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In Good Company: Accenture
- Complete insurance paperwork for HR … Check.
- Get computer login code … Check.
- Attend corporate citizenship session … Huh?
For many new hires, this "to-do" list may seem incongruent, but for Accenture employees, it's just par for the course.
Integrating corporate citizenship throughout a company is challenging for any organization, let alone a company that employs 140,000 globally. Most of Accenture's employees work remotely in the U.S. and nearly 50 countries, yet this does not prevent the global management, technology services and consulting company from bringing its employees together to educate them about the company's social responsibility initiatives. For both new hires in the U.S. and long-time employees around the world, corporate citizenship education modules are company protocol.
Over the past several years, Accenture has implemented corporate citizenship training into both its "new joiner orientation" and one of its quarterly leadership training sessions. Accenture "communities," based geographically, come together to learn about the company's many corporate citizenship activities. For new employees, it is "expectation-setting and lets the new joiners know about the programs and how they can get involved," but the training is also crucial for longtime staff. According to Tiffany Brott, a marketing senior manager who helps run the company's corporate citizenship programs, this training is a way to ensure that existing employees do not lose sight of the importance of corporate responsibility. She says, "We're always evolving, and we want to keep it relevant to our people. We want to keep them involved and engaged."
The new employee session lasts 30-45 minutes and is required of all new hires in the U.S., from recent college graduates to seasoned professionals. The annual training module delves a bit deeper and extends from 90 minutes to two hours. Often, each Accenture "community" will also incorporate other activities into the training, such as group volunteer projects or guest speakers. The core of each session is essentially an overview of corporate citizenship from the global to the local level. "We start macro and bring it down to micro, to what happens in [their] location and ways they can get involved," Brott says.
She continues, "When you have several thousand hired in the U.S. each year, it's a way to really help them understand our corporate citizenship program. It sets the culture of community involvement and responsible citizenship from the moment they walk in the door." The sessions cover everything from employee recruitment and retention to the business value of corporate citizenship. "[As a professional service firm], our people are our product," Brott explains. "They deliver their value to our clients, so it's important that they understand what we're all about, that they're excited, and that they reflect that to our clients."
Today this proves particularly important because, increasingly, current and prospective clients ask about Accenture's corporate citizenship credentials. "Post-Enron, [clients] are not only concerned about their own behavior, they're also concerned about the behavior of the companies they engage with." And as offshore competition grows, Accenture's corporate citizenship profile helps differentiate it from its competitors.
Accenture employees are paying attention, too. Since these education modules have been in place, Brott says the company has seen a significant increase in the number of employees that agree with the statement, "I believe Accenture is a good corporate citizen" – which the company asks as part of its annual employee survey. She says, "We've seen a four percentage point rise in the number of people who agree with that statement in each of the last three years since we've had a more robust communications plan. We attribute a lot of that to being more visible. We communicate with our employees more and in a smarter manner."
The emphasis on communication and integration has also helped spawn a more cross-functional program within Accenture. "It pushed us to be more actively engaged. It helped to get all those different groups – HR, diversity, procurement, marketing – out of our silos a bit and communicating and collaborating more with each other about our programs."
Essentially, Accenture's education modules for new and ongoing employees have helped integrate its corporate citizenship values throughout the company. Brott says, "It's moved beyond balloons and t-shirts; it's really about embedding corporate citizenship in your organization."
Read more about Accenture's programs at www.accenture.com/community.
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