People

Our commitment to our people

PwC does not simply employ people: we are the people who work here. We are committed to helping our people to develop and grow. We share a set of values that underpin this commitment to each other and guide the way we strive to behave, make decisions and achieve our goals.

These values form the basis of our global Code of Conduct which sets out the standards of behaviour we expect of each other. We measure our performance in living up to our code in a number of ways, and include below some statistics from our quarterly survey of our people - "YouMatter" as an illustration of our overall progress. We are pleased to note the positive trend in many of the opinions expressed. We use the outputs from our surveys to highlight areas for further attention.

In order to live up to our values, we must manage a number of key areas, including:

• Recruiting and retaining the right people
• Valuing diversity
• Balancing life inside and outside work
• Delivering fair reward
• Developing our people
• The health and safety of our people
• Senior management commitment to our people agenda

Recruiting and retaining the right people

Our values are embedded in the way we recruit, manage, develop and reward our people. They form the basis of our “career deal”, whereby we strive to provide the right environment for people to realise their potential, by:

• Investing in people to develop their skills and career
• Appropriate reward and recognition
• Equality of treatment and transparent promotion processes
• A supportive coaching culture, where people are helped to improve by receiving timely, constructive feedback
• Ensuring our people receive the support they need to achieve the balance they want between their work and their lives outside work
• Embedding a culture of continuous professional development, where people recognise that their profession is constantly advancing.

In return, we encourage our people to share responsibility for their development, by providing:

• Clarity on their aspirations and goals
• Flexibility to do and learn new things
• Initiative to seek opportunities
• Commitment to success
• Enthusiasm for linking their career plans to our business needs.

This two-way career deal makes for an environment in which people can feel valued.

Valuing diversity

Our diversity is our strength. We perform best by harnessing the collective and complementary skills, knowledge, backgrounds and networks of a rich mix of people who work together in an environment that is inclusive and respecting of individuals around the global PwC organisation. We believe that it is this ability to work in high-performing, diverse teams that gives us our competitive advantage.

 

The basis of our diversity is recognising all the ways in which people are different, both visibly (for example in gender or ethnicity) and subliminally (for example social or educational background, or personality). We are fully committed to ensuring that all our past, present and future partners and staff are treated fairly and with respect, irrespective of their actual or assumed background including gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, race (including colour, nationality and ethnic origin), religion/belief or disability.

Click here to read our diversity and inclusion statement.

Balancing life inside and outside work

We know through our regular in-house surveys that achieving a satisfactory balance between building a successful career and enjoying life away from work is a high priority for our people – and that this balance is very much a matter of personal choice and circumstance. Our “PwC Lifestyle” site provides a wealth of self-help ideas, information and tools to help employees make lifestyle decisions and cope with different life events. It covers areas such as caring and parenting, work-life integration, health and fitness, personal finances and managing time and stress.

Where possible, we accommodate requests to work part-time and/or flexible hours, and to allow staff to take career breaks for a variety of reasons, including those wishing to participate in our VSO Business Partnership Scheme.

Delivering fair reward

We are committed to offering a competitive reward package for all our people, reflecting the market for their role as well as their individual performance and that of the business.

Our flexible benefit scheme allows employees to adapt their package to match their own priorities and lifestyle.

Developing our people

As a professional services organisation, our business is all about the skills and expertise of our own professionals. Our brand is built on the quality and integrity of our people, and therefore we invest heavily in training and development (see Enabling Personal Development on the Culture and Ethics page), as well as promoting a culture of on-the-job coaching.

We also provide a range of career opportunities to suit the different aspirations, personalities and talents of our people. These include secondments to PwC firms in other countries, internal career moves, and spells at Genesis Park, our global think tank for young leaders based in Washington.

To support mobility, we recently launched Helix, an integrated programme designed to provide our people with new opportunities inside and outside the firm. This year, our international assignment programme helped 782 people find assignments to or from the UK.

For the fourth year consecutive year, PwC has been voted the UK’s top employer in The Times Top 100 List of Graduate Employers, where we were also voted Employer of Choice in the Accountancy Sector. In addition, we were named the ideal company to work for and the company that offered the best opportunities in student surveys in Universum and Trendence.

The Health & Safety of our people

We are committed to complying with our duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) to ensure the health and safety of our employees and those that are not in our employment. We have clear structure for managing and reporting our performance on health & safety, and a documented policy.

Our management target for health & safety is to capture comprehensive data in 5 key areas of health & safety performance management:

• Accident reporting
• Building risk assessments
• New Joiner DSE workstation assessments
• Expectant Mother risk assessment
• Environmental health office visits

We achieved this target, and based on the data collected, our performance targets for 2007 were as follows:

• For building risk assessments - to review all building risk assessments within 12 months or after a significant change – achieved 82%
• For new joiner workstation assessments - to perform all assessments for new joiners with known musculoskeletal issues within 20 working days of notification of start – achieved 73%
• For expectant mothers – to perform risk assessments within 10 days of notification – achieved 100%
• Our target for FY07/08 is to deliver our three R's desk survival course to 100% of offices over a two year period. In FY07 we delivered to 45% which is on schedule to our programme.

Click here for a summary of our performance in each area (8K PDF)

As well as managing our performance under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) we actively promote good health among our people through our zest for life at PwC programme.

Through this programme we have:

• Incorporated health as a key part of PwC’s ‘Great Place to Work’ strategy
• Given greater attention to early management of sickness absence and effective rehabilitation
• Continued to develop the profile of health, fitness and wellbeing within the firm and for new recruits to encourage our people to choose a healthy lifestyle.

We look at health as a continuum throughout the employment lifecycle and have taken a structured approach to both improving existing services and raising the profile of the importance of health and wellbeing within PwC. zest for life at PwC links all of our wellbeing initiatives and provides support and increased awareness. We have on site facilities at several offices and have classes on meditation, massage, yoga, pilates, positive thinking and many others. zest for life at PwC provides information and support for our people to make healthy choices.

The significance of our approach to health is that:

• PwC people benefit through better training and awareness about health and wider access to health information (all PwC people have access to health advice services)
• PwC people on sick leave benefit from earlier support from occupational health, better and quicker access to treatment, flexible return to work programmes and support, and nurse home visits if on long-term sickness
• PwC managers benefit from having better information about sickness absence (data, guidance and training) to support their people
• PwC as an organisation benefits from a more health conscious workforce.

Senior management commitment to our People agenda

The UK Management board manage and measure our business performance through a balanced business scorecard, which includes a section on "People" with key performance indicators which reflect our commitment to being a great place to work for all our people.

We review trends in our “YouMatter” people survey results, both firm-wide and within individual business units. Business units set specific targets against which to measure their progress, and firm-wide we have an overall target of continuously improving our scores year on year.