Summary of performance

* % female Supervisory Board members: 40%; % female Executive Bard members: 33%

1.      BASIS OF PREPARATION

This Report has been prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards: Comprehensive option, and the International <IR> Framework of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). The GRI Content Index is included in this report (see pages 154-159). This Report also serves as our Communication on Progress, as prescribed by the United Nations (UN) Global Compact, of which Deloitte Netherlands is a participant. In this context, we report our impact with a focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals that we deem most relevant to Deloitte.

Deloitte aims to be at the forefront of public reporting and has a long-standing practice of voluntarily disclosing audited, financial and non-financial information. Reporting to us is an evolutionary process where every year, we aim to improve on what we have done before and implement the latest reporting insights and requirements. In this year's Integrated Annual Report, for the very first time, we treat non-financial information similarly to our financial information, as this reflects our Connect for Impact strategy in which these two domains are also fully integrated. In addition, in line with the requirements from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the new Global Standards from GRI, we have implemented the principle of double materiality in selecting the topics that are included in this Annex, and - also in anticipation of the CSRD - we have disclosed our full Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions. Finally, we have completed our qualitative analysis of the EU Taxonomy requirements in preparation of its effective date for our sector in 2025.

The evolution of our reporting

Following the EU Taxonomy, Deloitte will be required to report the percentage of eligible and aligned turnover, capex, and opex (contributing to the six environmental objectives from the EU Green Deal) for our financial year 2024/2025. We have therefore identified the eligible and possibly aligned activities contributing to the first two environmental objectives of as part of our CSRD preparations. As the activities and technical screening criteria for the remaining four environmental objectives will be published towards the end of 2022, we will keep an eye out for more possibly eligible activities in the coming year.

The most notable eligible capex will most likely refer to the lease of our buildings, classified under the activity 7.7 “Buying real estate and exercising ownership of that real estate”, as four of our buildings in the Netherlands have at least an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) class A. 

The most notable eligible turnover will most likely refer to activity 9.3 ‘Professional services related to energy performance of buildings’ as Deloitte is an accredited auditor for the energy performance of buildings, and develops performance assessments for real estate clients.

The most notable eligible opex will most likely refer to Activity 6.5 ‘Transport by motor bikes, passenger cars, and light commercial vehicles’, as a substantial amount of the passenger cars leased by Deloitte have tailpipe CO₂ emissions equal to 0g CO₂ e/km.

1.1 Scope

In this Report, ‘Deloitte’ refers to Coöperatief Deloitte U.A. and its subsidiaries as listed in the ‘Notes to the specific items on the financial statements’ in Annex 1. This year, we have integrated the performance of Deloitte Dutch Caribbean (DDC) in our non-financial data, unless otherwise indicated. Coöperatief Deloitte U.A. is the firm for the Dutch geography within Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE), the second-largest member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.

1.2 Materiality

We interact with our stakeholders to seek their opinions and their expectations. This process allows us to define a timely and adequate response to the issues they deem important for our business and for our ability to make an impact that matters.

We actively seek our stakeholders’ views

We aim to take our stakeholders seriously. To this end, throughout the year, we actively engage in dialogue or seek their opinions in other manners such as through (social) media scanning.

Table 01: Means of stakeholder engagement

Our engagement in 2021/2022

In 2021/2022, we focused on the following stakeholder groups as we deem these groups to have the greatest impact on our business:

• - Employees

• - Clients

• - Deloitte network

• - Regulators

• - Competitors

• - Financial institutions

• - Public opinion

For stakeholder groups that we did not explicitly engage with, we build on the stakeholder insights we obtained over the past reporting years. For the stakeholders mentioned above, we provide an overview of the insights that we gained for updating our materiality matrix.

Employees

In Q2/Q3, we conducted and internal sustainability survey. One of the aims of this survey was to obtain better insights into the sustainability topics that our employees deem of particular interest. The Top 10 looks as follows:

1. Climate change

2. Human Rights

3. Health and safety

4. Career development

5. Biodiversity

6. Inclusion & diversity

7. Energy

8. Training & education

9. Vitality

10. Anti-corruption

In focus groups, we have discussed the outcomes to seek clarification. This has led to the conclusion that Human Rights are considered especially relevant in the context of the clients that we work for and the suppliers we source from. Human rights as safeguarding the rights of people working for Deloitte were not considered material as legal safeguards in the Netherlands were considered sufficient. Health & safety has a relatively high score which can best be regarded in the context of the time that the survey was open for reply at a time where the COVID virus delta variance was very much in the rise in the Netherlands leading to high hospitalisation numbers. Our one-on-one encounters with employees confirmed the results from the survey as well as their interpretation by us.

In addition, we have examined the results of the Global Millennial Survey 2021 that focuses on the key drivers and concerns for millennials and Gen Zs. The outcomes of the survey are that topics like health care / disease prevention, unemployment, climate change, economic growth, training & education, sexual harassment, diversity & inequality, and anti-corruption are deemed important by this group of young (future) professionals from across the globe.

We experience active participation from our employees on the topics of CO₂ emissions, inclusion & diversity, and vitality (a.o. well-being and work-life balance).

Clients

Our clients turn to Deloitte for relevant insights and high quality professional services that help their businesses become more responsible and sustainable, and thus progress and thrive. Quality, in all its aspects, is the key driver for our success, as is our ability to quickly adapt to changing needs from our clients regarding the expertise they need from us. To ensure both quality and adaptability, continuous learning, and development of our people and the ability to innovate are key requirements, as is international cooperation.

To perform our services, in many cases our clients entrust us with sensitive data. The integrity of our IT systems and the prevention of data leaks is of vital importance to the trust that our clients have in Deloitte. Privacy and data security are therefore important topics to us. 

Especially larger corporate clients and public sector clients are increasingly aware that their responsibility reaches beyond their direct operations and also involves parts of their value chain. Typical topics that these clients are interested in are human rights, CO₂ emissions, corporate citizenship, and social impact. Of these topics, CO₂ is by far the most important one.

Deloitte network

Through the Deloitte network (DTTL), we have a practice of reporting our CO₂ emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). In 2019, Deloitte announced targets for CO₂ reductions to be achieved by all its member firms. In addition, DTTL maintains policies and programmes in place in the area of corporate citizenship (WorldClass). Next to these sustainability related practices, DTTL maintains strict guidance in the areas of quality, ethics & integrity, privacy, data security, and anti-corruption.

In 2020, DTTL launched the WorldClimate programme. Through Deloitte NSE, Deloitte Netherlands is in the process of implementing and executing this programme. Through a maturity matrix that has been developed on an NSE level, NSE geographies cooperate in achieving the objectives that were defined.

Regulators / public policy

We have formal and informal engagements with our regulators. During the reporting year, the focus of our regulators remained on the following themes:

• Culture of quality

• Structure of accountancy firms

• Workload and stress

• Inclusion & diversity / inequality

In addition, we experience an interest in our 'Future of' agenda.

These themes related to the following topics: quality of services, credibility/trust/integrity, inclusion & diversity, vitality, and social impact.

Competitors

We have benchmarked our material topics and related performance against those of the other Big4 firms. This benchmark shows that to a large extent there is an overlap between the topics that the firms deem material to their business.

Public opinion

We constantly monitor public opinion and actively scan media for emerging topics. Our efforts in 2021/2022 did not result in any additional topics being identified that impact Deloitte’s approach or reporting.

Financial institutions

We have discussed sustainability in relation to our credit facilities with the banks that we use for financial transactions. Of course, all topics that relate to Deloitte’s ability to do business (quality, talent attraction and retention, innovation, etc.) have the interest of our banks as they ultimately determine our financial viability. In the context of a sustainable financing credit facility that we agreed upon in May 2022, a discount on interest due has been agreed when we fulfil agreed targets on CO₂ reduction, inclusion & diversity and talent engagement.

Scoring the topics

On the basis of the information and documentation presented above, we have scored the various topics per stakeholder category. We have attributed greater weight to the categories employees, clients, DTTL and public policy. This leads to the following long list of topics in order of relevance to stakeholders:

1. Quality

2. CO₂ emissions

3. Data security

4. Ethics & integrity

5. Privacy

6. Inclusion & diversity

7. Anti-corruption

8. Social impact (a.o. DIF)

9. Vitality / Wellbeing

10. Innovation

11. Human rights

12. Disease prevention

13. Training & education

14. Career development

15. Biodiversity

16. Unemployment

17. Economic growth

18. Energy

19. SDGs

20. Social return

21. Sustainable procurement

22. Water

23. Waste

Assessing impacts

After identifying the relevant topics, we have assessed the actual and potential impacts of the topics. To this end, we have scored the (potential) impacts of a topic on Deloitte on a five point scale (with 1 being low and 5 being high). Simultaneously, we have also scored the (potential) impact that Deloitte has on a topic on a five point scale. We added both numbers up, making the minimum score 2 and the maximum score to achieve 10 points. Our scoring is currently based on our own professional judgement and will be further validated in stakeholder round tables in the course of our financial year 2022/2023 to be ready to transition on a timely basis to the GRI Universal Standards 3 and to anticipate the expected content of the CSRD.

Material topics

Following our assessment, we have identified the following material topics for our 2021/2022 reporting:

Table 2: Material topics

Compared to our previous IAR, we no longer separately report on Client satisfaction / NPS, Credibility / Trust, Reviews by supervisory authorities, Profitable growth, International cooperation, and Contribution to societal challenges, as they are an integral part of our strategy and are as such reported in our strategy section. Cost effectiveness and Sustainable Development Goals do not meet the impact criteria. However, we do use the SDGs to explain our value creation in the context of our strategy execution. To align the wording of our material topics with our internal programmes, we have renamed the following topics: 'Training & education' to 'Learning and development', 'Career development' to 'Employee value proposition', 'Vitality' to 'Wellbeing', and ‘Environmental sustainability’ to ‘Climate & CO₂ emissions’.

1.3 Reporting boundaries

There is an overlap of topics and related opportunities noted by our internal and external stakeholders. Most of these topics relate to our internal organisation. For this reason, our reporting on these topics is limited to our performance within our direct sphere of influence, unless indicated otherwise (for example, where we discuss our value creation in a broader context).

1.4 Reliability and completeness

We have collected the relevant performance data from our business information systems as supported by our internal control and monitoring systems, and from suppliers and other sources. This is centrally recorded and thereafter reviewed by our Finance & Control department. We have engaged our independent external auditor, BDO Audit & Assurance B.V., to provide reasonable assurance on both the financial and the non-financial information on the PDF version of this report. The combined independent auditor’s and assurance report of BDO Audit & Assurance B.V. can be found in Annex 4 of the PDF.

1.5 Reporting process

Central to our approach to reporting is the IAR Project team. This team is headed by our Chief Financial Officer and consists of representatives from Finance & Control and Finance & Accounting, combined with specialists from our Risk Advisory business’s Sustainability Group and supported by Brand and Communication. Content planning and development takes place under the supervision of the Executive Board with internal oversight by Audit & Finance Committee and the the Supervisory Board. The Report is published after approval by the General Meeting.