Taking a look on the BRIGHT side

If you are a giant food retailer, say, or clothing manufacturer, the route towards greater corporate responsibility – and mutually beneficial responsibility – is pretty clear: look down your supply chain and invest in your farmers and factories. It makes sound business sense as well as ticking the CR (Corporate Responsibility) boxes.

The services industry, however, needs to find a different approach if it wants to make a impact beyond drinking Fairtrade coffee in the office and cutting managers’ CO2 emissions. The right approach is even harder when your initiative needs to provide business returns too.

But this is precisely what professional services giant KPMG has created with its BRIGHT initiative. Launched just four years ago, this innovative programme is already the recipient of a clutch of awards, as well as a great deal of internal enthusiasm.
Divided into two components, Local and Global, the BRIGHT programme allows KPMG’s brightest and best to use their professional skills to support the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Employees in KPMG member firms are invited to come up with an idea that would use their KPMG skills to support social and environmental improvements in their local community. The best ideas are put into practice with the help of a grant and the successful applicants are then invited to apply for a place on one of KPMG’s international pro bono teams in sub Saharan Africa.
In Africa, they join colleagues from KPMG partner firms across Europe who have been through the same selection process in their own countries and the teams work on two week placements with KPMG’s partner NGOs Fairtrade Africa, Child Helpline International and Restless Development, which improves young people’s skills and employability.

Needless to say, there is no shortage of applicants. Indeed, in-house volunteer rates have gone up 50% across Europe since the programme was launched, says Roisin Murphy, senior manager with KPMG’s Corporate Responsibility team and author of the BRIGHT initiative.

“Volunteering has always been a big part of KPMG’s values – all our employees are encouraged to use their professional skills within their local community,” says Murphy.

This commitment is supported by the current UK chairman, Simon Collins, who challenges the firm to ‘use what we are good at to make more of a difference in society’.

“The big driver for me in creating the BRIGHT programme,” says Murphy, “was to drive skilled volunteering and make it strategic.”
Local BRIGHT initiatives have included, for example, helping the food charity FareShare South West work efficiently to cut its CO2 emissions and reduce fuel costs by 25% and holding a series of workshops in East London to help charities and social enterprises with efficient financial planning.

Globally successful initiatives, put into practice by 121 KPMG volunteers from 17 KPMG practices over the past three years, have included developing a financial training module to help low income Fairtrade producers run their businesses more efficiently, reduce their economic vulnerability and raise their empowerment in the supply chain.

This has been rolled out to 635,000 farmers by local trainers, also trained by the volunteers who have also created a financial profiling tool which which makes it easier for banks to lend to farmers and small producers who want to expand or diversify.
With Restless Development, volunteers have created toolkits which have allowed 1,000 young people to become more employable and trained 102 “Restless Leaders” in leadership skills.

“It took over a year to set up the global programme,” says Murphy, “not least because my background was in CR rather than international development. Some potential partners were sceptical about what a two week placement could really achieve – although those same people are now knocking on the door.”

The initial implementation was costly in terms of investment, she adds, but the main running costs are in time rather than cash, with £3.5m worth of pro bono hours invested in Africa to date.

But the rewards are also significant. “Part of who we are at KPMG is being responsible,” says Murphy, “and we are a firm with a global clients so we need to be globally responsible.”

On top of this, the programme allows KPMG to pick out its emerging leaders and they in turn get to work in teams with their counterparts from other countries as well as gaining experience of working in emerging markets – understanding supply chains, for example.

“Plus,” says Murphy, “we see a big difference in the volunteers when they return in terms of promotion and retention rates, as well as education and awareness – a real benefit in times of increasing competition to recruit, retain and motivate talent.”
At the other end, the benefits to theNGOs are huge, says Murphy. In setting up the programme I wanted to be sure that it would be joined up and have real impact.

The feedback is generous, such as this from Childline South Africa: “Our interaction with the team from KPMG was refreshing, inspiring and challenged us to think out of the box. We had a group of young minds with a passion and vision for the future. They had insight on what we want to achieve and the challenges/limitations we face. Their energy was such that we too could not help it but catch the bug!”

But ‘success is measured in terms of economic empowerment,’ says Murphy, ‘and being sure that our impact is significant requires robust measurement framework. This takes time but you have to know that you are making an impact.’

KPMG takes short and long term impact measurements by first calculating input and then measuring outcome at both 6 and 12 months. “From this, we get our ‘learnings’,” explains Murphy, ‘which we then integrate into our Year 2 and Year 3 action plans.
Her advice to others who might want to develop programmes similar to BRIGHT includes taking the time to create efficient tools for measuring their impact – one of the most important components of the programme.

Other advice is that it is essential to understand the local markets where you are operating and to be aware that such initiatives are collaborative and not a question of going in and taking charge.

“NGOs have an awful lot of knowledge and you need their advice – I had a lot of help from Restless Development when I was designing BRIGHT. It is a question of blending different expertise and setting joint goals.

“For us, our pro bono work is really no different from working with our other clients – we use the same set of skills in our pro bono work.”

With the success of the BRIGHT initiative, conceived as a five-year programme, clearly established, what for the future? Murphy, it seems, is not resting on her laurels.

“I’m very proud of what we have achieved so far but now I want to make our volunteering more issues focused. Social mobility is a critical factor in the economic success of the UK. This will be central to our voluntary and pro bono work going forward.”