Reporting process and materiality

Annual reporting is an opportunity to provide our stakeholders with a big-picture view of the Deloitte network, Deloitte client work, and our ongoing commitments to our people and society. As a professional services network, understanding and engaging the interests and concerns of our stakeholders is embedded in our drive for excellence. Deloitte identifies key stakeholders as those who:

• Help influence Deloitte’s success; 
• Are highly affected by what Deloitte does; 
• Affect the markets, regulations and industries in which Deloitte operates; or 
• Affect the supply of resources that Deloitte member firms need to serve clients, talent and society.

Continual engagement with key stakeholders by Deloitte people is supported by a periodic, in-depth materiality assessment. Please see the “Basis of reporting” section for additional details on the materiality assessment process.

In the context of this report, material topics are those that reflect Deloitte’s significant economic, environmental and social impacts, or substantively influence the assessments and decisions of stakeholders. Topics were classified into three categories according to their relative rankings on a materiality matrix.

Topics can be material either within Deloitte, outside of Deloitte, or both. They also can be geographically bound. Except as noted below, all topics shown in the matrix are material to Deloitte Global, Deloitte member firms, or both. Client satisfaction is clearly a topic of importance to Deloitte clients. Other topics material to regulators, suppliers and member firm clients include privacy and data security, ethics and integrity, supply chain management, and labor conditions. Several issues are also material to society at large, such as community engagement, public policy engagement and climate change. Water is predominantly material outside of Deloitte (e.g., water used by suppliers in producing products or services Deloitte consumes) and is primarily material to society in geographic locations with water scarcity issues.