How can value realised today reshape tomorrow?

EY Value Realised 2022 is our annual report on how we’re creating long-term value for our stakeholders — EY people, clients and society.

What does creating long-term value mean? For EY people, it means giving them the experiences, training, skills and support they need to build a career that is unique to them. In FY22, we spent more than US$300 million on training and delivered more than 59 hours of training per person. There are now more than 250 different EY Badges on offer, ranging from AI to sustainability and impact entrepreneurship to supply chain planning. Since the program was launched in 2017, more than 280,000 EY Badges have been awarded.

Creating long-term value for EY people also means keeping them safe. At the outset of the war in Ukraine this year, our immediate focus was on helping EY colleagues and their families who wanted to leave, as well as those who had to, or chose to, stay. EY crisis and mobility teams worked in tandem to provide transport, accommodation, food and medical care. EY member firms have also gone on to collectively raise US$1.8 million to provide additional support for EY people, their families and communities.

In light of the war in Ukraine, the EY global organisation also made the difficult decision to separate the Russian and Belarusian member firms from the global network. This is now complete.

I have been humbled by the many ways EY people came together in support of EY colleagues, as well as the wider community impacted by the war, and I want to thank the EY people and leaders who have been front and center of our efforts in this.

Creating long-term value for society means having a positive impact on the planet and on the communities in which we live and work. We have reduced EY carbon emissions globally by 56% from our FY19 baseline, ensuring that we remain on track for our 2025 net-zero target.

In addition, in FY22, more than 91,000 EY people, from 129 countries, devoted their time and skills on EY Ripples projects, impacting 27 million lives. We have positively impacted more than 81 million lives since the launch of EY Ripples in 2018, and we continue to make good progress toward our ambition to positively impact one billion lives by 2030.

We also work with like-minded organisations — government bodies, non-profits, multinational corporations and impact investors — to achieve together what no single organisation could achieve alone. For example, this year we expanded the relationship with Microsoft to increase social equity in the digital economy, providing training and skills development opportunities to support millions of people to enter or re-enter the workforce or build new businesses by 2025.

For clients we create long-term value by building trust and transparency in business and the capital markets, and helping them to grow, optimise and protect value. We innovate, collaborate globally and embed technology into everything we do — today more than 60,000 technologists, working under the Tech@EY banner help drive technology and data-enabled business transformation for EY clients. We continue to bring the best of EY (service lines, sector knowledge and our ecosystem of alliances) to meet clients’ increasingly complex needs, particularly around their transformation challenges, and help them adjust to a fast-changing and dynamic world.

A record year

Our focus on the value EY member firms create for stakeholders has made us a successful and sustainable organisation, and we’ve experienced exceptional growth this year. The energy and commitment of EY people has led to our highest reported growth in almost two decades, with EY now a US$45.4 billion organisation, growing at 16.4% in local currency.

Measuring and reporting on our progress, beyond the financial results, is an important way for us to hold the organisation accountable to the EY purpose, strategy, ambition and the individual commitments we make to colleagues, clients and society. It also shows us where we need to improve.

In this year’s Value Realised report, we share stories of our far-reaching global impact and the value we are creating — for 365,000 EY people worldwide, for clients in every sector and geography and for the communities in which we live and work.

This year we also expanded our reporting on progress toward realising that value by incorporating increased environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures; using the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council (WEF-IBC) Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics as well as the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC); and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). I am pleased that EY continues to be a participant in the UNGC, and in this report I reaffirm our commitment toward its Ten Principles.

Taken together, EY is in a position of great strength and I’m so proud of all that we have achieved.

Looking ahead

We have an exciting future ahead. As announced at the beginning of September, EY leaders reached the decision to move forward with partner votes to separate into two distinct organisations. One would be a simplified, more agile global network of multidisciplinary member firms committed to assurance, tax and advisory services with all the capabilities required to deliver high-quality audits, serve the public interest, and focus on the CFO agenda and sustainability. The other would be a new global corporate organisation comprising Consulting, the majority of Tax, Strategy and Transactions, and managed services focused on clients’ growth, risk, and transformation agendas, enabled by technology. Partner votes, held over the course of FY23, will determine whether we move forward.

We recommended taking this bold step because we believe this is the way we can better serve EY people, clients, and broader stakeholders in a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine the future of professional services.

With two separate, multidisciplinary organisations, we believe we would create better and more dynamic career opportunities; EY people can learn more, take on new roles, and explore different mobility options.

It would also mean increased access to capital to reinvest in people and client services and solutions, with a laser focus on the issues that matter most to clients and stakeholders.

It would mean more choice for clients for both audit and transformation services, and an even stronger focus on ESG priorities, as well as more opportunities to develop new corporate responsibility programs — such as co-investments in ‘green’ projects — so that we can make an even bigger impact in our communities.

Of course, this proposal represents a significant change. But some things will remain the same. Both organisations will be values-focused and purpose-driven, and both will preserve the strong EY culture and commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness (DE&I), collaboration and teaming.

I am proud of the leadership and bold course EY is charting. I look forward to the opportunities ahead, and to building an even better working world.