How do we support our people?
| PwC’s approach to corporate responsibility ensures that we continue to enhance the development and wellbeing of our people. Our focus is on the whole person, not just their technical expertise, and we provide a diverse range of opportunities to support our people in reaching both their personal and professional potential. Our firm is brimming with energetic and inspirational people who want to build an enduring career. Strong relationships make this possible; they define our connection with each other, our clients and the broader community. Over the last few years we have progressively developed a deliberate and focused approach to building relationships, enriching our culture and supporting our people. More than 88 per cent of our people say they are proud to work for PwC. Our pioneering culture initiative, the PwC Experience, is embedded in everything we do – from the way we attract and recruit people to developing them and measuring performance. The PwC Experience originated within PwC Australia and, due to its success, has been adopted by the firm’s global network.
Development
Despite the current economic conditions, PwC is continuing to invest strongly in learning and development for our people. In FY09, we spent $94 million on initiatives to help our people grow and excel. In addition to building technical competency, we assist our people to enhance their broader business skills, such as client relationship management, commercial acumen, leadership and teamwork.
Coaching
Our talent management strategy guides the future development, retention and succession plans of our key talent. A Talent Council, made up of senior representatives from across the firm, oversees our strategy and identifies talent experiences and development opportunities that enable our people to become strong leaders. PwC people development is based on a 70:20:10 approach. This follows workplace research findings that 70 per cent of development should come from experience on the job, 20 per cent through coaching and mentoring and 10 per cent through formal education. This strategy has been designed to help our people get the most out of their career, with plenty of support and guidance along the way. As the world grows in complexity, our people and clients are being asked to respond more quickly, learn new skills, use faster and better technology and interact effectively with a range of diverse cultures – all while balancing busier personal and community-focused lives. As a result, people are looking for deeper and more meaningful connections with their business advisers, employers and colleagues.
Diversity
To help our people build stronger relationships within their teams and with clients, we have focused in recent years on building our coaching capability. Each person at PwC is assigned a coach who is responsible for helping foster their professional development. A network of skilled coaching champions supports and models our relationship-building and conversation-based approach, ensuring every discussion is seen as an opportunity for both parties to learn, challenge, reframe and innovate. PwC is committed to achieving a truly diverse and inclusive organisation, reflective of the community in which we live. We know that six people with different ideas are more valuable than 60 people who all think the same.
Working flexibly
Women currently make up half of PwC’s graduate recruits and, while we still have work to do to improve the retention rates later in their careers, our efforts are having an impact. The percentage of female partners in our firm has increased by 45 per cent since 2004 and over the last financial year we have increased the percentage of women across the majority of grades. Twenty-five per cent of our executive team is female, up from nine per cent in FY07. We have also been recognised as an EOWA Employer of Choice for Women. We are continually striving to improve our gender mix across the firm. In FY08, Women’s Leadership Forums and Mentoring Circles were established. We recognised that women often have difficulty finding a female mentor, owing to a lack of role models in leadership positions. These groups provide an avenue for women to share their experiences and stories, using their strengths to build mentoring skills and increase confidence. We are also investing in initiatives to support ethnic diversity over the coming years, providing language and culture training, as well as relocation support for our people. A career at PwC can take people in many different directions, providing broad opportunities, challenging work and connections to innovative people. We want to ensure our people are inspired at every stage of their career.
Getting agile
Like most businesses, we are working hard to support and retain our people through a challenging economic environment. Our ability to be agile as an organisation is more important than ever in achieving sustainable success. We have long been committed to helping our people achieve balance by offering a range of workplace flexibility options to support progressively busy lives and careers. For example, our people can choose to work part-time, take up flexible working hours or purchase additional annual leave. These options assist our people in pursuing family or personal interests, such as travel or study. We also offer 14 weeks of paid parental leave. Ninety per cent of our people who go on parental leave return, 10 per cent above the industry benchmark. We offer these new parents on-site caring facilities and a childcare information and resources service. Our range of flexible work options are positive steps that deliver a healthy work-life balance for our people, while at the same time setting us up for sustainable success. Work experience in a different team, state or country can be a great way to broaden talents and improve career prospects. At PwC, we have well-established domestic and global mobility programs, providing our people with a range of local, international and client secondment opportunities. This enables staff to move around in their careers and builds a highly capable pool of talent for our clients that can be moved up and around the organisation.
International experience is in demand from our clients and is highly valued in the increasingly global economy. We have offices in more than 100 countries and a number of long-term secondments become available each year. Domestically, we saw more than 50 staff per month experience new challenges across our eight Australian offices through a secondment or permanent transfer. In addition, the firm encourages and supports those wanting to develop their careers by working in different areas of the business through internal mobility initiatives. |  | Mary Waldron Managing Partner, Networks Sophie Crawford-Jones Human Capital Leader
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