What’s next
We are aiming to further increase diversity and the female share across the entire workforce and in leadership positions. Increasing the female share in our governance bodies to 30% by 2025 and maintain the average learning hours per employee.
Societal Value
We continue to increase the reach and impact of our global Corporate Responsibility programs like EY Ripples and EY Cares. Our aim is to give back to the communities as much as possible through these initiatives. We believe that a better working world is one where EY employees and our wider communities come together and jointly contribute to improve common good. Through EY Ripples, we engage in skill-based volunteering projects that give employees opportunities to apply their skills, knowledge, and capabilities to positively impact lives. It unites our regional Corporate Responsibility programs as well as collaborations with clients, NPOs and NGOs, impact networks and many others to:
1. Support the next generation workforce
2. Working with impact entrepreneurs
3. Accelerating environmental sustainability
We further engage with institutions that are working towards the Sustainable Development Goals and joined the UN Global Compact Network Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 2021.
What’s next
We are aiming to positively impact 300’000 lives with our EY Ripples projects by engaging 800 of our people by 2025.
Reducing our environmental impact
As a leading professional services firm, EY Switzerland strives to incorporate environmental concerns into its strategic decision making to drive sustainable and inclusive growth. We have developed our environmental agenda and priorities in alignment with the environmental commitment outlined in EY’s Global Environmental Statement.
We announced our carbon ambition in January 2021, after having become carbon neutral in 2020. The ambition sets a bold target of reaching net zero by 2025 by reducing, offsetting and removing more carbon from the atmosphere than we emit. A major step toward achieving this goal and delivering on our seven-point action plan was to become globally carbon negative as of October 2021. Now, we are embracing the challenge and opportunity of continuing to grow our business while working towards being net zero by 2025 — and supporting our clients to do the same. To achieve net zero, eliminate all avoidable emissions and remove the remaining emissions by 2025, EY worked with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to develop and validate a science-based target to reduce the total emissions by 40% across the entire organization.
EY Switzerland and Liechtenstein greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions:
What’s next
EY Switzerland, in alignment with EY’s global climate target, has committed to reduce its GHG emissions by the same amount by 2025. We will further reduce our business travel emissions, with a target to achieve a 35% reduction by FY25 against our FY19 baseline. While we recognize that many EY services require an element of business travel, we also know that air travel is where they have the most significant negative impact on the environment, accounting for approximately 50% of our carbon emissions in FY19. In achieving and maintaining this 40% reduction by FY25, EY Switzerland will avoid emitting more than 3’300 tons of CO2 from FY19 to FY25.
Financial Value
We have generated a total revenue of 552.5 million Swiss francs in the financial year 2021, thus grown by 2.4% compared to the previous year. We maintained a leading position among our peers despite the challenging times. This success comes with responsibility. We realized slight revenue growth but have also been able to continue to create a positive impact on our clients and communities.
Looking ahead
While this report looks at EY Switzerland’s efforts during the financial year 2021 (ended 30 June 2021), we are also continually focused on what more we can do. Organizations continue to face complex and inter-related challenges – climate; diversity and social equity efforts; improving resilience, trust and transparency in operations; and using technology – data, AI, blockchain – in new, responsible and different ways. These organizations will be reviewing their customer expectations and experiences; acquiring and divesting; and continuing to invest in people and resources. Communities around the world will also look to recover, regroup and adapt. And governments around the world will make investments to improve infrastructures and develop new regulations and frameworks.
This is an increasingly dynamic moment and even as we discuss challenges, we see the opportunities ahead. It is a moment that requires everyone’s contribution and calls for new investment and a determined focus on areas that we believe can catalyze recovery, improve agility and provide purposeful growth. That is why we are committed to invest in our people, capabilities, services, programs and society to help further build trust in the capital markets by strengthening audit quality, including technology-driven innovations in risk and audit procedures to detect and prevent fraud. We will continue to expand our sustainability services and invest to ensure that clients and EY people benefit from leading technology.
We know that there is still more we can do, we embrace this challenge, and together we will continue to Build a better working world.
Summary
EY Switzerland has defined an ambitious ESG strategy and we are committed to transparently report on our progress against set targets. We have come a long way on our sustainability journey in creating long-term value, also being aware there is still more we can do. We embrace this challenge and look forward to co-shaping our own sustainability journey together with all our stakeholders. We further commit to continuing to support our clients on their own transformation journeys and together we will continue to live up to EY’s purpose of Build a better working world.
