks Accenture’s 10th consecutive year as a “World’s Most Ethical Company,” and Jerdee credits the company’s culture for this distinction. “I am especially proud of this recognition,” he says. “Being ethical means more than just following the rules. For a large, growing, global organization like us, it’s also about how we treat one another and making sure that we have enduring core values.”
