Our Midlands purpose

We are committed to an inclusive workplace where everyone can fulfil their potential regardless of their background. We seek to attract and employ the best people from the widest talent pool, as well as those who reflect the diverse nature of our society.

We were one of the first companies to first voluntarily publish our gender pay gap data in 2014, and since then we have held ourselves accountable to disclose beyond the regulatory requirements in our annual Diversity Pay Report. We were also one of the first firms to publish our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) pay and bonus gaps.

Our diversity extends to the regions where we aim to reflect the diverse communities in which we work. PwC in the Midlands has seen some 664 new recruits in the firm’s last financial year, including 279 new graduates and apprentices, with 36% black, asian and minority ethnic (BAME) intake, creating new routes into professional services and cementing the foundations for the future growth of the business. PwC in the Midlands actively supports the LGBTQ+ business community through our own internal Shine network, which works to break down the barriers and connect people to celebrate difference, as well as being a founding member of the Alliance Network - a body of representatives from LGBTQ+ employer networks in the Midlands.

We aim to create a health-promoting workplace where our people can be themselves and feel and perform at their best, so we can deliver the exceptional service our clients expect. This means being proactive in empowering our people to prioritise their wellbeing and support those around them in doing the same. Using our brand and expertise to drive change across industry, we want to influence the employer wellbeing movement, making a difference for working people and their families.

We’re committed to creating an environment that enables our people to prioritise their wellbeing and take care of themselves.

• Our Everyday Flexibility approach: Giving our people have greater flexibility in how, where and when we work.
• Our Flexible Talent Network: Providing people with more formal flexible working arrangements if they need it.
• Reimagining our offices: Creating a variety of innovative and flexible work spaces to meet everyone's needs. Our home at One Chamberlain Square in Birmingham is one of PwC’s latest flexible workspaces with health and wellbeing at its heart. One Chamberlain Square provides flexible and hackable workspaces giving our people more choice about where and how to work, as well as shower facilities, leisure lockers and bike storage, and a choice of healthy refreshments on site.
• Our Dress for your Day policy: Encouraging our people to wear what’s most comfortable and appropriate for their work commitments.

As well as our central policies and arrangements, we work with each area of our business, supporting them in making changes locally to enable their teams to live and work at their best.

Education has been at the heart of PwC’s involvement in the Midlands for over 20 years, focusing on raising young people's aspirations and employability skills.
Our goal is to give pupils the opportunity to develop skills for a successful future and to access careers in business, whether at PwC or beyond, irrespective of their background.

This year, we’ve run over 43 schools events in the Midlands, showcasing the stories of our diverse apprentice and graduate role models. Alongside these, we’ve partnered with organisations such as Ahead Partnership and Teach First to make a sustainable impact for disadvantaged students. We also delivered 60 in-school Business and Technology ‘Back-To-School’ workshops to promote apprenticeships and work experience.

We have an excellent relationship with the Midlands’ international renowned universities. Nationally, the Firm has recruited some 1,200 graduates, with Midlands universities consistently providing more graduates for the Firm’s intake nationally than other regions.

PwC’s computer science technology degree, a level 6 apprenticeship programme in partnership with the University of Birmingham, is driving positive changes in the diversity of students studying technology subjects. The technology degree apprenticeship has been designed to develop the UK’s next generation of technology talent to meet the needs of industry. Students will combine university life with practical work-based technology projects at the PwC offices in Birmingham and will receive a salary from the company throughout the course and a job at the end of the four-year programme. We employ 74 Technology Degree Apprentices in Birmingham, supporting them with fully-funded tuition, salaries and work placements. This provides opportunities to students from diverse backgrounds, including some who are the first in their family to attend university. Our apprentices are regularly active in the community and on social media, inspiring and educating students about apprenticeships and technology careers.

In the East Midlands, our ‘flying start’ programme, is a collaborative degree programme for students who want to study accountancy, sponsored by PwC in the East Midlands, delivered by Nottingham University Business School, and the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales). It produced its first cohort of graduates in July 2018.

We also support charities’ and social enterprises’ education events with free office space. We hosted the teacher-focused ‘Birmingham Schools Digital Resources Launch’, Uptree’s ‘FuturesUp’ STEM conference for National Apprenticeship Week and CyberFirst’s ‘Girls’ Competition Semi Finals’. These events, with interactive workshops and inspiring discussions, helped students, teachers and parents from diverse backgrounds to experience STEM skills and careers.

Our Year 12 Summer Insight Week 2020 offered three pathways: Accounting, Digital and Business, and we gave students from disadvantaged backgrounds extra coaching during the selection process to ensure students from diverse backgrounds could access the opportunities. During COVID-19, we have converted our work experience to a Virtual Insight Week, inviting 899 Midlands applicants to participate in a week of over 30 interactive and engaging employability, business and tech-focused sessions.

NWNS is PwC’s first truly global, purpose led initiative, bringing together the entire network to help solve one of the world’s most important problems: the need to upskill in an increasingly digital world. In the UK we are looking to understand how we can enhance our societal impact by identifying where we should focus our own contribution to upskilling citizens for the digital age.

We conducted a series of workshops for our staff across the Midlands and the key emerging themes from these were:

Play to our strengths in education

• Reaching out to schools and utilising governors
• Reaching out to our clients and using the connections within schools that they have
• Role models to get into schools - upskilling and diversity
• Run competitions within schools - Hackathons that upskill in both tech and business
• Upskilling teachers to deliver tech sessions - Teacher Toolkit

Complement our social mobility focus

• Leverage OFED to harness the broader workforce to support through identified partnerships and make it easy through a Digital Upskilling section
• Partner with charities/existing enterprises who are focused with helping the specific groups/benefits that we want to target/building on partnerships with NGOs and charities to increase our reach and impact
• Donating/fundraiser for technology for those who don’t have access to it e.g. the vulnerable
• Targeting underprivileged schools and those that are marginalised (older generations, those in prison)

Explore the white space

• Working with local community groups and centres because the people here understand what is needed
• Make better use of current assets and deliver that more widely

The Tech She Can Charter is a commitment by organisations to work together to increase the number of women working in technology roles in the UK. It aims to tackle the root cause of the problem at a societal level by inspiring and educating young girls and women to get into tech careers and sharing best practice across the organisations involved.

During lockdown, since 28 April, we’ve hosted free ‘Tech We Can’ online technology lessons for children aged 10-13 via webcast - aimed at helping parents, carers and teachers to homeschool children. Each lesson focuses on the use of technology in our everyday lives - from travel and shopping to education and protecting the environment - with a homework challenge set at the end. Delivered by teacher, Becky Patel, and Tech She Can Ambassador, Katie King, the series was aimed at inspiring young people to consider a career in technology. We had over 3,600 views of our lessons over the last 10 weeks - that’s the equivalent of 150 classrooms full of kids.

By hosting live interactive webcasts for schoolchildren, we’ve been able to reach a large audience. Children from as young as seven have tuned in to learn about technology, and we’ve had attendees from over 20 countries and also from social care settings. Just as important is feedback that has shown that quieter, more reserved students - who perhaps are less inclined to speak up in the classroom - have felt more confident interacting, asking questions and even presenting digitally.

Of course students and parents are looking forward to schools safely reopening, but the past few months have shown how successful businesses can be in reaching out to the next generation of students to inspire them . It’s an important way in which companies can help the country build back better for the long term.

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