Ernst & Young >About us>About EY- Our commitment to Corporate Responsibility - community - Ernst & Young - United Kingdom

Our community investment programme has won a number of national awards and recognition.

CommunityMark. In 2011 we successfully renewed our CommunityMark status for another three years. The CommunityMark is the only UK national standard that publicly recognises business excellence in community investment, and is endorsed by both government and voluntary sector leaders.

Achieving the CommunityMark demonstrates our continued leadership within the community engagement agenda and our commitment to delivering quality programs which provide benefits for both the community and our business. "Achieving the CommunityMark is great external recognition of our commitment to making the difference to our clients, our people and to society". Steve Varley, UK Country Managing Partner

The renewal builds on our status as a Community Mark pioneer- one of the original 21 businesses to achieve the Mark in 2007.

Dragon Award. Ernst & Young won the Lord Mayor of London Dragon Award 2010-11 for our long term, sustainable community investment programme in Southwark, London.  Since 2004, over 5000 of our people have volunteered their time to support 2000 young people directly and a further 100,000 indirectly.  As well as working with schools to help pupils increase academic scores, business acumen and career aspirations, we have provided opportunities for young people to achieve by supporting theatres, local galleries and creative organisations.

Education programme. Since first applying in 2007, our Education Partnership Programme has achieved a ‘Big Tick’ from Business in the Community in the Achievement in Young People category annually. 

Corporate Responsibility Index. Since 2008, Ernst & Young’s community programme has scored 100% within our Corporate Responsability Index submission.

Key 2010-11 community outcomes
Targets shown in brackets where applicable.

• We contributed the cash equivalent of £5,143 million to charitable causes and our communities. This equates to 2.7% of our ‘pre tax profit’ donated to charitable causes (according to London Benchmarking methodology) (target: 1%) 
• 26% of our people volunteered 42,546 hours * (target: 25% and 30,000 hours)
• We provided 11,000 hours of pro bono support
• 84% of volunteers stated their engagements had a significant or very significant positive impact on their pride in Ernst & Young (target 85%)
• Our people raised over £1.8million for charitable causes (including matched funding from Ernst & Young)
• We are a founding partner of Social Business Trust
• Our community investment programme achieved a top rated ‘Platinum’ score in BITC’s Corporate Responsibility Index
• As the honorary account for Comic Relief we have counted over £3 million in public donations
• We raised £240,000 for The Prince’s Trust (target: £125,000).

* Ernst & Young employees record their time spent on engagements, including time spent volunteering, via a global time recording system (gT&E). In FY11 the total reported volunteering hours was 42,546, which is made up of volunteering time correctly recorded via gT&E and an estimation of additional volunteering time that represents time spent by Ernst & Young employees volunteering that was not recorded to the correct gT&E code. Additional hours were estimated by comparing how much time employees were expected to volunteer on specific projects to complete them satisfactorily to the number of hours that were recorded on gT&E. For example, facilitators on the Ernst & Young Careers Experience are required to volunteer seven hours on the project. Through cross checking facilitator names with time recorded on gT&E it became apparent that a number of volunteers had not recorded any volunteering time. This shortfall in volunteering hours on gT&E was included within the additional hours record. In FY11 approximately 10,000 of total reported volunteer hours were estimated.

Reasons for the under recording of volunteering hours include a lack of awareness of the volunteering code and volunteers forgetting to use the code when completing time sheets. Further campaigns to promote the correct use of the volunteering code will be undertaken in FY12.

Our community investment targets
Our community targets, to be met by June 2012, are:

• 25%+ of our people engaged in volunteering (of which 75 % is skills based )
• 35,000+ hours volunteering
• To contribute the cash equivalent of >1% of pre tax profit to charitable causes (according to London Benchmarking methodology)
• That 85% of volunteers state their engagement had a significant or very significant positive impact on their pride in Ernst & Young
• Meet community partner targets
• Develop a flagship education offering which enables us to play a role in the social mobility agenda
• Provide market leading support for entrepreneurs through a new bespoke programme
• Win nationally recognised awards, including reaccreditation of the CommunityMark.
  

We have a commitment to publicly report our targets. Please e-mail   Corporate Responsibility if you would like more information than is provided here.