'KPMG and the global people agenda' podcasts

11 May 2007

Presenter:

Hello and welcome to episode two of KPMG’s new range of podcasts for jobseekers around the world. In this series, called KPMG’s Global Citizenship Agenda, we’ll be learning more about the growing importance of corporate responsibility and the global themes for KPMG. In this episode, I’m going to be speaking to Lord Hastings, KPMG International’s Director for Corporate Citizenship.

Lord Hasting, first of all, why is corporate citizenship of critical importance to KPMG?

The trend, over twenty years ago was, a company gave money to someone else from its profits and someone else did the work. In the last ten to twenty years, the movement of corporate social responsibility has been towards helping our own people in any firm of any kind get involved in meeting some of the pressing social needs that are in the immediate communities around our buildings, our sites, and our facilities. Now, for an organization like KPMG, it’s gone even further. It’s gone towards how every one of us and how the network as a corporate entity, not only has a responsibility to be part of the solutions in society, but can contribute significantly to some of the big strategic issues that are facing society and the world as a whole. Global poverty, climate change, environmental issues, education, preparing the next generation for the future, skilling, providing homelessness support. All of these things which used to be the role of just governments and charities, have become also the responsibilities of business and for KPMG we have 113 thousand people around the world in 148 countries operating in roughly around about, as I understand it, something like 780 cities. We have a huge impact on the communities where we are and people look to us to be leaders.

Presenter:

How is corporate responsibility a powerful attraction for the best talent?

Well, very interestingly, because of the shift that’s taken place, which I just referred to, from the last 20 years, many of today’s new, younger workers are coming in to firms of every conceivable kind, as well as coming into the professional service organizations like KPMG, coming in already having had some involvement in international issues. They’ve been concerned about human rights. They’ve been concerned about global poverty. They’ve looked at the millennium development goals and seen how far short the world is from achieving these. They’re very conscious of climate change. They’re immensely aware that companies have had a bad reputation for some while because of their governance and their transparency. So many new recruits will come to KPMG looking at this organization saying, “Okay, given all these issues that are out there, given the bad public perceptions there are of profit-making companies, but also given the fact that society’s ills are very much in our face. What the media has done for all of us, a global media has done – it means that anything that happens anywhere in the world, we’re instantly aware of it and we get very concerned. And for this generation, that concern has got to turn into, will KPMG, will my organization now support me as an active citizen, as a concerned citizen?. Will it support me in getting involved, continuing to be involved and being an effective citizen myself?” And what we found from a lot of research is that today’s recruits are asking that question at interviews; they’re asking that question when they look at organizations on the web site, and they’re saying, “Well, if you don’t support me and the charities that matter to me and the issues that matter to me and my family and the big things in the world that I feel a real concern about. Maybe I’ve been out there and I’ve marched in the streets or I’ve signed petitions or I’ve sent letters or I’ve given money. If you don’t support me in these things, I’m going to look somewhere else. Because they matter hugely to me.” Now at KPMG, what we’re saying to all of our potential recruits and to all of our people now is these things have always mattered to us, that’s why we have a value that says we’re committed to our communities. We’re very pragmatic about it and we’re very determined about it and we want to be very supportive of our people in doing it.

Presenter:

What can individuals achieve, and how can they help to influence global citizenship within KPMG?

Well, what we’re saying to every one of our member firms around the world, that’s 150 different firms in 150 very, very different nations. We’re saying to every one of them, “First of all, take a good look at the issues that your people are struggling with in their immediate society.” We’ve got all sorts of projects around the world which are set out on the kpmg.com web site, and they tell you that our people are imaginative and innovative and they’re getting their hands dirty, but they’re using their brains, too. And I think it’s that mix that we want to encourage in every national practice, use you hands, use your brains, do what’s necessary to support the people on the frontline. We’re making the most profound difference.

Presenter:

How has corporate citizenship moved away from being at the margins of business debate, to being central to business strategy?

Well, because corporate citizenship is now much more than philanthropy; it isn’t just about writing checks for other people to do things on the outside, although that continues and should do. Many KPMG member firms have got foundations. Those foundations continue to provide resources gathered from partners’ profits outside of the member firms and that should continue and should grow. But because now, corporate citizenship is about internal strategy, in other words, how do we resource the products that we have in our buildings, for example. Are our buildings operating in a sustainable way? Do we recycle the paper we use? Do we take care over the use of energy in our buildings? Do we reduce our energy impact as much as we possibly can? Our water usage as much as we possibly can? Are we taking note of the savings, frankly, that we can gain from by responsible energy use and putting these to investment in more sustainable ways of conducting our business? We’re advising our firms clients about sustainability, we need to encourage and advise ourselves about sustainability. But also, at the same time, part of our business strategy is about being a global organization. That means we’re talking about connecting one to the other from our 148 locations around the world. People are moving around the world at great speed. We could be recruiting people anywhere in Europe, anywhere in the US, anywhere across Asia, anywhere in Australia, who’ve come from countries in any other part of the world, so we need to have a diversity strategy, which is all about recognizing difference, language, culture, background, the integrity of people’s nations and skilling from where they’ve come. We need to have a strong mobility program that supports people to travel freely and to upscale themselves over a one to two to three year period to develop their skills and capacity within the organization. We also need to recognize that very often as we’ve seen it, that global business is now buying and selling from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. Therefore, our footprint, our impact on society, our footprint on community is a global footprint, not just environmentally, but in terms of community issues.

Presenter:

What are the global themes for KPMG’s corporate citizenship agenda?

We set ourselves an overall theme of supporting sustainable communities. Nearly two billion people in our world are struggling to get through every single day. Now we at KPMG are not a non-governmental organization, we are not a development agency. But what we’ve discovered in all the research work is that actually most of the problem now is not lack of money but lack of the best ways to apply the money to deliver the most secure outcomes. How do you ensure that money given by governments, by individuals through charities, is spent well and really gets to its target and achieves the best outcomes? Now that’s where we can back international development options and so we’re partnering with a number ofdevelopment organizations to achieve that. That’s strand number one. Strand number two is on climate change and sustainable environmental practice. We’re asking every one of our member firms within the next few years to become carbon neutral. We’re saying to every one of our member firms, “in detail, assess, audit, evaluate and value your energy use and your carbon footprint. See if you can get your carbon footprint down to zero.”

And thirdly, we’re saying, after we’re saying international developments and we’re saying environment climate change. Thirdly, we’re saying, “In you national practices, in your country, in your town, in your city, get involved with the frontline organizations who are meeting society’s needs. Whatever they are, look on the kpmg.com web site, see the package of examples that we set out there very carefully. Forty (B) to 50 different projects from round the world, show different things KPMG member firms are doing. Look at all of those and say, ‘What could we do to make a difference in our city and our country.’ And we only have to go and knock on their door and they will ask us in with great joy.”

Presenter:

Lord Hastings, I know you’ve just touched on this, but which leading international development organizations are you currently working with?

Well, we’ve decided as the international organization, to partner with five main international development agencies. And I’ll just name what they are, and say a little bit about the rationale. We decided that we would partner with the Save the Children International organization. We’d partner with UNICEF, with World Vision, with the Millennium Cities initiative dimension of the UN Development Program and with the Global Fund for Aids, Malaria and TB. Now we’ve gone for those five partnerships because they give us a rich spread. So we’ve got organizations that are in the direct frontline delivery mode and other organizations, like the Global Fund for Aids, Malaria and TB, which delivers resources, hard cash, and lots of it, to the frontline, to the organizations who are making a difference on the ground. Now by partnering with those five, we’ve given ourselves a huge scope to allow as many of our people around the world to make a difference. And a lot of those organizations are saying to us, “You can make a difference from your desk.” Because there’s areas of work that need to be done, it might be assessing a strategy, it might be looking at a marketing plan, it might be looking at a better way for sorting out the financial operations of a frontline charity. It might be joining a visit program, as some of our people do, from anywhere in the world visiting other parts of the world and getting actively involved in frontline action. Any one of these things will be possible through the five partner program. We hope that as many people as possible in KPMG will join the fight. We want to make a difference to the poverty in the world, we want our people to feel proud about making a difference. If we can achieve that through these partnerships, we’ll have shifted the needle quite somewhat.

Presenter:

I know you’ve already touched on this throughout this interview, but just to clarify. How are you identifying what businesses can do at a global level to help achieve a UN millennium development goal to help the very poorest people in our society?

I think the first thing I’d say to that is that all of us need to be very intelligent and well-informed about the reality of where global poverty and need really is. In the same way as we need to be about environmental and climate change issues. The changes we’ve seen, literally in the last two years about environmental awareness, to a large extent driven by films, by Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth film, by documentaries on television all across the world, by businesses joining together to say, “We have a responsibility”. Not just the extracted businesses. Not just the oil companies and energy producing companies, but companies which consume huge amounts of energy. As we’ve seen in the environment case, we’ve seen huge amounts of intelligence, awareness, upskilling. We need our people to be equally intelligent about those things.

Presenter:

Thank you, Lord Hastings. Is there anything further you’d like to add which hasn’t been addressed in the interview?

I think the only thing I’d like to add to this is that what we’re trying to do in KPMG is raise the bar very high indeed. We’re saying that corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility, whichever term you use, isn’t just about occasional involvement or giving money. It’s about how I put myself into the place of being a solution, an answer, a provider, as it were almost an active intelligent carer. And how can I strategically make an impact, both in terms of my direct, day to day, hands-on involvement, my support for agencies, my involvement in charities, my backing of NGOs, my personal philanthropy, my giving, my volunteering, my time and the organizations support of that. But how can I also look at the big questions facing the world and realize that I’m not cut off from being part of the solution. I am part of the answer.

Presenter:

Thank you, Lord Hastings.

Join us next month for the next podcast in the series.