Download the EY Switzerland Sustainability Report 2022 here:
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.
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View our external awards and recognitions
We are signatory of the diversity charter of Advance — the leading business association for gender equality in Switzerland and a network of more than 120 Swiss-based companies committed to increasing the share of women in management. By signing the charter, EY has committed to maintaining gender balance in business and developing a workplace environment that supports a fair and balanced approach throughout the entire process of female talent hiring and management.
In 2019, we received the Fair-on-Pay label based on the logib analysis reviewed by Comp-on AG and certified by Société Générale de Surveillance SA. The surveillance audit was conducted in 2021 and the certificate was reconfirmed. The label signifies the robust and fair overall average salary definition practice adopted by EY in the previous four years and underlines our firm’s efforts to close biased pay gaps that might exist on an individual level.
We have been awarded the Swiss LGBTI label for our efforts to create an inclusive and appreciative workplace for the LGBTI+ community in 2020. This label is awarded to organizations that are committed to a discrimination-free work environment.
Annually, we participate in the St. Gallen Diversity Benchmarking to assess EY's progress in Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness and compare ourselves with other Swiss companies and the Swiss consulting industry. The results of the 2022 benchmarking show that EY has an above-average share of women at all levels within the consulting industry and also compared to the international banking industry. We also perform better than average in recruiting and promoting female employees in the consulting industry. With this assessment, we not only have a clear view of the facts and figures, but also receive specific recommendations for our recruiting, pipeline management and career planning practices.
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:
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Transparency
We maintain trust and transparency by regularly communicating with relevant stakeholders on how we manage risk, by maintaining independence as auditors and by ensuring sustainable audit quality. We embrace the transparency objectives of the European union’s Regulation 537/2014, which require statutory auditors of public interest entities (PIEs) to publish annual transparency reports.
Another way to transparently communicate our progress along our sustainability journey is the EcoVadis Sustainability Rating. It reviews the extent to which we introduce sustainability policies, practices and reporting along our business and helps us to understand the gaps to further improve our performance. In FY23, EY Switzerland was ranked among the top 4% of companies rated by EcoVadis in our industry, resulting in a gold medal. We are encouraged by this improvement but are also committed to take further action as sustainability criteria evolve. By 2025, we want to achieve a platinum rating.
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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Minimizing 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 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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Increasing our social impact
We continue to increase the reach and impact of our global corporate volunteering programs like EY Ripples (skill-based) and EY Cares (non-skill-based). 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 use their skills, knowledge, and capabilities to positively impact lives. It unites our regional CR programs as well as collaborations with clients, NPOs and NGOs, impact networks and many others to:
- Support the next generation workforce
- Work with impact entrepreneurs
- Accelerate environmental sustainability
We further engage with institutions that are working towards the Sustainable Development Goals. We joined the UN Global Compact Network Switzerland and Lichtenstein in 2021.
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.
