Culture and inclusion, diversity & equity

We promise our people the best human experience, so our workplace needs to be one people want to be a part of – inclusive, diverse and equitable, where they feel safe and supported. We value different perspectives and encourage all our people to be themselves completely. This commitment ensures we have the people in place to meet current and future client demands, protect quality and our reputation, broaden our talent pool, and contribute to a fairer society.

At the same time, we recognize that, as a consequence of the answer sharing investigation (new window) related to mandatory training tests, we fell short of the ethical standards we set ourselves. We are addressing these shortcomings by focusing on our values. We will also work to ensure our culture remains an ethical one, where people feel safe and supported enough to speak out if they see wrongdoing, and where we uphold the highest standards.

In 2022/2023, we added equity as a central commitment for KPMG N.V.. We want to move beyond equality to give our people from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunities they need to put them on an equal footing. To help succeed in this, we signed up for Emma at Work’s GAP200 Membership (new window) in 2023. We are aiming for a co-creation for a 5-year period and to hire 20 people with a disability in the period 2024 until 2027/2028.

In terms of gender diversity, we believe in inclusive sponsorship for women at management and senior management levels. Rather than simply mentoring women, we use sponsorship to ensure women get the opportunities they need to progress within KPMG N.V., plugging the talent drain among women at management levels. 

Although our gender diversity numbers are improving in general, and specifically at executive level, we need to forge forward in strengthening our pipeline of talent across all function levels. Root cause analysis showed us that we need to focus on life defining moments, clearly spotlighting role models and continuing to address unconscious bias. These form the basis of our inclusion, diversity & equity (IDE) activities going forward.

We value the cultural[1] diversity within our organization. In 2022/2023 our people represented 80 different nationalities. We actively foster an inclusive environment through various initiatives, including International Day and our Ramadan Challenge, encouraging mutual learning and making everyone feel included.

We also invested more during the year in IDE programs and unbiasing our HR processes. We annually review our people processes for unconscious bias risks – for example, by assessing decisions on promotions to partner/director and equity partner to strip out bias.

We worked on making vacancy ads more inclusive to encourage a wider selection of applicants, and employed blind selection – removing candidate information that could bias selectors until after evaluations are complete – to create a more diverse pipeline of talent entering the business. We are getting close to gender parity, which remained stable compared with the previous financial year.

Recruitment efforts continued throughout the year, doubling down on hiring talents in Assurance. The average age of our people is 34, which means younger generations are strongly represented in our workforce and, via our Young Board Now, we make sure their voices are heard and their ideas are integrated in our strategy. We also invested in experienced hires to accelerate our strategic priorities.

Following last year’s change in law on paid parental leave, we entitle all our people to nine working weeks of partly-paid leave for children under the age of one. As an organization we believe a healthy work-life balance is important. When private situations change due to the arrival of a child, we actively support our people to devote more time and attention to their home life.

Crucially, we know healthy IDE practices begin at the top. In 2022/2023, our partners and directors completed our mandatory IDE Impact Program, in which they were confronted with their own biases and encouraged to create a collective language on IDE. It is our partners and directors who are responsible for taking us to the forefront of this topic. In 2022/2023, four incidents of discrimination were reported compared with one the year before. These are dealt with by our confidential counsellors.

We also measure our gender pay gap: results from our latest assessment show that there is no significant pay gap, and changes from last year are marginal.

Gender pay gap

• KPI shown above relate to our Inclusion, diversity & equity material topic.
  Figures show percentage of men/women by headcount on 1 October 2022 or 2023 (the start of our reporting year). This is because promotions made during the year become effective at the beginning of October. Excluding KPMG International and outbound expats. Calculation of opening balance based on 1 October instead of total month of October. For comparison reasons the 2021/2022 figures have been restated, see Restatement of prior year figures.
  
  

• KPIs shown above relate to our Inclusion, diversity & equity material topic.
• Leadership Teams combines KPMG N.V.’s Group Leadership Team and the separate leadership teams of our Assurance, Advisory and Business Services units.
• Figures show percentage of men/women by headcount on 1 October 2022 or 2023 (the start of our reporting year). This is because promotions made during the year become effective at the beginning of October.

• 1 Cultural refers to individuals with a non-Dutch heritage or background.