EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Limited is a Swiss company with registered seats in Switzerland providing services to clients in Switzerland.
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The EY Switzerland Sustainability Report 2022 provides insights into how we create long-term value for all our stakeholders.
In brief
- We are committed to creating long-term value for our stakeholders: EY clients, people and society.
- The EY Switzerland Sustainability Report 2022 outlines our sustainability strategy and commitments, describes main actions and initiatives and highlights progress towards set KPIs.
- In adherence with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), we provide detailed information on topics material to our business and our stakeholders.
The past year saw ongoing uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic give way to turbulence from the war in Ukraine and a cascade of knock-on effects. Increasingly volatile markets, supply chain disruption and pressure on energy prices combine with geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic shifts. At the same time, poverty continues to rise and climate change remains the biggest challenge of our times.
Against this background, EY is actively contributing to an economic system that is fairer, more trustworthy and capable of addressing humanity’s most profound challenges. The conviction that this is right inspires us to take ownership of our economic, environmental and societal responsibilities, including by committing to the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Our sustainability commitment is aligned with the EY NextWave strategy. Our purpose of building a better working world serves as our north star and guides all our decisions and actions. The workstreams per strategic pillar encompass activities concerning business operations managed by EY functions and parts of our core business managed by our client-facing teams. The workstreams have articulated targets and respective action plans in place, aiming to create long-term value. Ultimately, we are seeking to contribute to sustainable development. We assessed the material topics against the SDGs at target level and identified that we can especially contribute to the eight goals set out below. EY has the potential to impact those SDGs through our client service delivery, sustainable economic growth, community investment and our role in informing public discourse.
Key actions that EY Switzerland has committed to:
- By financial year 2025, triple our sustainability services related annual turnover.
- By financial year 2025, EY Switzerland will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 40% (across all Scopes 1, 2 & 3), in line with the EY Global Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)-validated 1.5°C degree pathway, compared to 7,804 tCO2e in 2019.
- By financial year 2025, 75% of our main Swiss suppliers by revenue will engage in the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), compared to 21% in 2022.
- By financial year 2025, EY Switzerland will positively impact 300,000 lives (cumulatively 2,183,666) through EY Ripples (skill-based volunteering) projects, compared to 57,000 lives impacted in 2019.
- By financial year 2025, EY Switzerland will improve gender balance in our governance bodies to 30%, compared to 26% in 2022.
- By financial year 2025, EY Switzerland will take corrective actions to obtain the platinum medal by the EcoVadis Sustainability Rating, compared to a gold medal in 2022.
Measuring our progress
Transparency is a crucial component in building and maintaining trust. This is especially true as our business makes long-term commitments – to achieve our carbon ambition, increase diversity, equity, and inclusiveness in our workforce, and contribute to the prosperity of the communities in which we operate. Measuring and assessing our progress is critical to understand whether EY is on track against those commitments. Our EY Switzerland Sustainability Report 2022, adhering to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards 2021, covers the reporting period 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022. The Sustainability Report sets out the parameters of our sustainability strategy and explains how we are living up to our purpose of building a better working world. We are holding ourselves accountable by disclosing how we are creating long-term value and what actions we commit to going forward.
How we are creating long-term value
For EY people
Today, we are about 2,895 people strong across 11 offices in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Embedding an inclusive culture enables our people to unfold their potential and helps us create the highest performing teams to deliver high-quality service to our clients. We empower our people to adopt the right mindsets and skills to navigate what’s next, become the transformative leaders the world needs, pursue careers as unique as they are, and build their own exceptional EY experiences. We enable our people to develop and grow through 360-degree performance feedback, comprehensive learning and development and career management across technical and non-technical domains along EY’s transformative leadership framework. To develop a gender-balanced workforce, we have implemented various programs and policies. Today, the number of female employees stands at around 41% and we have almost 34% female representation in managerial positions. We have introduced the Parents@EY framework and provide additional maternity and paternity leave.
For EY clients
Topics like digital transformation, recovery from the pandemic, geopolitical instability, the instable macroeconomic environment, distorted value chains, climate change and sustainability are some of the biggest challenges companies and society face today. Through our work, we help business create value for sustainability as well as helping sustainability create value for business, reframing how business approaches sustainability and putting it at the center of how value is created.
Value-led sustainability brings the collective power of our organization’s services and solutions to support clients as they implement and accelerate sustainability strategies and transformation. It also serves the basis for communicating and reporting impact.
We engage with our clients to help them grow, optimize and protect value through providing high-quality services and capabilities that are developed through a client-centric approach. With a legacy in sustainability services spanning more than 20 years, EY Sustainability combines deep technical skills across a breadth of business issues. This includes delivering technology-based solutions through alliances with Enablon, IBM, Microsoft and SAP. We deliver end-to-end solutions, reframing strategies, accelerating transitions and implementing the right governance, reporting and operations processes to build trust and recognition with our clients’ stakeholders.
Our teams provide sector-specific solutions in areas such as sustainability strategy, decarbonization (EYCarbon), sustainable supply chains and products, ESG reporting and technology, ESG risk and opportunity management, energy transition and renewables, green infrastructure, green tax, mobility, cultural transformation and sustainable finance. We continue to develop technology, products and services to help EY clients further embed sustainability into their strategies.
We operate in a demanding, complex and increasingly globalized business environment. With new challenges each day, the choices we make define our reputation as individuals and as an organization. EY strives to build a culture of quality and trust that emphasizes transparency, independence and accountability of all professionals. We rely on our values, our purpose and our professional standards — anchored in our sound governance structure — to guide us in our day-to-day choices and decisions. Read more about how we uphold our values and professional standards below:
For our society
Driving inclusive growth is at the heart of our purpose and shapes our approach toward creating positive societal impact in our communities. We believe in building a better working world, where everyone can contribute to and share the benefits of sustainable economic growth. When we look at the world around us today, we see societal challenges everywhere – issues such as climate change, deepening inequality, growing unemployment, lack of opportunity for young people and low trust in institutions. At EY, we feel a responsibility to utilize our knowledge, skills, experience and global convening power in finding better answers and realizing better outcomes to these challenges.
We run corporate responsibility (CR) programs and initiatives to extend the value of our knowledge, skills and experiences to the people in our local communities and wider society in which we operate. Such focus areas include impact entrepreneurs and social enterprises, i.e., those accelerating quality jobs creation and affordable access to basic goods and services for the next-generation workforce. We also inspire our people to embrace responsible consumption and decision making to accelerate the environmental sustainability of our operations and value chain. We are focusing on the following three areas to create societal value:
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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 the 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, in alignment with EY’s global climate target, has committed to reducing its GHG emissions by the same amount by 2025.
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Financial value
We have generated total revenue of 623 million Swiss francs in the financial year 2022, representing growth of 12.8% compared to the previous year. We maintained a leading position among our peers despite the challenging times. This success comes with responsibility. We realized double-digit revenue growth but have also been able to continue to create a positive impact on our clients and communities.
Looking ahead
Looking ahead, FY23 will be pivotal in deciding the future path of the global EY organization. We have invited our partners to vote on our proposal to separate into two distinct organizations. One would be a simplified, more agile global network of multidisciplinary member firms committed to assurance, tax and advisory services. The other would be a new global corporate organization comprising Consulting, Tax, Strategy and Transactions, and managed services. It would mean more choice for clients for both audit and advisory 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.
Summary
EY Switzerland is committed to executing its sustainability strategy and transparently reports on its progress against set targets with this Sustainability Report. The Sustainability Report applies the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standard 2021 and describes our sustainability commitments, elaborates on progress towards those commitments, and discloses the performance in the past financial year against set KPIs and our material topics. Acknowledging that the targets consider a short-term outlook, we are currently working on setting ambitions for the longer run. We are looking forward to co-shaping our own sustainability journey as well as that of our clients.