The Sustainable Development Goals

Our diverse workforce makes us a better firm. We’re committed to creating an inclusive workplace and culture where everyone can reach their full potential.

• We have an extensive diversity and inclusion programme which seeks to drive equality for women in our business. This includes ambitious public targets for gender at each grade, transparency around our gender pay gap - which we were one of the first businesses to disclose - and multiple programmes to help women throughout their careers, including sponsorship, mentoring and coaching. We've banned all-male shortlists for experienced hires, and are also signatories of the United Nation’s HeForShe campaign to engage men as agents of change for gender equality. (Target 5.1, 5.5)

• Our Flexible Talent Network offers people a chance to work for the firm without being tied to a full time contract and standard working hours, and our parental leave policies aim to support our people when taking time out of the workplace for caring responsibilities. Similarly, our Back to Business programme is helping senior professional women to restart their career after an extended break. (Target 5.4, 5.5)

• We continue to publish our assessment of female economic empowerment across OECD countries in our annual Women in Work Index, and published a report on the gender pay gap in the technology sector. We also ran the Scale-up Female Founders programme, which sought to create commercial opportunities for women running high potential tech companies. (Target 5.5)

• Our #WomenInTech initiative is expanding: we co-created the Tech She Can charter, signed by over 50 organisations, which aims to encourage more young women to pursue technology careers. In Belfast, Our Hive Tech Academy promotes STEM subjects to school children and we're founding members of the Inclusive Digital Champions Network. (Target 5.b)

• Our client work includes engagements to help empower women and girls including DFID’s Girls Education Challenge, which improves education opportunities for marginalised girls in some of the world’s poorest countries; and supporting the development of partnerships between the government and the private sector to improve education for girls, such as the Coca Cola 5by20 initiative. (Target 5.c)
  

As one of the largest professional services firms in the UK, our role in helping clients of all sizes and in all sectors to grow makes this one of our most significant areas of positive contribution.

• Our revenue grew 5% in 2018 to £3.76 billion, while we recruited more than 1,250 graduates and school leavers, and more than 2,000 experienced hires. We periodically measure the net financial value to society of our combined economic, tax, social and environmental impacts, and in 2017 this totalled £4.62 billion - 28% more than our revenue that year. (Target 8.1)

• Our growth strategy is based around the use of technology to catalyse higher levels of economic productivity. We've developed 'Intelligent Digital', where we balance business understanding with technology innovation and human insight to help our clients and people thrive in the digital revolution - for example, applying artificial intelligence to GDP forecasting, and incorporating machine learning into healthcare record keeping. And, we’ve introduced a Technology Degree Apprenticeship to our Flying Start degree series for students. (Target 8.2, 8.3)

• We’ve extended our ‘responsible technology’ approach, showcasing the positive role technology can fulfil in society while mitigating some of the potentially negative impacts. We’re collaborating with the World Economic Forum and Stanford University to explore how the fourth industrial revolution could help solve global environmental issues. And, collaborating with Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), we also published the SDG Investment Case outlining to the investment community the benefits of proactively engaging with the SDGs, and the risks of not doing so. (Target 8.2, 8.4)

• We’re founder members of the Buy Social Corporate Challenge, committing ourselves to use our purchasing decisions to support the social enterprise sector in addressing social and environmental issues. Social enterprises have also been central to our community engagement programmes for several years - our UK-wide Social Entrepreneurs’ Club offers training, support, events and resources to 250 social entrepreneurs. (Target 8.3, 8.6)

• We set challenging, long term, public targets to decouple our environmental impact from our economic growth, and publish our achievements each year in our Annual Report and non-financial scorecard, and on this website. (Target 8.4)

• As set out under Goal 5, we have an extensive diversity and inclusion programme, with transparent reporting against public targets, and were among the first businesses to voluntarily publish both our gender and ethnicity pay gaps. (Target 8.5, 8.6)

• We have a programme addressing human rights and modern slavery risks in our operations and supply chain, with 72% of our key suppliers reporting that they have a human rights policy in place in 2018. (Target 8.7, 8.8)

In a diverse and competitive world, we need to make sure that we can bring the best talent to our clients, regardless of race, gender or background. We pride ourselves on our approach to diversity and inclusion.

• We publish our performance on diversity, ethnicity, and social mobility in our Annual Report and scorecard. We were one of the first businesses to voluntarily publish details of our gender pay gap (2014) and ethnicity gap (2017), both of which have been externally assured. We have robust policies in place to prevent discrimination in the workplace and our Open Mind training, designed to make our people think about the impact of unconscious bias on their relationships, is mandatory for all partners and staff. We were named as one of the UK's Best Employers for Race 2018. (Target 10.2, 10.3)

• As part of our five point social mobility action plan, we’re working with over 40 partner schools nationally, focused largely on local authority social mobility coldspots and DfE Opportunity Areas. Our work in Bradford is a key example. We’re also a founder of the Social Mobility Pledge. We ranked sixth out of the top 50 employers in the UK’s Social Mobility Employer Index 2018 and were named Community Programme of the year at the UK Social Mobility Awards 2018. (Target 10.2, 10.3)

• As tax advisors, we’re well placed to help governments understand how the tax system might be reformed for greater equality. For example, we’ve run a programme for several years called ‘Paying for Tomorrow’ to collect multi-stakeholder input to develop options for tax reform. And we’ve invested in our Total Tax Contribution (TTC) survey every year since 2005, to inform the debate over how much tax large corporates pay. Additionally, we’ve been working with business, Whitehall and the third sector to encourage the development of new solutions to try to tackle the Poverty Premium. (Target 10.4)

• We’ve had an active voice in the debate on executive pay for several years. Together with the London School of Economics and Political Science we’ve published research on attitudes to fairness in reward policies and strategies, and we've given evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy about corporate governance and executive pay. We also report on executive remuneration in our own business in our Annual Report. (Target 10.4)

• Through our leadership of the Climate & Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) over eight years we supported developing countries to deliver climate-compatible development, and continue to support them in international climate change negotiations to secure fair and ambitious outcomes. (Target 10.6)

Our business isn’t closely linked to the systemic issues that drive hunger, but we contribute where we can.

• By eliminating our food waste, and pursuing opportunities to redistribute unused food from our on-site kitchens, we’re helping to reduce the pressure on food availability. (Target 2.1)

• We work with businesses, governments and civil society on ‘climate-smart agriculture’ to help them understand the impact of climate change on their agricultural interests and how they can respond. (Target 2.4)

• And, we’ve joined the Peas Please campaign together with our catering service provider, with a commitment to increase spend on vegetables sold in our in-office restaurants. We’ve run an engagement campaign to raise awareness of the impacts of some industrialised food and highlighting ways to get the daily recommended amount of protein from plant-based food. (Target 2.4)

We don't have a large water footprint in our direct operations. However, we monitor our consumption and have been investing to reduce it.

• Between 2007 and 2018, we achieved a 39% reduction in water consumption in our offices. (Target 6.4)

• As we report under Goal 15, we’ve also played a key role in the technical development and launch of the Natural Capital Protocol. (Target 6.6)

• At a global level, PwC is also a signatory to the United National Global Compact's (UNGC) CEO Water Mandate and supported the development of the UN guidelines for water disclosure. (Target 6.6)

As a people-based professional services firm, this goal is less relevant to our business operations, although some client work can make a positive contribution.

• As part of our ongoing Paying For Tomorrow campaign, we convened a business jury on improving workforce productivity, to deliver recommendations to representatives from the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. (Target 9.2)

• We launched a new series of Scale-up programmes across the UK. These aim to foster commercial opportunities between fast-growth companies, post-startup, and large organisations looking to innovate, by connecting them with potential customers, industry decision makers, investors and leading experts who can procure, partner, go-to-market, advise or invest in their business. (Target 9.3)

• We’re working with the Office of National Statistics’ Data Science Campus on data analytics skills development, research, and capabilities. (Target 9.5)

• In 2017, we launched a National Technology Industry Hub in Reading to help support our technology clients. Overseas, we’re supporting development in Africa by helping governments to use digital technology to improve their ability to collect tax for investment. (Target 9.2, 9.5)

• We've also developed an online service to help small firms to quickly and easily prepare claims for tax credits for research and development and to then submit to HMRC. (Target 9.5)

We make a contribution to sustainable cities through our client work to help improve the infrastructure of urban areas in developing nations, and locally by upgrading our offices in the UK.

• We lead DFID's Infrastructure and Cities for Economic Development (ICED) facility. ICED supports the design of a next generation of UK development assistance programmes on accelerated and sustainable investment into the built environment of developing countries in Africa and South Asia. We're also working on the ‘100 Smart Cities Mission' which aims to make cities across India citizen friendly and sustainable, with ‘smart’ technology systems that respond to changes in the urban environment. (Target 11.2, 11.3)

• As part of our work with WEF, we’ve co-published a series of papers which include how the Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing environmental sustainability in emerging cities, and the impact of migration on urban infrastructure and services, highlighting potential solutions. And, we’re a founding member of the Coalition for Urban Transitions, an international and collaborative initiative that provides evidence-based sustainable urban policy advice to emerging market governments tackling the challenges of rapid urbanisation. (Target 11. 3)

• A key element of transitioning to a more sustainable economy is dealing with old building stock, so we built sustainability criteria into the upgrade of our UK offices. In particular, our London offices at More London and Embankment Place have both achieved the ‘Outstanding’ rating under BREEAM, a leading environmental rating system for buildings, setting new standards when they were opened. We’ve applied many of the pioneering technologies and lessons learned from these projects to the upgrade of our regional offices. (Target 11.6)

Following the Paris Climate Agreement and 2018 IPCC report, there’s a global imperative to address climate change. Our carbon emissions are relatively low compared to many sectors, but they’re the biggest environmental impact for our business, so we’ve made their reduction central to our sustainability strategy and invested to make a step change in our impact and resilience.

• Our ISO22301-certified business continuity management system has been developed to minimise the risks of extreme weather to our offices, whilst locations for new offices and data centres are assessed for potential climate change impacts. (Target 13.1)

• As set out under Goal 16, as members of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), we helped to develop the recommendations for companies to use in disclosing information to investors about the impacts of climate change on their financial performance. We’ve also developed climate scenario analysis and TCFD readiness diagnostic tools, as well as publishing TCFD guides for business leaders. (Target 13.2)

• We continue to publish our Low Carbon Economy Index, tracking the progress G20 countries have made since 2000 to decarbonise their economies. Through our leadership of the Climate & Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), we supported low-income countries to deliver climate-compatible development, and we continue to support them in the international climate change negotiations. And our work with WEF, includes exploring how the Fourth Industrial Revolution can be harnessed to address environmental challenges such as climate change. (Target 13.3, 13.b)

• We’ve set long term targets to reduce our absolute carbon emissions (Scope 1, 2 & 3) by 40% between 2007 and 2022. In 2018 we reduced them to -37%. This includes a reduction of 86% in our combined scope 1 & 2 emissions since 2007. We've also offset all of our ‘direct’ emissions, as reported in each financial year since 2007. All of the projects we support are REDD+ certified,and have also achieved Gold Level status under the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standard. (Target 13.2, 13b)

Our business isn’t directly linked with oceans and marine resources, but we’re making a contribution through our operations and our community volunteering.

• We’ve worked with a range of partners – including the Marine Conservation Society and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust – as part of our environmental volunteering programme, to monitor and reduce water pollution. This has included events focused on ocean plastics and highlighting the polluting impact of single-use plastic on marine life. (Target 14.1)

• We’re also reducing the amount of plastic in our business, having published a plastics policy. We replaced plastic bottles in our client meeting rooms with refillable glass bottles several years ago, and moved to fully compostable consumable products for food and drinks prepared in our offices as part of our ‘Going Circular’ programme. We also ran a successful 'Give Me Tap' initiative, offering reusable metal water bottles to employees to help reduce single-use plastic bottle consumption. Additionally, we’ve undertaken a comprehensive review of the major sources of plastic across key categories of spend, and have identified a number of potential solutions that we’ll continue to evaluate as part of our Going Circular ambition. (Target 14.1)

• Through our catering supplier we ensure that seafood in our office restaurants is sourced from MSC-certified fisheries, and that we don’t purchase from the MCS red list of 'fish to avoid', or from the IUCN red list of endangered fish. We also developed a sustainable fish campaign for our people, encouraging them to try less well known varieties in our restaurants, and distributing the MSC Good Fish Guide. (Target 14.2, 14.4)

Our core business doesn’t have a significant impact on life on land directly, but it’s a UK priority so we use both our operations and technical skills to make a positive contribution.

• Part of our environmental volunteering programme has focused on woodland management and conservation work to support biodiversity and ecosystem services, linking local volunteering activity to global environmental issues. (Target 15.1, 15.2)

• We’re also a leading adviser on forestry, helping clients with issues relating to sustainable forestry, biodiversity and climate change. This includes structuring afforestation, reforestation and forest conservation projects, and carbon credit transactions. (Target 15.2)

• We use our carbon offsets to conserve life on land. 100% of the carbon credits we purchase to offset our residual Scope 1, 2 & 3 carbon emissions each year are from projects which have achieved gold level status under the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) standard, and are REDD+ certified, meaning that they focus on the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks through working with local communities. (Target 15.2, 15.5, 15.b)

• We’ve collaborated with some of the world’s leading organisations in the technical development and launch of the Natural Capital Protocol, which aims to support better business decisions through a standardised framework to identify, measure, and value impacts and dependencies on natural capital. (Target 15.9, 15.a)