Accenture

Accenture has an unwavering commitment to equality and justice for all, and zero tolerance for racism and hate of any kind. We have set new goals to increase the representation of our Black, African and Caribbean colleagues in the UK by 2025. We believe these goals will help make Accenture more inclusive, diverse and representative of the communities where our people are living and working. By 2025, we will: Increase the representation of our Black colleagues from 4% to 7% More than double the number of our Black managing directors.

We designed and launched our new mandatory ‘We Stand Together Against Racism’ training, which helps our people identify, speak up and report racism wherever and whenever it happens. This builds on our unconscious bias training that was mandatory for all managing directors in 2019 and all of our people in 2020. The ‘We Stand Together Against Racism’ training defines racism, explains how it can appear in the workplace and provides guidance on how to safely respond if someone witnesses a racist incident or microagression. Throughout the course, our people heard from Accenture leaders about our ongoing journey for equality and a workplace free from any form of racism—whether it be harassment or discrimination based on race.

The training also highlights the importance of speaking up about racism and reinforces our commitment to zero tolerance for any retaliation when racist behaviour is reported. In addition to the training we reviewed and significantly enhanced our processes and ethics hotline to ensure our people feel comfortable reporting racism and do not fear retaliation. All Helpline submissions are received by an independent team and handled confidentially. In most geographies, our people have the option to proceed anonymously, if they prefer.

For us to truly embed inclusion and diversity and sustainability in everything we do, we need to start at the top and ensure these areas are embedded into our overall business strategy. In recognition of the importance of these areas, we have appointed three roles on our UK and Ireland (UKI) Executive team. Working with our employee networks and business leaders, our Executive Sponsors will be responsible for developing our inclusion & diversity strategy in its broadest sense, driving innovative and ground-breaking solutions to forward our inclusion and diversity agenda.

They will represent inclusion & diversity at the executive level to drive influence and accountability and ensure consistent integration with our UK and Irleland business strategy. People and Diversity Executive Sponsor will be responsible for employee experience, inclusion and diversity, and talent strategy, looking at ways we can innovate to improve how we all work and live. Working closely with our business leaders, the People and Diversity Executive Sponsor will define our UK and Ireland people strategy and will work closely with our Accent on networks (aka employee resource groups), Ally programmes and external groups to drive advocacy and spearhead sustainable inclusion for all our people and the intersectionality that they represent.

Ethnicity Executive Sponsor will work closely with the People and Diversity Executive Sponsor, will shine an important light on ethnicity, focused on increasing our ethnic and racial development and representation across all levels of the organisation as we put our drive for workplace equality for all right at the heart of business.

STEP 1
Accenture CEO, Julie Sweet has publicly committed to being an active voice in speaking out against all forms of racism, bigotry and hate.

STEP 2
Continue to invite external perspectives and advice on meaningful actions that can help us to accelerate our pace of change. Towards the end of 2020 we commissioned an external US legal firm to review our internal processes for racial biases.

STEP 3
Leadership to have open conversations with clients and partners on inclusion and diversity.

STEP 1
Listening to colleagues is one way we can show our care and concern, and this continuous learning remains critical to developing empathy, speaking up, having respectful dialogue when sharing our points of view and being stronger together.

STEP 2
Building trust that Accenture is a place where everyone recognises what racism and discrimination is, and anyone can speak up safely, without fear of retaliation.

STEP 3
Increasing transparency about investigations into discrimination incidents—how they work, what our people can expect and who they can contact, for all parties involved.

STEP 4
What is important is that all our people feel seen, safe, connected and courageous in our work environment.

STEP 1
Developing and executing comprehensive plans that include recruiting, retention, staffing, sponsorship, advancement and external partnerships.

STEP 2
Monitor ethnic representation across all races, to help ensure we maintain our diverse representation at all levels, while making progress in the areas where we have significant gaps. Monitoring our progress ensures that we continue to self examine and scrutinize our approach, ultimately asking ourselves whether our strategy is helping to fulfil what we set out to achieve and if not, enable us to reevaluate our this strategy.