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.

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 the recognised impact of Wellbeing initiatives Citizenship volunteering days and many more.

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.

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 in Careers (EiC) team run annual insight programmes: Explore BDO for school students who meet social mobility criteria, and a programme for university students from Black Heritage backgrounds. These programmes provide participants with a variety of sessions to meet colleagues from across the firm and can lead them to joining the firm upon completion.

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, along with ICAEW and other top accountancy firms, founded Rise in 2021 to aid social mobility by supporting UK secondary schools located in areas of disadvantage. As a proud founding partner, our shared vision is to raise the aspirations of young people and develop the skills they’ll need in their future careers, whatever roles or industries they choose. Rise helps us to connect with our local communities, improve diversity within future talent pools, and widen the career prospects of young people.  

Enactus Next Gen Leaders

Enactus have enjoyed success driving social change in the schools’ space already, having run the Next Gen Leaders programme since 2017 in the North of England. An already established network of schools in Leeds and West Yorkshire, serve as an incredible foundation for the work we will embark on as part of this partnership, while working to scale up efforts across the UK over the coming three years.  

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.

Chapter One

We are signed up to help primary school pupils in London and Bradford struggling to read. Our volunteers help students with their reading, 30 minutes every week during the academic year.