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SUSTAINABILITY

We believe every business must be a sustainable business

We help our clients advance their environmental, social and governance goals by connecting sustainability to their transformations; operate our business with a strong commitment to the environment, ethics and human rights; and work to create value in communities around the world.

100%

renewable electricity across our offices, achieving our goal

82%

of our key suppliers* have disclosed emissions targets

4.3M

people equipped with skills toward employment or entrepreneurship

*Key suppliers are defined as vendors are represent a significant portion of our 2019 Scope 3 emissions.

Supply chain

To drive our culture of responsible buying, we leverage our size and scale to advocate for supply chains that are more sustainable and inclusive.

Procurement Plus

Our overarching buying approach, Procurement Plus, informs every aspect of our supply chain, and helps us build stronger partnerships based in ethical behaviors, transparency, agility and inclusivity.

Our ethical procurement strategy

Payment certainty

  • We realize the economic certainty that prompt payments can provide a supplier, whether a Fortune 500 company or a small- or medium-sized enterprise.
  • In the United Kingdom, we are a signatory to the Prompt Payment Code, which requires a continual focus on ensuring that we pay our suppliers on time, within the payment terms agreed. We consistently make more than 95% of our U.K. payments within 60 days, as required by the code.

 

Supplier Inclusion & Sustainability

Our award-winning Supplier Inclusion & Sustainability (SI&S) Program guides how we work with suppliers to promote environmental sustainability, human rights and supplier inclusion & diversity. The program, which has a global scope of 22 countries, was developed to promote the inclusion of companies owned by people who have been historically excluded from the labor market.

Sustainable Procurement Hub

The Hub allows us to assess and track our suppliers’ performance in environmental sustainability, human rights, supplier inclusion & diversity and ethics and compliance.

50+

The Hub is available in more than 50 countries

~5,000

We conducted ~5,000 sustainability assessments

Promoting supplier engagement

We believe supporting our suppliers in their own sustainability journey is a key element of our responsibility buying culture and our responsibility towards our suppliers.

We are collaborating with the Supply Chain Decarbonization Suite team to pilot an end-to-end solution that enables our suppliers to accelerate and scale decarbonization and other sustainability efforts across their value chains.

Supplier Environmental Sustainability

Carbon disclosure

We expect our suppliers to prioritize environmental sustainability and provide updates on their initiatives, goals and impact.

Accenture Supplier Eco Summit

In May 2023, we brought together climate thought leaders, sustainability practitioners and suppliers to discuss how to transform value chains by setting goals and initiatives to reduce our collective environmental impact.

 

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Suppliers' environmental targets

Our goal is that 90% of our key suppliers* disclose their environmental targets and actions being taken to reduce emissions by 2025. We are making strong progress—82% of our key suppliers have disclosed targets and 93% have disclosed actions to reduce their emissions.

 

*Key suppliers are defined as vendors that represent a significant portion of our 2019 Scope 3 emissions.

Sustainable Procurement Pledge

To further advance awareness of the positive impact procurement has on sustainability, we have joined forces with the Sustainable Procurement Pledge (SPP), a global nonprofit community of procurement professionals that aims to embed sustainability in their daily activities.

Human rights in our supply chain

Our commitment to human rights is an integral part of our sustainability commitments, and this informs our supply chain and supplier selection. We have dedicated resources to assessing human rights risks in our supply chains and carrying out due diligence processes.

Supplier Inclusion & Diversity

Global Diverse Supplier Development Program

We recognize the opportunity that we have to encourage economic growth and social equity through inclusive procurement practices. By advocating for inclusive procurement practices, we can drive further impact throughout the supplier ecosystem.

Since 2006, we have hosted our global Diverse Supplier Development Program (DSDP), a formal 12-to 18-month training and mentoring program.

In fiscal 2021, we set a goal to graduate 250 diverse suppliers by the end of 2023 and as of November 2023, have reached 256 graduates of our Diverse Supplier Development Program.

DSDP was offered in Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom & Ireland, and the United States.

Diverse spend in key geographies

We monitor our diverse spend with suppliers to understand our progress throughout the year, and we are industry leaders in this space.

UNITED STATES

45%

In fiscal 2023, our U.S. diverse spend was 45%

CANADA

27%

In fiscal 2023, our Canadian diverse spend was 27%

India

28%

Building on our launch of diverse spend reporting in India in fiscal 2022, our fiscal 2023 spend with diverse businesses including small and medium businesses was 28%

In South Africa, we continue to lead the way on supplier inclusion, going above and beyond requirements of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act, maintaining our B-BBEE Level 1 recognition for the 6th consecutive year.

SOUTH AFRICA

75%

In fiscal 2023, our procurement spend with Black women-owned enterprises in South Africa increased to 75%, again exceeding the B-BBEE target of 12%

SOUTH AFRICA

95%

Our spend with Black-owned SMEs was 95%, against a target of 30%

South Africa

98%

Our overall procurement spend in South Africa with Black-owned suppliers increased to 98% in fiscal 2023 from 61% in the previous year, surpassing the target of 50%.

Expanding our reporting on diverse spending

For the first time, we are also reporting diverse spend in Australia, Ireland, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. In fiscal 2023, our spend with diverse businesses was:

AUSTRALIA

4%

    

IRELAND

6%

  

PHILIPPINES

10%

     

UNITED KINGDOM

3%

             

Working with our clients

  • Our Global Supplier Inclusion & Diversity (SI&D) offering helps our clients build and scale their SI&D programs, and increase the amount of dollars spent with diverse suppliers.
  • We help our clients improve the social performance within their ESG agendas by integrating small, medium and diverse suppliers into their supply chains through strategy, consulting, mentorship and technology.
  • Research cited in Supplier.io’s 2022 State of Supplier Diversity Report found that 61% of CEOs are engaged in SI&D, yet corporations are challenged to incorporate it into their supply chains. Our offering provides solutions and intelligence to address these challenges.
  • Our client offering has been shaped by our own disruptive, award-winning initiatives, such as our longstanding DSDP and strong leadership support, to drive organizational change.

The information provided on this site reflects our goals, progress and performance across our global operations during fiscal 2023 
(ended August 31, 2023), unless otherwise noted.