As a service firm, our business operations would not function without our employees. They are our key assets and they enable us to succeed on the market. It is our responsibility to ensure that our People have a meaningful and beneficial experience at PwC Luxembourg.
Our employee journey runs on a central theme: enabling our People with greater agility and confidence in a rapidly changing world. Workforce flexibility and agility expressed in a quality experience, making our employees fit with the right behaviours and skills, for the challenges today and the unknown of tomorrow.
Building this strong and flexible foundation for our People through values, systems and healthy habits, allows our employees not only to achieve maximum employability. They are essential to solve important problems in society, by building trust with our clients and the broader community. By developing inclusive and effective leaders at all levels, promoting diversity as a strong asset, we enable the company to perform in an environment of continuous change.
As the world continues to change around us at an ever-increasing pace, the way we behave with each other at work or remote within the societies of which we are part of has become more critical; and we need to rely on our purpose, values and behaviours to lead us in the right direction (see Principles of Governance chapter).
What does this mean for Luxembourg?
Our challenges over the next 12 months focus around understanding the evolving workforce, the new relevant skills, the gaps that exist in our People’s skills set, to name a few. But there is more. The world has moved on and we are now truly living the Digital Age. COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst to propel our business into a new reality, full of opportunities and challenges.
There are two major components that will allow us to approach these topics and define our People’s experience: work-life integration and continuous development.
The first element, work-life integration, is built on flexibility, personalisation and wellbeing. Flexibility promotes how, where and when the work is done. Personalisation is about organising how work integrates with anyone’s specific life conditions and ambitions. Wellbeing focuses on the physical and emotional health of everybody, which is even more so important in the digital era (see Health chapter for more detail).
The second element of continuous development speaks for itself: how to be fit for today and tomorrow. This employability fitness requires digital skills, business skills and collaborative/leadership/interpersonal skills. It is crucial that our employees are well rounded, agile and holistic thinkers, who have the ability to help clients navigate through current challenges, while keeping the big picture in mind. In order to provide our current and future leaders with these relevant skills, we are planning on intensifying our investment in our People. We need leadership at every level, empowering our People, creating future sustainability, trust and long-term growth.
While work-life integration and continuous development is highly important for our business to adjust to changing times and to remain relevant for our clients; they are also factors that millennials are increasingly looking for in companies. Millennials, who are now occupying a majority of the workforce, are particularly shifting the management culture. They show a preference for the “proximity” management approach, which brings the operational manager closer to the employee. The proximity manager is supported by a decentralised human capital management tool. This organisational model reduces the number of direct reports to maximum eight, eventually facilitating a personalised and flexible approach to work-life integration.
In addition, the management’s ability to build trust will be key to engage our workforce. We are updating our processes on attracting, onboarding, coaching, managing and rewarding to provide an environment where high-performing talents excel and thrive. It is clear to us, that our People are most engaged in innovation, creativity, opportunities and development; and it is therefore important that we offer these aspects in order to recruit and retain the right people.
What does this all mean for attracting and retaining our Talent?
Attracting talent remains paramount. Our value proposition for graduates and experience professionals is constantly upgraded to remain ahead of Market. We constantly engage through career fairs, physical and virtual, with potential candidates to build a strong pipeline of talent.
Studies show that Generation Z (aka iGen, Gen- Z) are easy to reach but hard to engage. We reach them primarily through social media channels ( Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc.) because they are constantly active However, as they are receiving tons of information, our message might be ‘lost in translation’. That’s why we supplement our attraction strategy with a dedicated engagement platform to build firm relationships through dialogues and discussions with our target candidates. Our online candidate engagement platform provides the opportunity and facility to meet the Gen-Z expectations. The content of our student curriculum goes above and beyond to explain for example what the job of an auditor at PwC is but our narrative also resonates with the individual’s interest and aspiration.
For the attractiveness of the audit career to remain high and engage high-quality candidates, PwC needs to cater for more than just a good salary package, learning opportunities and career development. Candidates expect work-life balance, offered facilities like a gym, a great location, an inclusive organisational culture, strong moral and social values, flexible working hours and individual care. Since COVID-19, remote working has become another element of attractiveness.The changing nature of the role also plays a major part as more and more IT-skills and soft skills for a great client experience are required to make a career at an Audit firm. As more and more companies are competing for the same skills, the Profession as such has become less attractive overall.
Thus far, our new engagement platform has proven itself effective, as - despite COVID-19 - we have seen a big increase in new hires compared to 2018 and 2019.
Apart from attracting talent, we also focus intensely on retaining our talent.
Retention acts primarily through personal growth and opportunities. We develop different development tracks and career paths in our various Lines of Business for employees to advance and shine. Aspiration, learning agility and performance form the cornerstones of any growth path. The essential ingredient to growth is Leadership, now more than ever. Developing leadership at every level, living our values and our purpose, is the key ingredient to sustainable business success.
As an example, our high potential talents are able to fast track their development through several 'on-the-job' challenges. This is how they get the necessary experience and exposure to fulfill critical/key leadership roles in the organisation. But we do plenty more:
- Internal mobility opportunities to broaden the career potential;
- Cultural exposure (either international or working within different cultures); through relationships with global clients;
- Collaborate on various projects with recognised experts (critical skill);
- Work with / manage people from other competencies, LoS, or locations;
- Contribute to our Innovation Idea Lab;
- Lead a new initiative to address an internal or external challenge;
- Shadowing our leaders;
- Proximity management through near constant feedback;
- Introduce new mentorship / sponsor relationships;
- Identify opportunities that provide greater visibility to PwC leadership;
- Participate in strategy-setting sessions with business unit leaders;
- Be part of the decision making process;
- Teach/coach other teams in areas where the individual has demonstrated clear strengths.
Retention also happens through reward and recognition. We value our employees correctly. We are continuously monitoring our total reward package to stay ahead of the market. We also introduced a new recognition platform, which allows employees to recognise their colleagues for their hard work and demonstrating the PwC values in their daily activity. This initiative comes directly out of our Global People Survey. Our survey results become actions plans, which are built on a firm level.
This material makes reference to GRI disclosure 401-1
This material makes reference to WEF core metrics - Prosperity - Employment and Wealth Management - Absolute number and rate of employment
Since we have been changing our retention strategies, and have been implementing initiatives that ensure that our employees will have a beneficial and enjoyable journey with us, we have also seen an improvement in our retention rate.
The number of early leavers (those we stayed at PwC less than one year) has also slightly decreased this past year:
Our purpose is to enhance employee engagement, which is key to our success.
This material makes reference to GRI disclosure 401-1
This material makes reference to WEF core metrics - Prosperity - Employment and Wealth Management - Absolute number and rate of employment
This material makes reference to GRI disclosures 102-44 ; 102-46a ; 102-46b ; 102-47 ; 103-1 ; 103-2 ; 103-3
