We cultivate sustainable communities that enhance the wellbeing of current and future generations by driving positive environmental practices within our firm and with our clients, colleagues and communities.
Our four strategic pillars help bring our mission to life and guide us in fulfilling our environmental commitment.
At RSM, we define stewardship as leaving the world better than we found it, and we recognize that the actions of our people, both personally and professionally, make a significant impact on the environment.
We provide on-demand educational opportunities and resources to empower our people to make environmentally responsible decisions to reduce their carbon footprint by reducing waste, recycling, composting and traveling more sustainably.
We engage our people by offering local and national environmental stewardship opportunities hosted by our Environmental Employee Engagement Committee and environmental office champions.
We strive to integrate environmental policies and procedures into the way we do business to minimize our impact on the environment and reduce waste.
We recognize that the future of work looks different following the pandemic and we’re taking steps to reduce our square footage by nearly one-third per employee to better align our real estate strategy with how our people use our office space.
We continue to prioritize buildings with sustainable practices for new office spaces, design our office build-outs to meet or exceed the latest energy conservation codes and LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) parameters, and procure furnishings from manufacturers committed to environmental sustainability.
Our video conferencing tools enable our people and our clients to collaborate virtually, which reduces the need for travel, and in some cases enables completely virtual service delivery, thereby reducing our carbon footprint.
We leverage additional technologies, including DocuSign, SecurePrint, CrowdCompass and Caseware, to reduce or eliminate our use of paper whenever possible. Our digitized processes, electronic forms and digital apps continue to streamline processes and eliminate waste and physical storage needs.
Our office operations team has implemented a variety of waste management guidelines for ordering consumable products, recycling (including printer toner cartridges), composting, and hosting sustainable meetings and events.
Our decommissioned technology equipment gets a second life through our vendor relationships. Functioning equipment is sold, and non-functioning equipment is broken down into raw materials that are sold in the secondary market.
We recognize the importance of developing and communicating our environmental impact. Our greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, which highlights our material scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, is developed using guidance from the GHG Protocol.
We calculate our GHG emissions annually and continually work to improve our data collection processes and reporting. Our top two emission categories are utilities (gas, electricity, etc.) and business travel.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave us the opportunity to re-evaluate and address business travel, our largest emission category. We adapted by effectively engaging our clients and colleagues virtually and empowering our professionals to own their future through more virtual, on-demand technical learning opportunities. The valuable lessons we learned from the pandemic have changed the way we work and operate.
Since returning back to “normal” at the start of 2022, we have continued to prioritize virtual meetings, as well as updated our travel policy and internal meetings guidance. These actions contributed to the reduction of miles flown by RSM U.S. employees by 32.1% compared to 2019, even with U.S. headcount increasing by approximately 3,000 employees.
Our Environmental Advisory Board includes leaders and employees responsible for assessing our GHG emission inventory and carrying out our mission to reduce our carbon footprint.
Strategic ecosystems include a much broader set of mutually beneficial relationships that allow us to contribute and derive value on behalf of our firm, clients, colleagues and communities. These relationships enable us to enhance our environmental efforts while deepening our relationships with like-minded businesses.
As part of our commitment to the UN Global Compact, we support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges and are actively undertaking initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility.
Our sustainability advisory practice goes beyond our firm, partnering with organizations to achieve their environmental goals through tailored ESG strategies. With deep expertise in sustainability reporting and a proven track record across industries, we help businesses identify key ESG impacts, enhance risk management and drive stakeholder value—building lasting confidence and turning challenges into competitive advantages in this critical era of sustainability.
We expect all vendors and suppliers to act responsibly and adhere to our Code of Conduct. We work closely with them to enhance our reporting and implementation of sustainable products and services that help reduce the impact our operations have on the environment.
To reduce our use of paper, we moved to an all-digital experience for our annual reports, adding compelling interactive components and making them easily accessible for all stakeholders via our website.
