Nicky has led Corporate Responsibility activity in the UK for the global professional advisors Ernst & Young for four years. Her main areas of focus are the community and the Environment, having previously led the firm's community investment and art sponsorship programmes. Ernst & Young provides solutions to clients based on financial, transactional, and risk-management knowledge in its core services of audit, tax, and transactions. The company has around half its 9,000 staff working in London, the remainder located in a further 19 cities around the UK - 114,000 people based in 140 countries in total.

Mel Poluck spoke to Nicky Major.

What are you working on now?

"We are focusing on reducing the impact of our travel, including significant overseas travel. We are working on getting people to challenge what is necessary and how they choose to travel.

"We have teleconferencing, videoconferencing and [IBM's online conference software] 'Sametime Connect' to enable people to travel at a minimum, so we are building knowledge of how they work. When people travel, we encourage them to use trains, for example.

"We are also giving Oyster cards to people who travel in London to encourage the use of public transport; we have a mileage rate for people travelling for business reasons by bicycle as well as having a 'bike for work' scheme allowing bikes to be bought tax free, supported by having showers and bike storage facilities in many of our offices; a passenger rate for those that car share with the rate going up with the number of people in the car; and free season ticket loans."

What is your proudest 'green' achievement?

"- working with a team who have had the energy and enthusiasm to make a significant difference to Ernst & Young's carbon footprint in the UK. I'm also very proud of the fact that we've actually changed the thinking and behaviours of many our people. I know we've made a difference every time an Ernst & Young person says 'I now recycle at home because of what we do here,' or 'I thought about the emissions levels when I chose a new car because of what I'd seen at work.'

"Every small action will add up to reducing our business emissions and contribute to our people reducing their carbon emissions at home - 80% say they're proud of our approach to corporate responsibility."

What are the key ingredients for success of your low carbon initiatives?

"The biggest sources of carbon emissions for our sector are energy consumption and travel, so key ingredients are: energy efficiency measures, our move to using renewable sources of electricity and having the best technology to enable people to reduce their travel.

"What is important too, is engaging with our people to encourage and support them in changing their thinking and behaviour. We can change a certain amount through infrastructure and process but we also rely on our people to act differently. There is no point installing video conferencing facilities if no-one uses them."

What are your biggest challenges - how do you deal with them?

"Every business has competing issues to manage. Environmental issues are rising in importance in terms of good corporate management, but they have to be balanced with the need to provide clients with the highest quality service. For example, travel is our largest source of carbon emissions but we have to travel to clients, sometimes for regulatory reasons. We have to be realistic about what we can change and manage what we can't.

"Also, many of our people are not office based much of the time, so engaging with them has to be very carefully thought through. We have to ensure our communications are noticed among the large volume of other communications that they get. We work very closely with our internal communications colleagues to help achieve this."

Are current UK Government climate change targets realistic?

"The latest scientific thinking says they aren't high enough and we certainly aren't on track to meet them right now. We are moving in the right direction. I think the mood is changing with higher levels of private investment going into the sector and much higher levels of general public awareness. We need to make sure we have a combination of Government, private sector and public activity. Government needs to take a carrot and stick approach. I don't believe that one sector can achieve the targets on its own."

How do you encourage clients and staff to become 'greener'?

"As a business-to-business organisation, we have an opportunity to support clients in managing their environmental impact. The Environment can be relevant in our core services of audit, tax and transactions. For example, we can help boards understand the non-financial aspects of business performance, including the nature, extent and accuracy of non-financial information they need to disclose, which includes the Environment. We can work with our clients to test and build controls to support governance of non-financial performance management and disclosure, helping organisations manage potential risks to reputation, or consider the Environment when managing supply chain processes. We also support clients through our advisory services for the renewable energy sector, where we provide finance and project advice to project sponsors, bidders, investors and borrowers.

"We communicate with our staff a lot, in a wide variety of ways to ensure we reach everyone. A lot of our people want us to minimise our environmental impact, but there will always be a few who are less interested. Our approach is to make change as easy as possible. It's about supporting and encouraging rather than mandating any behaviour or practice, so we bring people with us rather than disengage them."

What future carbon reduction initiatives are planned?

"We'll be carbon neutral this financial year, but I'm focusing on ensuring we reduce our impact before offsetting, so that we aren't using offsetting as an excuse not to improve our performance.

"We'll also be ISO14001 accredited for our London offices this year too, with other offices accredited next year. We are commissioning energy audits in many of our offices to ensure we are doing everything we can from an efficiency perspective.

"Travel will be an ongoing initiative - forever probably!

"For waste management, we've begun composting our food waste in London and will be rolling that out across appropriate offices."

What advice would you give to someone starting out in your role?

"Understand where you are starting from - if you can't measure it, you can't set improvement targets or demonstrate the difference you've made. We spent quite a bit of time getting to understand where our biggest impact areas were to enable us to focus on where we could make the biggest difference. There are hundreds of things you can do to improve your business' footprint, but start with the 'quick wins.' Learn from similar organisations - the building blocks for a good carbon reduction programme are very similar for office-based businesses. I'd also think about how to engage people. In our sector, taking the employees with you is critical."

Best Practice Tips

Please visit the Forum here and share a tip that you have for organisations to reduce their carbon emissions. Often the very simplest ideas can have the greatest effect:

• "The biggest step a family can take to lessen their carbon footprint is to reduce their food miles, which can be applied to businesses too"
  (Dionne Rooney, Co-Founder, The Local Food Company)

• "Replacing a 15-year old boiler could save you over 20% on your fuel bills, around 32% if you're installing a condensing boiler and up to 40% if you also install good heating controls."
  (www.energylinx.co.uk)