“Our 295,000 colleagues around the world are our greatest asset and the foundation for our success. Through delivering our strategy, The New Equation, we are creating incredible opportunities for our people that will enable them to achieve their potential, build rewarding and sustainable careers and become inclusive leaders.”
There is no doubt that this past year has been a challenging one for people everywhere. And that matters to us – because at PwC, our people are at the heart of everything we do. We currently have more than 295,000 professionals in 156 countries and, as part of our commitment to our new strategy, The New Equation, we plan to hire 100,000 net new professionals by 2026.
This makes it vital that our “people first” approach continues to guide our actions, as it has done over the past year. During it, we’ve remained focused on keeping our people safe, supporting their wellbeing, providing them with the flexibility they need to manage the often-competing demands of professional and personal lives, offering them opportunities to develop new skills, and continuing to build a diverse and inclusive workforce.
At PwC, we are enabling our people to have – and deliver – a high-quality experience. To achieve this, we are actively building the right mix of team members, skills and approaches that fit today and flex for tomorrow.
The evolving world of work and how we are responding
The world of work is always evolving. But its evolution has accelerated rapidly in the past year, opening up opportunities for both PwC and our clients to learn lessons and encourage new ways of working.
While remote working clearly has many benefits, we also recognise the importance of coming together in person to build relationships and share ideas. That is why many of our member firms are moving towards a hybrid working model tailored to their local market conditions. Several of our firms, including the UK and Africa, have enhanced their flexible working policies to provide their partners and staff more choice over how, where and when they work. These policies are built on two-way flexibility and the trust that each individual will work in a way that suits them while also meeting the needs of their teams, the wider firm and our clients.
We also recognise that extended periods of remote working can lead to feelings of isolation. To combat this, our member firms have established mechanisms to ensure our people feel connected while working virtually. For example, PwC Malaysia runs an ongoing programme of virtual team activities, ranging from cookie decorating contests to fitness challenges and virtual lunches.
Just as our ways of working have changed, so we are now coaching people in new ways too. what is friendfinder During the times when quick chats over lunch or while walking between meetings were not possible, we needed to help our people approach coaching with a new mindset and make it more intentional than ever before. By increasing access to upskilling opportunities in different types of coaching, our staff and partners are encouraged to integrate coaching conversations into their everyday connections, in person or virtually.
Our people
Take the example of our assurance practice. After shifting to fully remote working, many team members were missing the collaboration and on-the-job learning that the physical audit room had historically provided. To create a flexible workplace that fosters an environment where mentoring and coaching happen in the course of daily work, our assurance teams created virtual audit rooms – digital ‘hangouts’ – where team members and clients could come and go at the click of a button.