Vicki Ling is a Sustainability Strategy Analyst. Her blog is part of our side of desk series. We’ve invited three colleagues to share their experiences of side of desk work at Accenture. Side of desk is what we call projects and work that are done alongside our day-to-day client work. Everyone at Accenture works on these throughout their career. They cover a wide range of interests and activities; everything from sustainability to emerging technology and inclusion and diversity; developing thought leadership to organising internal events. Read the blogs to get a glimpse of what current analysts do and how their side of desk work has contributed to their career journey.
My main side of desk project is leading the Corporate Citizenship Sustainability team for the Analyst Consulting Group (ACG). The ACG includes analysts from several graduate programmes, working in the Strategy & Consulting, Song and Industry X business areas.
I came to Accenture knowing that I wanted to work on sustainability, but I didn’t really know what that might look like in reality. In my first week, I went to a talk from the former leader of the ACG Corporate Citizenship Sustainability team, and I thought it would be something interesting to get involved in while I figured out how I wanted to build my career.
What do we do?
In the ACG Corporate Citizenship Sustainability team, our focus is on finding ways to engage analysts on how to be more sustainable and providing analysts with a platform to use the skills we learn at Accenture to contribute to sustainability in society.
Our output is really varied. We organise everything from ‘brown bags’ (informal educational talks on specific topics) to film screenings to games and initiatives that encourage analysts to adopt sustainable behaviours. We also help organise opportunities for analysts to volunteer or run pro bono consulting projects with sustainability charities.
For the talks, we invite a mixture of internal and external speakers. In the past, we ran a ‘Tech for Good’ series where we had experts from across our business come and talk about the interesting work that they’re doing, such as green cloud. My highlight was definitely our event with ’She Changes Climate’, focused on the importance of gender equality and female leadership in the face of climate change. We organised a screening of their short film and had the founder and producers join a panel for a Q&A alongside some brilliant men and women working in sustainable fashion, sustainable finance and climate education.
I was nervous beforehand because it was originally planned as an event only for analysts, but a lot of people across Accenture ended up coming, including colleagues from a newly acquired business, Carbon Intelligence. The event was a big success and inspired a nuanced discussion afterwards which made me proud to be part of organising it.
We’ve also run more practical initiatives. During Earth Week we ran a ‘sustainability bingo’ challenge where there were prizes for analysts who could tick off the most sustainable activities, like washing clothes at 30 degrees and doing a plastic-free grocery shop.
Shaping my career
As part of the Sustainability Strategy practice, my day-to-day client work is also centred around sustainability, and doing this side of desk work definitely helped me network with people running projects I was interested in. But I do have colleagues in the ACG Corporate Citizenship Sustainability team who work in Accenture business areas that aren’t solely focused on sustainability.
For me, side of desk has given me opportunities to develop skills and get experience I might not have in my day-to-day work. On top of learning how to manage my time better, I’ve had the chance to organise events, moderate panels, manage finances for our group and present to quite big and sometimes senior audiences. I
think what any side of desk work really does is help you realise that you can make just about anything happen if you have a good idea and some similarly passionate people to deliver it with.
I usually give two pieces of advice about side of desk to people starting here. The first is just to reach out to people! Everything I do came from speaking to people and understanding what opportunities were available. There’s no other way to get involved. My second piece of advice is to be selective. It’s really easy to take on too much so you have to remember your day job and make sure you’re always putting your best in.
Author bio
Vicki is a Sustainability Strategy Analyst at Accenture who is passionate about sustainability and social impact. Prior to joining Accenture via the consulting graduate programme, she graduated with a 1st Class Honours in Chemistry, specialising in sustainable solar cell production. Outside of work, Vicki enjoys cooking (and eating), particularly Asian food, and going to gym classes.
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