The future of work is changing fast, and so too are our clients’ needs and peoples’ expectations of their employers. We know that our people are our biggest strength as a business and that’s why we’re focused on helping to empower them to be the best that they can be.
We must lead by example. We have a responsibility to role model and promote inclusion and equality of opportunity not only internally but also externally, making a positive social impact on the communities in which we work.
Transforming our workforce and the way we work requires us to have very diverse talented people, from different backgrounds, people who have different experiences and bring innovation, creativity and a fresh perspective. We’re committed to improving the diversity of our workforce by building a culture that’s genuinely inclusive, a culture that empowers all of our people to thrive and feel they belong at PwC. To track our progress, we’ve set targets for ourselves and publicly report on our progress in our Annual Report.
Diversity pay reporting
We first voluntarily published our gender pay gap in 2014, prior to the Gender Pay Gap Regulations being introduced in 2015. Since then we have held ourselves accountable by disclosing data points even where there is no regulatory requirement to do so. You can find out more about our pay gaps in our diversity pay report.
How we are driving an inclusive culture
Achieving a culture of inclusion requires inclusive leaders, who get the best out of all their people, helping their organisations to succeed in today’s complex national and global environments, with their ability to be self-aware and open-minded they proactively create a culture in which difference is valued. Our five point action plan sets out the steps we’re taking to promote diversity and inclusion across the firm and the areas we’re focusing on for the greatest impact.
Inclusive culture
We run inclusive leadership programmes to help our leaders at all levels create a culture where difference is embraced and to equip them with the skills and knowledge to do to drive inclusion in their business, and we work with teams across the firm to help them understand the role that all of us play in creating an inclusive culture. All of our inclusion activity is underpinned by sustained engagement and communication strategy that is designed to engage our people in thinking about inclusion in broadest terms, covering different aspects of difference and challenging our people to reflect on how they can be more inclusive.
Senior level accountability
Ensuring senior level accountability for delivering on our publicly disclosed targets for both gender and ethnicity, aligning our accountability framework to both performance management and reward. In our partner income allocation process, we have recognised and rewarded those partners who have made a positive contribution to the delivery of our diversity targets.
Fair work allocation
Working on high-profile projects is one way that our people can really make their mark and progress in their career. That’s why we’ve taken a number of steps to make sure that we’re providing fair access to the best work opportunities. It’s about challenging assumptions to ensure that we’re not always looking in the same pool when it comes to resourcing, providing more people with the opportunity to work on career defining projects.
Recruitment activity
We’re making sure that our recruitment processes from student hires to experienced hires, are open and attractive to all. We’ve invested in new recruitment tools to reduce an unintended bias in our processes and are using data to monitor our progress. Banning all male shortlists for experienced hires and our new Flexible Talent Network are just some of the bold changes we’ve made to our recruitment process to ensure we’re looking in the broadest talent pool possible.
Progression coaches
We’re investing to create more progression coaches to provide career sponsorship and advice to high potential female and ethnic minority directors. Career sponsorship is a vital part of giving individuals the network and support to reach their full potential.
Targets
We first set five-year targets on our diversity data in 2015 to measure the success of our action plan over time. We’ve updated our targets to 2025 to ensure we continue to drive change.
Our diversity targets and progress against them are also published in our Annual Report according to our obligations under HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter.
Women account for 48% (47% FY23) of our workforce and we continue to make good progress in strengthening our pipeline of female talent resulting in higher levels of representation at director and partner level. We are pleased with the reductions we have achieved in our gender pay gaps that continue our sustained downward trend.
The positive trend reflects our commitment to delivering against our five-point action plan, particularly re-wiring a number of our people processes such as recruitment, work allocation, performance management and promotions.
All of our pay gaps are driven by under-representation of the relevant population in senior roles within our business. This is why we have set targets by grade for gender and ethnic background which are based on accelerating our progress over a 5 year period. Very simply, delivering our targets is essential to closing our pay gaps.
| Grade | Ethnicity targets | Gender targets |
| Partner | 15% | 30% |
| Director | 20% | 43% |
| Senior manager | 24% | 50% |
| Manager | 29% | 50% |
| Senior associate | 33% | 49% |
| Associate | 27% | 50% |
Our 2025 targets have been expanded to include our internal support roles and our junior grades to ensure we are building a strong pipeline for promotion across our firm. As part of our plans to accelerate action on ethnicity we’re also committed to doubling the number of Black Partners over the next five years from six to twelve, as well as increasing the proportion of Black students hired from 3% to 6%.
Inclusive communities
We know networking contributes to personal and professional fulfilment and success. That's why our firm is home to fourteen people diversity networks. Each network has specific objectives tailored to its membership. But all of them share the aim of providing a sense of community, inspiring and supporting diverse talent and raising awareness of diversity within our firm and creating a genuinely inclusive culture at PwC.
As well as the personal development and support aspects of the networks, they have a focus on identifying new business opportunities for the firm, supporting our strategy to be a leader in each of our chosen markets.
Our 5 faith networks
Christian network, Hindu network, Jewish network, Muslim network, Sikh network.
Black network
To celebrate unique aspects of Black Culture and positively impact PwC's inclusion journey by promoting the talents, skills, and views of Black employees. Open to everyone to come together and learn from each other.
DAWN - Disability, AWareness Network
DAWN is for everyone, whether you're affected personally, support a colleague or relative.
East & South-East Asian Network
Bringing together colleagues who are from East and South-East Asia, have family history or trace their ancestry to the region and also those who have an interest in the region and its culture - it welcomes everyone.
Gender Balance
Our Gender Balance Network brings people together in conversation on gender and equality; to share experience, learn, and create valuable change.
Military Network
For those with past or present military service to use their experience and personal networks to benefit both our clients and the firm.
Shine
Shine is an inclusive business network for LGBTQ+ people, allies and supporters.
Social Mobility Network
Provides practical opportunities to contribute to one of the most important challenges our society faces - that of inequality and social mobility.
South Asian Network
Bringing together those who trace their ancestry to South Asia (countries like Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc), or anyone with an interest in learning more.
SPACE - Supporting, Parents, Carers, & Everyone
Creating SPACE so that work sits comfortably alongside our other interests & responsibilities.
More on empowering people and communities
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