Global Goals Week is an annual week of action, awareness, and accountability for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals are a universal call to action to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, addressing global challenges we face, tying into our ESG movement.
At KPMG, we encourage our people to come together, collaborate and connect with our communities to make a difference. Find out more about each of the Sustainable Development Goals below and how we're working towards this collective global impact.
We provide significant pro-bono work for some of Ireland's most dedicated charities and voluntary bodies who work towards alleviating poverty, including Focus Ireland who work with people across Ireland that are homeless or are at risk of losing their home and UNICEF who work in more than 190 countries and territories to reach the most disadvantaged children and adolescents to protect the rights of children.
Last year, colleagues across the firm raised funds for organisations working to reduce poverty including Peter McVerry Trust, GOAL, Focus Ireland, Simon Community plus more.
Our pro-bono programme provides notable service to charities working towards this goal which is about creating a world free of hunger by 2030.
Benefiting charities include Concern who work towards ending hunger, malnutrition and increasing agricultural productivity in Developing countries, FoodCloud who transfers surplus food into opportunities to make the world a kinder place and Feed the Heroes who support Ireland's frontline workers.
We’re proud to support St. Michael's House as the main sponsor of their corporate volunteer programme. They provide a range of services to help people with intellectual disabilities in the greater Dublin Area. Hundreds of our people volunteer with the charity each year.
Our people also volunteer with National Council for the Blind Ireland with their befriending programme, helping to alleviate loneliness of service users. We provide pro-bono services to organisations like Against Malaria Foundation, Human Dignity Foundation, Irish Heart Disease Awareness and more charities working towards this goal.
Last year, employee fundraising and firm donations went towards charities including A Lust for Life, Arc Cancer Support, Breast Cancer Ireland, Bumbleance, Cancer Focus NI, Children's Health Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Ireland, Irish Cancer Society, Pieta House, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and more.
Education is one of the key pillars of our Corporate Citizenship strategy and we believe it's paramount to developing a society for future success.
Our volunteering programme offers our people the opportunity to give back through educational initiatives with local disadvantaged schools including Time to Read, Time to Count and our Secondary School Mentor Programme, literacy programmes with Children’s Books Ireland, NCI’s Early Learning Initiative, Fighting Words and Kinia, Inclusion Diversity & Equity projects with Children’s Books Ireland like Free To Be Me and Bold Girls, business centric programmes for Primary and Secondary Schools with Junior Achievement Ireland, accountancy grinds and more.
We're proud to support the next generation of female leaders in sport and business. We're a founding member of the 30% Club in Ireland and active on the Professional Services Group, inputting to the 30% Club Flourishing Equally in the Workplace Framework.
We support Going for Growth, a programme for female entrepreneurs which encourages women to accelerate the growth of their business. We were a lead sponsor of the 20x20 campaign, which aimed to increase visibility of women across sport and we continue to support women in sport through our sponsorship of Irish golfer Leona Maguire, and jockey Rachel Blackmore.
We have also set an ambition for 50% of all partner promotions to be women from 2025 and have developed a Gender Action Plan to help us get there.
Access to safe water is the most basic human need for health and well-being and demand for water is rising due to rapid population growth, urbanization and increasing water needs from agriculture, industry, and energy sectors.
We've been monitoring our water usage for many years and since 2019, we've reduced usage by 76%, from 21.8 million litres a year to 5.2 million in 2022. We've implemented a target of 1,000 litres per employee a year, which is well below average home use.
Our Premises team have implemented water conserving measures across offices including aerators, meter inspections, water timers, controlled kitchen, taps and water saving urinals. We're also exploring rainwater harvesting, time limits on showers, enhanced leak detection and live monitoring of usage across our six offices.
We recently announced our commitment to be a net-zero carbon organisation by 2030 and are proud to have maintained carbon neutral status since 2007. We currently green source our electricity and supplement natural gas usage with environmentally friendly biogas and we're trialling the use of HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) to replace fossil fuels for heating purposes.
We also now have a wholesale energy supply agreement in place, whereby we source wholesale market rates as opposed to supplier driven rates, ensuring more affordable energy costs.
We’re partnered with Business in the Community Ireland to provide a mentoring programme for immigrant jobseekers who have a business qualification from their home country. Volunteers take part in 1:1 mentoring, providing CV advice, interview practise and career guidance to help people with the skills and confidence they need to gain employment in a highly challenging climate.
Since 2011, 85% of mentees on the KPMG mentoring programmes made significant progress in their job search by starting employment, enrolling in appropriate training or starting work experience. Our volunteers have also worked with the Irish Red Cross, Ukrainian Centre in Rathmines to provide career buddying sessions with Ukrainian refugees seeking work in Ireland.
How people live, work and access services are vital for Ireland's future. KPMG works across central and local government, healthcare, education, housing, justice and infrastructure – as well as the private and charity sector – to help clients find better ways of working.
We're actively involved in helping Governments and organisations deliver on policy objectives to make Ireland a better place now and into the future.
Our “Sustainable Futures” team provide financial markets, clients and our leaders with clear, comprehensive, high-quality information on the impacts of climate change and are heavily involved in designing and delivering resilient innovation models aimed at supporting economic development, human wellbeing and sustainable ways of working and living.
We've recently teamed up with STEM Passport for Inclusion to provide mentors, on their programme which aims to support 5,000 girls from across Ireland, in disadvantaged schools to achieve a university qualification in 21st Century STEM skills, promoting STEM education and careers to socio- economically disadvantaged girls across Ireland.
We also work with the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities (TCPID), which promotes the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in education and society. We have and continue to hire placements from this programme.
We're working with industry experts to design and deliver our New Build HQ which will be one of the most sustainable office buildings in Ireland, future proofed in terms of amenities, specification, wellbeing, and comfort. The new office will be LEED Platinum.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. LEED provides a framework for healthy, efficient, and cost-saving green buildings. LEED certification is a globally recognised symbol of sustainability achievement and leadership.
We're working with industry experts to design and deliver our New Build HQ which will be one of the most sustainable office buildings in Ireland, future proofed in terms of amenities, specification, wellbeing, and comfort. The new office will be LEED Platinum.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. LEED provides a framework for healthy, efficient, and cost-saving green buildings. LEED certification is a globally recognised symbol of sustainability achievement and leadership.
We've made a commitment to become a net zero organisation by 2030, backed by verified science-based targets. This means, we'll reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 absolute emissions by 80%, by 2030 and we'll reduce our Scope 3 absolute emissions by 30%, by 2030. We have reduced our absolute emissions by 48% since 2019.
Our emissions per full time employee have reduced from 5.6 to 2.35 tonnes in the same period. To hold ourselves accountable for these responsibilities, we’ve brought together our firms Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments under one umbrella, 'Our Impact Plan' which you can read here.
Teams across the firm volunteer with marine environmental charities and complete beach clean ups along the Irish coastline. We partner with An Taisce Clean Coasts and Flossie & The Beach Cleaners who are passionate about saving our seas and sea creatures from the ravages of plastic pollution.
Healthy oceans and seas are essential to human existence and life on Earth and it's essential to conserve and sustainably use them. Yet, human activity is endangering the oceans and seas – the planet’s largest ecosystem.
Since late 2021, we've been leading a team of experts helping the National Parks and Wildlife Service to develop the fourth National Biodiversity Action Plan. We recently became a founding member of 'Business for Biodiversity Ireland' which aims to drive the transition to a nature-positive Irish economy, and we're registered as a business supporter of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan.
We've developed a staff-driven biodiversity working group who have implemented a bug-hotel at our Harbourmaster office and volunteered at the UNESCO Biosphere site and we're capturing early-stage biodiversity design for our new-build HQ.
Last year, our people showed solidarity with Ukraine by donating almost €54,000 to our Ukraine Appeal run in conjunction with UNICEF to provide life-saving support to help children and their families affected by war. The fundraising amount was matched by the firm and a total donation of €108,000 made to UNICEF.
A further €50,000 was donated by the firm to a KPMG worldwide initiative to get critical supplies including medical equipment, medicines, hygiene items, disinfectants and non-perishable foods to the Poland/Ukraine border. Our volunteers also supported Ukrainian refugees in Ireland with career buddy support run in conjunction with the Irish Red Cross Ukrainian Centre in Rathmines.
We're proud to partner with Business in the Community Ireland, Chambers Ireland Sustainable Impact Council, Dublin Chamber and all our partner organisations, charities and community connections who pioneer the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Sustainable Development Goals require a strong commitment to global partnership and cooperation between governments, the private sector, and civil society.
