Empowering our people

Investing in technology, tools and training for our people and communities

We’ve invested heavily in technology this year, with more than two-thirds of our people agreeing that ‘those I work with actively seek out new ways to use technology’. Our firmwide Tech For All digital learning programme has given our people knowledge of key technologies and, in line with our flexible working approach, is available on mobile, anytime, anywhere. We’ll continue to build on this investment in the coming year by upskilling our entire workforce and creating a place for our people to learn about working with different technologies and sharing this across our business.

Technology is helping us allocate work fairly and efficiently, and we’ve deployed an AI tool matching our people to the right client projects. We’ve also built technological capabilities into our new development programme for senior managers, ensuring they have the skills they need to become our future leaders.

Our investment goes beyond the people who currently work for us and this year we’ve been using immersive experiences and interactive videos to bring our culture to life for potential graduate and school leaver recruits. We’re also continuing to inspire young women to pursue a career in technology via our Tech She Can Charter.

Our diversity and inclusion action plan

This is our fifth year publishing our gender pay gap, and our third voluntarily publishing our ethnicity pay gap. We do so in the hope that being transparent with our numbers will accelerate change and promote action. Alongside data, we have a clear action plan outlining the steps we're taking to drive real change within our business. At PwC, our focus is on the outcomes of the action we're taking, which is why we believe an action plan is so important.

Spotlight on ethnicity

This is our third year voluntarily publishing our ethnicity pay gap, and we believe taking a transparent and data driven approach is key to driving action and change. Building on this disclosure, we undertook a qualitative review in 2017 to understand the workplace experiences of our ethnic minority talent to understand what interventions we need to make to ensure our culture is inclusive.

This summer we followed up by holding a series of open and honest focus group discussions and surveys with over a hundred of our people (see video below) to understand what progress has been made, how our actions are making an impact and what else can be done. You can find out more about the work we’ve done this year to support ethnic minority inclusion, including progression coaches and our work with other organisations, here.

Be Well, Work Well

We’re committed to ensuring that care and our people’s wellbeing remains central to our culture. This year, we brought together all that we do to help our people prioritise their wellbeing as part of our new global approach called Be Well, Work Well. To ensure our people have access to support covering all aspects of wellbeing, including those still not often talked about in the workplace, we’ve introduced initiatives such as a menopause in the workplace guide, financial wellbeing support, and campaigns promoting work/life balance.

We’ve also continued to evolve our approach to supporting mental wellbeing in the workplace by expanding and relaunching our firmwide mental health advocates network and rolling out mental health awareness training. We’ve also continued our programme of Green Light to Talk activity, including regularly sharing our people's stories to encourage everyone to talk openly and help break the stigma.