2022 Corporate Responsibility Targets

In addition to our seven corporate responsibility goals, we created annual short- and longer-term targets to inspire growth and tangible action across our organization. We shared our targets for 2022 in last year’s corporate responsibility report, and meeting them has brought us closer to achieving our goals in three areas:

✓ Achieve a Carbon Footprint Below 3.48 MT CO₂e per Person

In alignment with our goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030, we’ve reduced our operational emissions and surpassed our target, arriving at a carbon footprint of 2.00 MT CO₂e per person in 2022. By working in high-performance offices, making office energy-efficiency improvements, using renewable energy, flying less and enabling flexible work, Thornton Tomasetti is committed to leading efforts in corporate climate action.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our employees adopted new work-from-home practices. In 2022, we implemented a flexible return-to-work policy of having “most people in the office, most of the time.” This allows employees to choose a hybrid schedule while promoting collaboration and community. But while we’ve seen an uptick in in-office attendance, our commute-to-work numbers remain lower than prepandemic levels, which has led to a decrease in commuting emissions from our 2018 baseline. Our business-travel emissions are also low, compared to our baseline.

We’re reducing electricity use in our offices by implementing efficiency measures like replacing incandescent lights with LED bulbs and by using more efficient computer equipment. We’ve also improved our ability to adapt to new places. When we move into a new office, we adhere to our office fit-out best practices policy — seeking a green-building certification or the equivalent for each and ensuring that each location is more energy-efficient than the previous one.

We continue to follow our strategy for achieving carbon-neutral business operations – reducing as much energy use as we can rather than simply declaring carbon neutrality through the purchase of carbon offsets (except in the case of business travel, a business-critical activity that we offset each year).

✓ Offer Mentoring to All Employees

Thornton Tomasetti’s mentorship program was originated by our Women@TT employee network group and initially offered only to women, due to the known challenges they face in STEM professions. A year ago, we expanded the program to include all interested staff. Now, 88% of both female and male employees report feeling that someone at the firm encourages their development.

By subscribing to an online mentorship platform, we were able to automate processes that allow us to administer the program at a high level. In 2022, we reached all employees through the platform, except in special cases where groups asked to make their own mentorship matches. We offer one-on-one mentoring during two six-month cohorts each year. The mentoring platform matches mentees with internal mentors who have relevant experience. Mentorship opportunities include formal long-term mentoring, informal peer groups and coffee breaks. This expansion of services has made mentorship and community support more accessible across our organization and promoted a culture of sharing knowledge and experience.

✓ Ensure Our Employees Are Familiar With Our Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Initiative

Ninety-eight percent of our employees report being familiar with our equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) initiative. Supported by our top leadership, our employee network groups (ENGs) organized dozens of local and global activities in 2022 to promote ED&I initiatives. Awareness across the organization was fueled by these very visible events and by office leaders who encouraged involvement. Ninety-seven percent of our employees say that their managers promote equity, diversity and inclusion.

This year, our ED&I program featured an allyship learning series in which employees learned to recognize unconscious bias and advocate for others in the workplace. And in 2022, we added three paid holidays – Juneteenth, Veteran’s Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day – to provide our employees expanded opportunities to celebrate their heritages and learn about the backgrounds of others.

Our ED&I initiative, started in 2016, has become a primary driver and exemplar of our workplace culture, and we continue to explore new ways to build an inclusive environment and improve our firm’s gender, ethnic and racial diversity.

Looking to the year ahead, we’re working to achieve measurable short-term progress toward our corporate responsibility goals in these three target areas (and more!). Please look for the release of our next report in spring 2024 to learn about our progress toward these targets.