Summary
Tackling climate change is not a choice, it’s billions of them. When it comes to our emissions as a firm, the travel choices our people make have a significant impact. To create a better way of working that sustains our future, we have to transform, and we must start by changing our individual actions. That’s what sustainable delivery is all about.
Our Sustainable Delivery Clause is just one of a number of measures that help drive progress towards our WorldClimate target to reduce business travel emissions by 50 per cent per full-time employee by FY30, compared with FY19. This year, we exceeded this ambition, achieving a 64 per cent reduction.
Our people have been sharing their experiences…
With over 75,000 people across Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE), the choices we make when delivering our services matter. We’re inspiring and empowering our people to own the change, and work together with our clients to put sustainability at the heart of everything we do. To formalise this commitment, and to make sustainable working our default way of doing business, we are introducing a Sustainable Delivery Clause into our client contracts and engagement letters.
Our people are our greatest asset and we want them to be role models in making sustainable choices such as going digital-first to reduce emissions from business travel. We are equipping them with smart tools to help them deliver sustainable client engagements – for example, web-based travel emissions calculator, checklists and frameworks designed to help with sustainable choices and options such as the best approach for virtual collaboration, or the most sustainable travel mode where there is a need to meet clients in person.
We are driving steady progress towards our WorldClimate commitments - by embedding sustainable delivery in how we work with clients and empowering our people to make sustainable choices. There is a lot to feel proud of and growing momentum around our transformation - but there’s still a lot to do. So, we’ll continue to work collectively to put sustainability at the heart of everything we do.
Smruti Naik-Jones
Chief Sustainability Officer, Deloitte in UK & NSE
“Our public sector client aspires to be a leader in environmental sustainability, including managing their Scope 3 emissions," says Ian O'Brien, Senior Manager at Deloitte UK Consulting. "As part of our collaboration, we agreed to track and report monthly on the emissions of our project. We introduced a KPI reporting template and used the travel emissions calculator and other tools to understand our impact. The Sustainable Delivery Clause is bringing this sentiment and transparency to other clients as well.”
“We are helping many of our clients on their way to achieve sustainable business models. This often means making difficult decisions. I believe it is important for us as advisors to walk the talk. Using our Sustainable Delivery Framework is a great way to achieve this. It empowers us to work together with our clients in a way which is not just convenient but also sustainable. To talk about how we can use remote delivery, public transport and carpooling in a more effective way. And to measure the impact on the back of it!” says Hesse McKechnie, Director, Sustainable Finance, Deloitte Netherlands
By embedding a culture of sustainability, we are enabling creative solutions to be developed in individual countries which can then be scaled up across NSE, amplifying our impact.
We’re working across the 30 countries of our NSE firm to bring to life a variety of locally driven initiatives that accelerate the pace towards our collective goals. This includes piloting activities to drive engagement, implementing new tools, educating and empowering our leaders to initiate conversations with our clients and ensure that sustainability is part of every discussion we have.
We’re leveraging our NSE Climate Champion network, consisting of 500+ people, to embed sustainable delivery into our processes and ways of working across the firm.
Deloitte Switzerland are leading the way by providing training on the Sustainable Delivery Framework to every team and embedding a Travel Emission Calculator into the take-on process of all client engagements to ensure sustainable travel decisions are always considered as part of the work we deliver. "Changing habits can be a formidable challenge, but the path to success lies in our commitment to educating ourselves about the sustainability impact of our actions, and then having the courage to change our actions for the better, even if the transition is uncomfortable. In the past year, we've empowered 50% of our people with Sustainable Service Delivery training, and our unwavering resolve is to extend this knowledge across the entire organization, propelling us toward a greener and more sustainable future," says Liza Engel, Chief Sustainability Officer, Deloitte Switzerland.
In Belgium, an Intelligent Travel Booking System has been implemented that has transformed travel behaviours. “The travel online booking system utilises cutting-edge technologies to enable user-friendly, sustainable, and intelligent corporate travel reservations” says Annelies Vanrenterghem, WorldClimate Lead, Belgium. “Through one central travel online booking tool, travelers can be guided at the right moment in time through the different elements and prioritise accordingly with informed decisions”. In addition, Belgium continues to implement a policy to reduce CO2 emissions whereby business trips to neighboring countries within a radius of 500 km from Brussels must be taken by train.
We’re leveraging the passion, creativity and influence of our WorldClimate teams and our network across the region to pilot and scale these and other solutions, including bringing the Sustainable Delivery Clause to life and making sustainable delivery our default way of doing business.
“We want to work with our clients to question old ways of doing things and define new approaches that support our respective sustainability journeys - especially addressing our Scope 3 emissions. This is a shared challenge, which is why we intend to tackle it hand-in-hand with our clients.”