Inclusion and Diversity mean many things for us, from the 82 nationalities that interact in our offices every day, our proportion of women in all management levels to the development of our LGBT+ community.
We continue executing our I&D strategy focused on five aspects: engaging our leaders, building common awareness for all, filling our talent pipeline, embedding I&D into our business operations and developing our external footprint. We power this action plan with a systematic data-driven approach, which has enabled us to set priorities—such as the notions of gender balance and inclusiveness—and enable all dimensions of individual characteristics to be accepted, respected and valued. To advance our strategy successfully, we plan to combine actions and work on the pillars in a mutually beneficial manner.
Digging deeper into the invisible obstacles
This year, we implemented a real-time monitoring tool for our promotion cycle, the “promotion dashboard”. This dynamic reporting tool helps our leaders visualise the impact of their decisions on promotions in terms of gender allocation during the evaluation cycle. It minimises the bias and follows an indicator called “opportunity rate” that translates into a simple formula: number of women promoted / total of eligible women, and similarly for men. This ensures that the decision makers can visualise whether they are widening or closing the gap for accessing higher levels of responsibilities as a man or a woman. Interestingly, the data evidences that there is almost no statistical significant difference (a maximum of 3% in favour of women) when it comes to assessing our people, i.e. similar proportions are observed in terms of performance rating allocation among the female and male population. However, the data collected about the promotion cycle do reveal a striking gap when reviewing the opportunity to be promoted: a similar opportunity is proposed to men and women as 24%/25% of them are experiencing a promotion but with an unequal distribution for the grades of manager and above. We see that 30.18% of men are promoted to Manager/Senior Manager/Director level among all the male promotions, while only 18.87% of all women are promoted to those levels. The use of our dynamic reporting tool will help balance promotions in the future, as it will make evident the gender allocation during the promotion cycle.
Engaging with our main stakeholders, our people
Our I&D plan is regularly adjusted with the input of our people, and we do so through surveys. This year we conducted two surveys, through which we gathered the following:
- Internal D&I survey (1,000+ respondents): Equal opportunities and gender equality remains a demand, as well as ensuring these factors are embedded in everything we do (from mixed teams to propulsing gender balance, to leadership roles).
- Global People Survey (GPS) (81% participation rate): The “Diversity Index” (based on different criteria in the GPS) has dropped from 65% in 2019 to 60% in 2021. While the result was surprising as the perception of an inclusive culture has not altered, the current circumstances have indeed increased feelings of concerns and doubts, particularly in the context of promotions. We therefore, find it even more important to ensure our people that their specific capabilities will not be forgotten going forward in professional development, which will simultaneously nurture a culture of inclusion.
One for the parents
Lastly, one of our main actions of this year was “Back and Happy”, an initiative targeted specifically for new parents. This mentoring programme is a parent-to-parent initiative where PwC experienced parents support others who are just returning from a long child leave. Based on a one-to-one mentoring relationship, it aims at helping the new parent address her/his new challenges, in a confidential and trust-based environment.
And one for our LGBT people: Shine, our global brand and initiatives
Shine, the LGBTQI+ and Ally inclusive business network at PwC, is acting to implement a safe working environment for everyone to be her/him or their selves in order to help unleash everyone’s potential. To ensure this environment in Luxembourg, we have set up an ambitious action plan covering the training of leaders and key people managers, the creation and animation of our network of allies, events and common actions with external organisations, explicit HR and ethical policies, among others. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the tone from the top is essential with our CEO having participated as a speaker in various conferences and symposia on the topic organised within the PwC network and with external local stakeholders.
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