Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)

Why are the environment and society important to BDO?

Positive and sustainable performance is imperative to demonstrate our impact on the people and planet around us. It’s how we are, and will be, judged to be a responsible business. For you it’s the opportunity to build on the strength of BDO to help people, businesses and society flourish.

Environment

We all have a role to play in protecting, preserving, and renewing our resources so that the way we live our lives today is sustainable for future generations. That means taking action on climate change. That’s why we've made a commitment to be Net-Zero by 2050, with a near-term target to halve our overall emissions by 2030. Our journey to Net-Zero involves making changes to how we travel for business, buy goods and services and work, at home or in the office.

Read more in our Environmental Impact Report.

Social

Here our priority is to empower our people and utilise our skills and resources to have the best social impact. We encourage our 8,000 individuals to share their experiences and skills to make a difference - through ‘Be Yourself’ and Wellbeing initiatives, and Citizenship volunteering days.

Governance

We continuously monitor, measure and report on our ESG ambition areas. Our dedicated Executive Group oversees our strategy, and we have a dedicated ESG and Sustainability team ensuring real progress is made against our various agendas.

Understand more about our governance in our Transparency report.

A purpose-filled career

Being a good corporate citizen doesn’t just happen when we take our ten Citizenship days. As auditors, tax professionals and business advisers, we play an important role in both the UK economy and society. We identify and promote the issues that the entrepreneurially-spirited, ambitious businesses of the UK face through our Rethink campaign.

ReThink

Rethink has helped our teams to have real business conversations with manufacturers, retailers, software companies, real estate developers, building societies, tech and media companies, law firms, private wealth individuals or private equity companies about sustainability and how to ‘Rethink’ how they operate in a post-pandemic world.

Did you know?

In December 2021, BDO in the UK made a commitment to go Net Zero by 2050. Since then, we’ve had our targets validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which follows the latest climate science and has the aim of limiting global temperature rises to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A transition to Net-Zero isn’t easy. Even with both our near-term 2030 and long-term 2050 targets in place, making significant reductions will take time and the effort of all our employees, partners, clients and suppliers. We believe that by making achievable, realistic commitments now, we can have a real impact on the environment while continuing to support the needs of our people and the businesses we work with.

To achieve our target, we are tackling three core areas: the goods and services we buy, the ways in which we work and business travel.

Find out more about our Net-Zero commitment here.

Access to opportunity

Social mobility is about ensuring the opportunities open to an individual are not dependent on their economic and social background. At BDO, we believe where you start in life should not determine your future. Here, everyone can develop to their full potential regardless of their background, their parent’s income, or their education.

Our initiatives

We’re committed to reducing workplace barriers, designing opportunities to level the playing field and broadening our talent pipeline. To accelerate progress we continue to collaborate with other accountancy and professional services firms to give our people a chance to get involved and give back.

Early Careers

The Early Careers (EC) team are running ring-fenced insight programmes: Explore BDO is for school students who meet the social mobility criteria, and there is a programme for university students from Black Heritage backgrounds. In total we host around 60 students each summer, providing a variety of virtual sessions which enabled participants to meet colleagues from across the firm.

Access Accountancy

Access Accountancy is a collaboration of more than 25 professional services firms dedicated to improving access to the accountancy profession in the UK. We work together with other member firms on a series of commitments, including arranging quality placements for school students that meet social mobility markers, participating in working groups and workshops.

Rise

We have been working with the top accountancy firms and ICAEW on an outreach project RISE, targeting secondary schools in social mobility cold spots across the UK. The aim is to support students with the skills and aspirations they need for their future careers, whatever roles or sectors they choose to go into.

City of London Social Mobility Taskforce

A new taskforce has been launched to improve socio-economic diversity at senior levels in financial and professional services across the UK. BDO’s Sarah Hillary, Partner – Digital, Risk and Advisory Services, was appointed to support the incredibly important work of this Taskforce in her position on the Advisory Board.

Social mobility charity partnerships

We have a number of charity and school partnerships that tackle social inequality. From running competitions, mentoring, workshops, CV writing and mock interviews, our people use their citizenship days to make a difference for the communities in which we live and work.

Teach First charity partnership

We're working with the charity Teach First to help improve social mobility within accountancy. The partnership will see us delivering inspiring workshops in schools in disadvantaged areas, coaching school leaders and investing in the charity to support their ongoing work to create lasting change through investing in the recruitment and training of quality teachers.