People

Inclusion, diversity and equity

We want to foster a culture that welcomes everyone — without exception. We continue to advocate for equal opportunity by supporting our KPMG firms to develop their Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) focus on gender, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ+ and other cultural and ethnic groups. We’ve made progress with our global approach to IDE, yet we know there is more work to be done and seek to expand the measurement and impact of our programs. On track to achieve our KPMG International goals for women in leadership by 2025, gender equality is a strategic priority and we are working to identify more opportunities across the global organization.

Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) underpins our Value of ‘Together’ and is vital to inspiring confidence and empowering change — our Purpose. There’s an expectation from our people, clients and society that we have a robust IDE agenda — linked to Our Impact Plan and our strategy. We align to three key principles for our IDE approach:

• Inclusion is about belonging: We commit to creating a safe environment built on trust, where we can bring our authentic selves to work and feel valued for our unique contributions and perspectives.
• Diversity is about difference: We commit to embracing and respecting the variety of unique experiences, cultures, identities and perspectives we collectively bring to KPMG.
• Equity is about access to opportunities: We commit to standing against systemic barriers and biases, helping level the playing field and ensuring everyone can succeed and thrive at KPMG.

Fostering a culture that welcomes everyone — without exception — requires purposeful work. IDE has been part of our culture for many years. Building upon the progress we’ve achieved, we regularly review and update our global approach to help make the difference for our people and push ourselves to go further.

In FY23, KPMG International launched a global guide to provide insights on global best practices related to those areas where an evolved IDE focus can help make the greatest impact through the creation of an inclusive environment — including hiring, compensation, performance evaluation and promotions.

A well-designed talent program is critical to future proofing our organization, helping to build great teams with diverse views, experience and capabilities that represent the world we live in. We aim to continually evolve our talent frameworks to provide equity of opportunity for all our people around the world. Ultimately, this helps to level the playing field and allows us to tap into the entire talent pool, giving everyone the chance to succeed.

We consistently measure our progress and work with KPMG firms to continually expand our global IDE data. Our IDE Index helps us measure the qualitative and quantitative impact of our work.

Our Global People Survey is one of the key mechanisms of the Index, allowing us to continue to build on the results from our first IDE Index by aiding in the effort to collect additional demographic data. In FY23, 54 KPMG firms chose to add optional self-identification questions into their local versions of the survey, giving 65 percent of our workforce the ability to self-identify, enabling us to better understand our people’s lived experiences and perceptions.

In FY24, we aim to continue to increase the number of KPMG firms who adopt the self-identification questions into their surveys.

Click below to interact

Source: KPMG International.

Supporting an inclusive culture characterized by respect, we bring our people together for global IDE-related learning summits and campaigns to build knowledge and allyship and to encourage workplace conversations on diversity and inclusion.

Our global learning programs focus on building allyship, listening to our people and educating ourselves on the perspectives and life experiences of others.

In FY23, we brought our people together for global learning summits and campaigns in recognition of International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, International Day of Persons with Disabilities, International Women’s Day and Pride Month.

By focusing on increasing leadership visibility across our summits, we saw participation grow to almost 19 percent with more than 9,000 people from 86 countries and territories taking part.

In FY23, we also hosted a Heads of IDE education series for our KPMG firm leaders, featuring experts discussing belonging and fairness, equity in the hybrid workplace, psychological safety, IDE in a post-pandemic world and microaggressions.

Click below to interact

Health and well-being

Professional services can be a fast-paced and demanding environment, so we are creating a culture where people can be open about their well-being. At the KPMG global and firm level, we are taking strong steps to remove the stigma on mental health in the workplace. We actively seek feedback from our people on the well-being support offered and understand that work-life balance and flexibility is important to them.

Physical and mental well-being helps people thrive and deliver high-quality work to our clients. Professional services can be a fast-paced and demanding environment, so we are focused on creating a culture where people can be open about their well-being — and reach out for support when they need it.

While our KPMG firms offer medical and well-being programs locally, we are also prioritizing mental well-being at a global level to create an integrated approach.

Through our membership with the MindForward Alliance, we are working to help remove the stigma around talking about mental health in the workplace and giving KPMG firms the capabilities to support our people to thrive.

In 2023, we expanded the number of questions in our 2023 Global People Survey to help drive tangible, consistent measurements that can be tracked annually across our KPMG firms (who may also carry out their own in-depth surveys). The 2023 results show that 72 percent of KPMG professionals agree that the global organization shows care and concern for its people, while 71 percent also feel that the well-being support provided is sufficient for their needs. While positive, these results demonstrate that there is still room for improvement. Now that this baseline has been established, we will continue to use this important measure to gain deeper insights into our people’s views, and focus on further opportunities to both foster a culture that supports mental health and drive higher numbers.

We are conscious that workload pressures can impact well-being. We have focused on addressing this in recent years by developing a globally scalable workload management framework. It links operational and people considerations for a holistic strategy and approach by managing work volume while maintaining quality and resource capacity.

We have been monitoring our year-on-year progress in this area through specific questions in our Global People Survey. From our FY21 baseline, we have seen positive increases which tell us that while there is still more work to do, we are heading in the right direction.

Read more Read less

We recognize the importance of expanding our offerings and supporting people through different life stages and our KPMG firms continue to develop innovative programs targeting specific needs. For example, in 2023, KPMG in the UK introduced dedicated menopause support, including a consultation with a menopause trained general practitioner, a personalized care plan and additional flexible work options and support networks for those that needed it. Meanwhile, under KPMG in France’s new parent policy, all new and adoptive parents are entitled to a four-day week at five days’ pay for up to six months.

Our Global People Survey responses show that flexibility and work-life balance remain important considerations for our people and we are committed to supporting them to achieve a balance.

In recent years, KPMG firms have adopted a variety of hybrid models that enabled our people to benefit from more flexible ways of working, grounded in the principle of working where they are most productive so they continue to deliver excellence for clients. We continue to listen and adapt our approach to help ensure there is sufficient in-person time for relationship building, knowledge sharing and coaching, along with team-building and social activities which support a healthy work environment. Whether in the office, at a client site or working from home, we encourage our people to use their time in each location with purpose and intention.

Feedback on this approach continues to be positive, with 81 percent of participants in our 2023 Global People Survey responding favorably to the statement ‘I can work where I am most effective to meet client, business and team needs.’

Read more Read less

Learning and development

Rapid advances in technology have made reskilling and upskilling more important than ever. Providing our people with opportunities to learn and develop their careers is a key pillar of KPMG’s People strategy. In addition to the wealth of training courses we offer, we are also developing coach-like leaders who can support conversations around diverse opportunities to pursue varied and challenging careers, a hallmark of our multi-disciplinary model.

We are committed to developing a culture of continuous learning in line with our desire to provide access to learning for a lifetime — one where our people can continually upskill and reskill in functional, ethical and accelerated learning. With a focus on enabling excellence, our continuous learning culture helps our people make the difference for both clients and themselves.

• Functional learning provides our people with globally relevant subject matter expertise in KPMG’s service areas of Audit, Tax & Legal and Advisory.
• Ethical learning empowers our people to always act ethically and encourage others to do the same.
• Accelerator learning gives our people an edge by strengthening their skills in ESG and digital and data literacy, including AI training.

Enabled by our global learning technology, we’ve connected these three areas of formal learning to create a more holistic, academy-style learning experience that is aligned to our priorities of ESG, Technology and Talent and enables growth for our professionals.

In FY23, KPMG worked with the European Business School, Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, and New York University Stern Executive Education to develop more than 100 ESG learning resources and launch programs across our network to increase our people’s ESG knowledge and capabilities.

From an ethical learning perspective, these new programs focus on integrity, independence and executing high-quality standards within our client deliverables. They have also coincided with the launch of the CARE framework, our new ethical decision-making model.

Success for our people and our network of KPMG firms comes from developing well-rounded, digitally literate, coach-like leaders who are mindful of sustainability principles and highly experienced in their fields.

Our coaching strategy program brings to life the voice of our people, to reflect what they need to succeed in their employee learning journey and in leading the development of others. Coach-like leadership helps people rapidly develop skills in empathy, engagement, inclusion and wellness, and is critical to our human-centric people strategy.

All KPMG employees are invited to join our Coaching Culture Community of Practice, which is guided by leaders from eight of our Reporting KPMG Firms and our regions.

In FY23, we committed to gathering qualitative data on the benefits of our learning solutions and launched a new global evaluation platform that measures the immediate and actual long-term impact of training on our people’s work.

We also continually seek feedback from our professionals. In our Global People Survey, 76 percent said they are satisfied with the learning and development available to improve their knowledge and skills, and 75 percent felt the people they work for take an active role in their learning and development. While strong, the results guide us to specific areas to focus on for improvement.

Supporting a growth mindset, we launched ‘digital badges’ for our people in FY23 to make their skills visible across the network, with 16,000 badges issued to date.

We are particularly keen to develop and give a voice to the next generation of leaders. We have several global programs to support and develop leaders at different stages of their careers:

Chairman’s 75 brings together more than 75 high-potential partners from across our organization. The program’s aim is to create stronger leadership, establish global collaboration and a strong community between participants, and ensure KPMG is well positioned to tackle future global issues.

Next Generation Council enables a select number of senior managers from our Reporting KPMG Firms to represent the voice of the next generation of leaders, contribute fresh ideas and new insights, and make meaningful contributions to key strategic issues. Recent topics addressed have included improving career mobility, leveraging social media to drive engagement and attract talent, building a stronger sales culture, and improving inclusion, diversity and equity.

Leaders 2050 is a cross-industry external network of future leaders focused on a fair and just transition to net-zero, clean growth and sustainability. The network provides a platform that connects the next generation of leaders, both within KPMG and externally, while equipping them with the skills they need to drive a more sustainable future. Originally established by KPMG in the UK, in 2023 the program expanded across the network to include 26 KPMG firms and was part of KPMG’s delegation at COP28, as well as at ENRich, KPMG’s flagship annual Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Conclave.

One Young World’s annual summits empower and develop leaders under 30 from around the world. KPMG sent 32 delegates to the 2023 summit in Belfast, where they were able to connect as some of the world’s future leaders to learn, grow, share experiences and exchange ideas on the most pressing issues facing humanity.

Read more Read less