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Outreach Award
This award recognizes unique workplace practices that provide outreach and impact the community, environment, and employees. Winner: KPMG LLP The economic challenges in the past year did not lessen KPMG's commitment to creating a great place to build a career. In fact, the organization firmly believes the current conditions only underscore the critical nature of their people strategy. As a result, it continued to reach out to its community, environment, and above all – its employees. KPMG knows that its employees have a passion for helping others, so they continued to provide ways for them to touch the lives of those in need and support the communities in which they live and work. From their national community involvement program, scholarships provided through Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI), to the new books they handed out to school kids as part of KPMG’s Family for Literacy initiative, the organization continues to enhance its impact on youth, education, and the Northeast Ohio community. Locally, the organization remained committed and influential in the Northeast Ohio community, allowing employees to pursue volunteer interests and provide hundreds of volunteer hours to enhance others' lives and sponsoring a variety of community programs including Junior Achievement, March of Dimes, United Way, Adopt a Family, and RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) Day at Jacobs Field. The organization also supports many local social service organizations including the ALS Association, Alzheimer's Association, American Cancer Society, Catholic Charities, Hospice of the Western Reserve, and YWCA of Greater Cleveland. The organization also established a Living Green Team to develop environmental initiatives and programs surrounding their mantra "Rethink, reduce, recycle, and reuse." It has implemented a variety of initiatives including energy-efficient lighting and heating, reuse and recycling of technology equipment and other office supplies, and many programs to reduce the use of paper and natural resources. In addition, all new constructions and renovations are LEED certified. The organization also has reduced business travel by investing in video conferencing equipment, implementing a WageWorks program to encourage use of mass transit, and encouraging employees to carefully consider traveling. Not only have these programs contributed positively to the environment, they have also helped the organization reduce costs and save jobs. KPMG continued to reach out to their employees to help them better balance their work and personal lives and develop their careers. The organization provided an array of work/life options which include flexibility and remote working options, family resources, a generous amount of paid time off, and a variety of leaves of absence suited to their employees’ diverse needs. It started offering a sabbatical program for employees, a positive perk for employees which also enabled the organization to manage costs during trying economic times. This past year, they even started a Summer Jump Start program where employees were allowed to leave at 3pm on Fridays to jump start their weekend. KPMG has developed a culture of mentoring and now has more than 10,000 mentoring relationships across the firm, involving about 13,000 individuals. They built a career development tool, named "Employee Career Architecture," which allows employees to develop the career they want – one that is personally and professionally rewarding. More than 15,000 career paths have been built using this tool. The firm also continued to provide a wide variety of training and development courses for its people so they can build the skills and experiences they need for success. Despite the economic challenges they faced, KPMG continued to reach out to its community, environment, and employees in impactful ways. When asked what their organization’s greatest strength is, top performers at KPMG speak to their organization’s emphasis on integrity, serving the community, and work/life.
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