Kevin Ellis video transcript

Part 1 - The year

Welcome to our PwC Annual Report for 2022. 

As we reflect on last year, many of the issues we are now facing feel very different from those twelve months ago. The emphasis has shifted from dealing with post-pandemic economic concerns, to a new set of challenges such as cost of living, energy shortages and war.

Our purpose is to build trust and solve important problems and that has never been more relevant. This is why we launched The New Equation strategy last year, which focuses on combining human ingenuity and understanding with the right technology.

Through the New Equation we’re investing to deliver the results that make a difference. We are empowering our people with new skills, capabilities and technology and we are bringing together people from different backgrounds, with diverse experiences and viewpoints to better solve our clients’ problems. 

Faced with these market and societal disruptions, our clients want more support, more insight and fresh thinking. And we have been able to deliver.  Despite fierce competition in the market, it has been a strong year for our firm, and we have grown revenue.  

Part 2: The way we work

The rise of the home as a place of work is reshaping our towns and cities, driving change and providing opportunities for levelling up across the UK. Hybrid working allows our people to also spend more time in the office, collaborating and learning from each other. 

We’re seeing the benefits to our people, teams and clients as well as our working culture.  We achieved our highest ever engagement score of 80% up 2% on the previous year: our people clearly welcome the flexibility they have around working location.

We’ve also had a great response to summer working hours In June, July, and August; when the majority of our people are able to finish at Friday lunchtime having condensed their working week.

Our strong performance and the continued hard work of our people means we’ve also been able to make our biggest investment in pay and promotions in a decade. 

As a business and an employer we want to ensure pay at every level is as competitive as possible, helping us to attract the best talent and skills from across the UK. 

We’re also continuing to invest in high quality collaboration areas in all our offices and this year we opened a new state-of-the-art office in Belfast. 

With 25,000 people across the UK working with thousands of clients, there have been many stand out moments over the year that have brought our strategy to life.  For me, just some of the highlights include:

• Creating a new technology hub in Manchester, which brings together a wide range of technologists and digital experts that will lead to 1,000 new jobs and a wealth of reskilling opportunities in the region.

  Playing an active role in COP26 in Glasgow and launching our new annual Green Jobs Barometer. As a large UK-wide employer with a focus on social mobility and equality, we want to support a fair transition of jobs and skills, particularly in the areas they are most needed.
  

• Working with our clients to help build greater trust in ESG reporting as well as using our expertise and technology to help organisations deliver against their commitments.
  

• Bringing on board over 1,300 school leavers and graduates across the UK.  This includes students joining through degree apprenticeships, which PwC has been expanding - Ada college in Manchester being the latest addition.
  

• Part 3: Where next?
  

Our business is in a strong place thanks to the breadth of our services and clients, the skills of our people, and the investments we’ve made.  We can’t take this for granted. 

The audit profession continues to be subject to regulatory change and we remain committed continuing to build trust in the sector. I believe that the multi-disciplinary firm is more relevant than ever in an uncertain world.  

By bringing together expert teams with diverse skills and experience to deal with a wide variety of business challenges, such as complex audits, net zero transformations, cyber security assignments and multi-national transactions, we have the greatest chance of finding solutions to economic and social challenges.

In the face of these challenges and with the current economic headwinds - including rising costs and the tightness of the labour market -  we are making investments, particularly in people, skills and technology to ensure that we grow sustainably over the medium to longer term and play our part in strengthening the economic prosperity of the UK.