“…we take a very long-term view of our business.”

Deborah Holmes,
Global Director of Corporate Responsibility 

In the midst of a worldwide economic downturn, Ernst & Young, a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction, and advisory services, is doing something counterintuitive: putting more energy than ever into good causes.  

“Our efforts are especially important now that so many not-for-profi ts are struggling as their donors pull back,” says Deborah K. Holmes, Ernst & Young’s Global Director of Corporate Responsibility. “But they are also important because we take a very long-term view of our business.”

Ernst & Young has embraced a global vision of its impact around the world, as well as the impact the world has on its operations in 140 countries. “We are currently being shaped by forces that lie outside our control – economics, demographics, and climate change,” says Holmes. “But one of the best ways to respond to those forces and make sure our business is sustainable in the long term is to help the communities around us educate their children, prosper and grow, and protect their natural resources.”  

“With skills-based volunteering, it’s not just that the firm is giving back.”

Riaz Shah,
Global Learning and Development Leader

Ernst & Young has focused its community efforts on three areas where social needs and its own knowledge intersect: on education, a critical function for a professional service organization whose success lies in the development of its people; on entrepreneurship, where Ernst & Young’s Strategic Growth Markets team has been a leader in advising young businesses for three decades; and on the environment, where Ernst & Young is concentrating its own efforts to tread lightly on the planet.  

Of course, using this knowledge means engaging as many of Ernst & Young’s 135,000 people as possible and making skills-based volunteering part of a successful career.  

“We feel very strongly about it,” says Riaz Shah, who was named Ernst & Young’s Global Learning and Development Leader in 2008. Indeed, EYU, the organization’s learning and development framework, lists community work as one of the key professional development experiences that the firm recommends. “With skills-based volunteering,” Shah explains, “it’s not just that the firm is giving back. In addition, our people are gaining new skills in project management, teamwork, and leadership.”  

Shah points out that cross-border volunteering – sending people to other markets with a volunteer-only focus – is extremely important to a truly global organization like Ernst & Young. “We’ve found that a short, sharp experience volunteering in a developing country can change people’s whole view of the world, and help them see how interdependent we all are.”  

“Ernst & Young people all over the world wanted to help us contribute to the cause of rebuilding.”

David Sun,
Co-Area Managing Partner, Far East 

While the particular projects taken on by Ernst & Young’s people vary a great deal depending on the community being served, the firm has put a structure in place to help reinforce corporate responsibility as a key concern in all its markets. A global Corporate Responsibility working group has been formed with representatives from Ernst & Young areas and sub-areas around the world.  

Greater China, for example, is represented by Irene Gu, a dedicated corporate responsibility professional who joined Ernst & Young almost two years ago after a career in the nonprofit world. David Sun, Co-Area Managing Partner of the Far East Area, explains, “Many of the individual partners in Greater China have been quite involved in community work for some time. Irene, however, is helping us think through what we can do as a firm.”  

Sun sees the advent of the working group as truly significant and offers a powerful example of why: the 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan Province that claimed 70,000 lives. “Eighty volunteers from Greater China instantly went to work with the Red Cross. However, Ernst & Young people all over the world wanted to help us contribute to the cause of rebuilding, especially the reconstruction of primary schools.”  

He continues, “The global Corporate Responsibility working group will be able to coordinate efforts like that in the future, and to come up with global leading practices that we can implement everywhere.”