“Diversify our talent pool”

For consulting and accounting firm KPMG, which became a mission-driven company in May 2022, inclusion and diversity are now issues of performance, talent appeal and trust in the marketplace.

What topics do you include in your inclusion and diversity policies?

Stephanie Nervena. We support all our employees in all their diversity and at all stages of their lives. This includes age, diversity, gender, academic background, disability and, more recently, caregivers.

Your sector of activity is known for recruiting a large number of young people, mostly with BA+5 degrees from leading business and engineering schools. How to diversify your profiles?

To change this, we have trained all our hiring managers on unconscious bias to ensure they are as inclusive as possible. When selecting candidates and for each position, we identify as many women as men. We have created a “junior team” for our audit activities. This is a team made up of working and studying BA+2/3 students, some from disadvantaged backgrounds, whom we support to complete their BA+5 degrees. Around 200 young people will join this ‘junior team’ in 2023. We are also opening up our vacancies more to university graduates.

Today’s young graduates expect more active management. How do you handle debate in a missionary company like yours?

Every year, all of our employees are encouraged to express themselves on an internal social barometer. Two years ago, we also launched another program focused on inclusion and diversity. Our employees can tell whether they feel aligned with the firm’s values, whether our culture is inclusive enough, and share their expectations. In 2021, we created the NextGen Committee, which brings together talent from across our businesses. They are responsible for bringing innovative proposals to our Executive Committee, particularly in terms of inclusion and wellbeing at work.

Specifically, what did he propose?

Among the key measures we find the introduction of a 4-day parenting week. From 1 October 2022, our new maternity employees have the opportunity to request part-time work at 80% and 100% pay for a maximum period of 6 months. To date, 560 employees have taken advantage of the benefits.

Are there as many fathers as there are mothers?

Today 60% are mothers and 40% are fathers. We monitor this indicator and support the system so that men can also take advantage of this part-time job.