At Accenture, we believe transparency creates trust. In 2016, we were the first professional services company to publish the demographics of our US workforce for gender, ethnicity, veterans and persons with disabilities.

We committed to publishing the information annually to hold ourselves accountable for progress. This has kicked off a new level of collaboration and innovation with our people, our clients and our communities.

In publishing our demographics, we issued an external announcement and posted the demographics online along with a letter from our Chief Executive Officer of North America, Julie Sweet. We also engaged employees in the announcement, creating an “I&D Circle” – an online forum where employees can share ideas and explore practical ways we can make a change in inclusion and diversity.

In 2017, we followed through on our commitment for annual publication, releasing our most recent demographics, which showed modest increases in diversity over the prior year. We also shared the steps we are taking to accelerate our progress, which include setting a new goal for gender diversity: growing our percentage of women in the US to at least 40 percent.