Sustainability Services Snr Manager at KPMG South Africa

Description of the role and purpose of the job: 

• The Sustainability Services team provides ESG assurance and a wide range of ESG-related advisory services. Our multidisciplinary team works with a range of established methodologies to identify strengths, weaknesses, and risks in organisations’ interactions with society, and uses this knowledge to strengthen impact. 
• Due to the heightened awareness around ESG and its increasing importance for all organisations, there has been an increase in ESG considerations and inclusions in proposals and client liaisons throughout the business. It is imperative that the Sustainability Services team works with teams across all business units to ensure that each of the relevant ESG pillars are being considered when offering services or delivering on work, which will ultimately result in increased value to the client. We provide assurance for corporate companies across a range of sectors, on a wide variety of topics or key performance areas, including (but not limited to) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, waste, water, social-related spend, occupational health and safety (H&S) etc.  
• Sustainability Services requires a Senior Manager to work with the current leadership team to deliver on the upcoming workload of assurance projects. The Senior Manager will need to project manage the assurance and reporting engagements and direct, guide and supervise the allocated team. The role entails management of all aspects of the end-to-end engagement process. Furthermore, there is a need to work with the leads across the KPMG Business units to build KPMG solutions in Assurance and Reporting as well as prepare and deliver on proposals. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Supervision of the team to ensure testing, assurance fieldwork and deliverables are of the highest quality
• Overseeing site visits
• First review of work performed and documentation thoroughly and completely and in line with KPMG’s quality standard
• Report writing
• Team planning and management
• Client liaison, building and maintaining close working relationships with existing and potential internal and external clients
• Management and delivery of sustainability assurance engagements
• Oversight of financial elements of projects (budget determination and management, billing, overrun negotiations with clients, agreement of project timelines)
• Responsibilities for wider unit management within the Sustainability Services team (training, finance, planning, and performance management)
• Performance managing junior team members and ensuring that there are valuable and enriching development conversations that support their career progression
• Actively seeking opportunities for new work, proposal development and translating these into revenue-generating projects
• Proactively engaging with other teams within the wider KPMG to take advantage of cross selling opportunities whilst ensuring holistic client solutions
• Ongoing relationship building, ideas sharing and support of global pursuits with other KPMG international offices
• Ongoing personal and professional development to remain technically relevant and able to deploy applicable methodologies with confidence
• Quality review of client deliverables

Skills required 

• Good understanding of Assurance standards applied (ISAE 3000 and ISAE 3410 at minimum). Familiarity with KPMG sustainability assurance methodology would be beneficial.
• Proven track record of managing and delivering high quality, complex projects with commensurate deliverables
• Project management skills
• Fully Microsoft office competent, specifically Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Report writing and communication skills
• Business development skills
• Client liaison with strong relationship management skills
• Presentation skills
• Analytical thinker and problem-solving ability
• Ability to multi-task and meet strict deadlines
• Presentable, professional and confident
• Ability to manage stress and work under pressure
• Ability to work in a team environment and manage a team proactively with a can-do attitude
• Ability to work individually and be accountable and make decisions while maintaining open lines of communication to senior management
• Strong attention to detail/methodical/analytical
• Willing to travel

Minimum Requirements 

• Undergraduate degree in either commerce, accounting, economics, development economics, finance, social science, business administration or equivalent
• Postgraduate diploma / degree is advantageous
• 6-8 years’ experience within Assurance and Reporting of non-financial/ ESG information
• 6 – 8 years project management experience in a similar environment
• Knowledge and experience in performing and managing external assurance and reporting engagements
• Detailed knowledge regarding assurance standards and ESG reporting criteria
• An understanding of the broader services offered by KPMG in order to identify internal and external business opportunities across advisory, and the ability to work across teams / business units is essential
• Experience in people management and business development is necessary.