Accenture, Inc.

Being A Responsible Business for Our People

Project Commitment to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

INTRODUCTION

Accenture is fuelled by their purpose to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and at the heart of that purpose are their people who innovate and deliver meaningful impact to their clients and the communities they support. As a responsible business, they are committed to ensuring the welfare and continuous development of their people. This commitment was amplified by the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a response to the sudden lockdown restrictions imposed in March 2020, Accenture Philippines had to urgently transition to remote working at incredible speed and scale. Their driving goal went beyond sustaining critical business operations and they strove to ensure the well-being and personal safety of their more-than-55,000 employees as they shifted to a new working reality, while holistically supporting their employees’ needs including strengthening their mental resilience.

FRAMEWORK AND STRATEGY

To transform their ways of working in weeks during the onset of the pandemic in the Philippines, the company set out as One Accenture and moved with agility to ensure the safety of their people, enable them to perform their functions, and contribute to crucial nation-building efforts to lift their communities. Several teams within Accenture—Human Resources, Legal, Workplace, Marketing and Communications, Business Resiliency, Infrastructure Services, People Mobility, Procurement—collaborated and moved together to transition and quickly adapt to this new hybrid working model. This collective response to COVID-19 was inspired by their vision of an Elastic Digital Workplace. Accenture’s Elastic Digital Workplace solution enables a highly extendable workplace environment that allows companies to quickly scale and dynamically adapt to changing business needs based on global and local conditions, looking into the key dimensions of Culture and Adoption, Elastic Collaboration, Virtual Work Environment, Seamless Networking, Distributed Continuity, and Adaptive Security.

ACHIEVEMENT AND IMPACT

Through their sustained focus on their commitment coupled with their leading with care and compassion, the company turned the massive challenge of COVID-19 into meaningful change for their people. They boosted employee confidence to emerge as a stronger, more resilient, and truly human organisation. They rapidly shifted to remote working across 21 facilities in as quickly as one week. To ensure the well-being of their employees, they amplified their mental health initiatives via their Thriving Mind programme, mental health webinars, and psychological first aid training. They continued to hire new employees through fully digitised recruitment, onboarding, and transition process. Employees’ learning opportunities increased with over 2 million training hours rendered by their people in 2020. Their impact extended to the communities they support. Their digital upskilling initiatives—Skills to Succeed Academy and Near—Hire Training (NHT) Program—reached over 22,400 learners and more than 600 marginalised job seekers, respectively.

FUTURE DIRECTION

Creating sustainability in an increasingly digital, post-COVID-19 world requires combining the best of technology and human ingenuity. In line with this, the company recently launched the “Future of Working in Accenture”, taking a holistic look at how they can further improve the way they innovate through technology, providing the best human-centric employee experience in today’s evolving work environment. This includes developing talent and culture programmes to sustain a frictionless workspace through 2025 and beyond. They are planning a slow, deliberate return to office by taking into consideration the safety of their employees, security of the company’s facilities, and seamless continuity of service for their clients. They also recognise the value and need to continue adopting hybrid ways of working as necessary in the future. To ensure the safety of their people, they are rolling out a comprehensive vaccination plan for their employees and their eligible dependents aligned with government guidance and safety protocols.

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud, and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialised skills across more than 40 industries, they offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology, and Operations services—all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centres. Their 569,000-people workforce delivers on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. They embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for their clients, people, shareholders, partners, and communities.

www.accenture.com