Leading from the top

Richard Collier-Keywood
Managing Partner
Transcript

"For PwC, corporate sustainability is core to who we are, what we do and how we do it.

Our PwC in the Community programme has been running and making a real and positive difference for more than fifteen years.

Our investment in environmental management has grown exponentially over the past decade and we've consistently innovated and set the standard for corporate best practice.

And our people strategy has been focused on diversity, development, leadership and talent long before they became fashionable and our commitment has led to the firm winning many awards along the way.

We have achieved a lot over the years. But the Executive Board believe now is the time to step up our efforts and to provide real leadership to our people, to our network and the wider business community on 'what doing the right thing' really entails, to help us to realise our ambition of becoming a truly iconic firm.

We are already putting this strategy into action. In September 2009 our Chairman and Senior Partner, Ian Powell, signed the Copenhagen Communiqué for PwC, because we believe that long term economic prosperity depends on robust low carbon principles.

Working across industries as we do, across the public and private sectors, and with clients who operate globally, our people generally have a good understanding of the issues.

Our task now is to shift our culture to one where sustainability is taken into consideration in everything that we do. That means how we manage our operations, how we deliver our client services and how we influence our wider network.

This will be a huge challenge. To guide our efforts, we have created a formal corporate sustainability Governance Group, which I co-chair with Ian Powell. We have representation from our lines of service, as well as expert advice and guidance from the external marketplace in the form of the widely respected Will Day and Amanda Jordan. The group meets every two months to provide scope and direction to our activities.

We are supported by a steering group and our corporate sustainability team who manage the day-to-day implementation of the strategy.

And we are learning from the expertise of our client facing Sustainability & Climate Change team who provide us with access to leading edge thinking, which we use to inform our internal approach.

They and I want PwC to become the firm that defines best practice.

I am extremely confident that we now have the leadership commitment, strategy and key people in place to help us achieve this ambition and in so doing take a big step towards our goal of becoming the iconic professional services firm."