Culture and Ethics

 

Why this matters to PwC

Our success depends on having an ethical culture that engenders trust in everyone who comes into contact with us.

Our approach is to ensure that the way we do business reflects the aspirations in our Code of Conduct – that we live the code. Our reputation for ethics and integrity suggests that we have been doing pretty well at this. But there is never room for complacency – because continuing to live up to our values is critical to maintaining our reputation.

What we do

To help us really embed the code, we focus on eight areas that we believe are critical to supporting our business culture:

Setting the right tone from the top – The Board takes responsibility not only for growing the firm as a business, but also for driving our response to wider issues. Examples include Kieran Poynter's active sponsorship of our diversity agenda and climate neutral initiative, and Richard Collier-Keywood's championing of our Community Affairs programme.

Managing the business using more than just financial measures – We use a balanced scorecard to track our progress against the challenging targets we have set ourselves in terms of clients, people and the firm as a whole. We link our management’s reward to their performance in these areas, measured against your feedback in regular YouMatter surveys. So your views on how well management is doing help to determine how they are rewarded.

Making ethics a part of business decision making – We take on new assignments and new clients every day, and we have formal processes in place for assessing all clients and engagements before we accept them – including reviewing the ethical behaviour and reputation of their senior management. For existing clients and recurring projects we repeat these assessments at least annually.

Taking a thorough approach to regulatory compliance – We operate in a highly regulated industry with far-reaching rules on issues such as independence and money laundering. For us, embracing the regulations simply has to be a way of life. That is why we have invested heavily in training and support mechanisms to ensure that we achieve a compliance culture.

Trusting and empowering our people – We do our utmost to ensure that we recruit and retain the best people, that you understand what is expected of you as representatives of PwC, and that we give you the right tools to deliver professional services with ethics and integrity. Then we trust you to use your own experience and insights to deliver the excellence that our clients expect. In 2005-06, 75% of you agreed that 'the management style of my group encourages people to give their best'. This is an area we want to improve still further.

Enabling personal development – helping people to think more broadly – We invested a large slice of our £42 million training budget for 2005-06 in creating opportunities to develop broad management and leadership skills and increase understanding of key social and economic issues. Our MD+ course 'Corporate Responsibility – Making it Personal' is an example of one of the initiatives we are putting in place to increase the awareness and use of corporate responsibility concepts in our approach to work and client relationships.

Rewarding the right behaviours – Everyone contributes to our culture, whether positively or negatively, through numerous actions and conversations every day. Compliance with regulations, respect for confidentiality, behaviour towards clients and colleagues, understanding of corporate responsibility issues – all of these have an impact. This is why our personal appraisal process includes a focus on these behaviours, and also why we support more informal ways of celebrating the right behaviours through local recognition schemes – often referred to as 'thank you' schemes.

Supporting our people through difficult situations – Line management, career coaches and mentors are all available to help you deal with difficult decisions at work, and we offer you additional guidance and support through our confidential ethics and compliance helplines. We also seek to support you when dealing with situations outside the office, including providing a confidential employee assistance helpline and access to counselling as well as the opportunity to request practical solutions – such as career breaks or flexible working arrangements.

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