Reimagining the People Experience

At PwC, we provide industry-focused professional services for public and private clients. Our partners and staff, in conjunction with partners and staff at PwC member firms within the PwC global network, allow us to provide the support clients need – wherever they need it, at home and abroad, whatever the size of their organization. To help our clients build trust and deliver sustained outcomes, PwC provides professional services across two segments: Trust Solutions and Consulting Solutions. Within these segments we bring a range of capabilities to help organizations solve faster, solve more, and realize more value. These capabilities include cloud and digital, deals, ESG, cybersecurity and privacy, governance/boards, risk, transformation, tax services and much more.

We are purpose-led and values-driven. Through the actions we take and the choices we make, we aim to make a meaningful difference in the world for our clients, for our people, and for society. PwC is human-led and technology-powered, a responsible business supporting local and global organizations, and built upon a culture of care and belonging that embraces diversity and inclusion.

This case study represents one of the submissions for i4cp's 2023 Next Practice Awards, winners will be honored at the i4cp 2023 Next Practices Now Conference. You can also view other Next Practice Award case studies.

Business challenge

The world has changed in the past few years, and employees’ expectations and mindsets about where, when and how they work have evolved, enabled by technology and accelerated by the pandemic. As the world changes at an unprecedented pace, we want to support our people and help them thrive.

Through a variety of channels, we listened to our employees to understand what they need today, but to also help us envision what they might need in the future. We know people can thrive when their daily experience matches what they value and makes them happy — meaningful relationships, a varied workload, support for flexibility, and a sense of purpose and belonging. As a result, we embarked on a journey to change our people experience to meet the evolving needs of our people as well as our clients.

Our vision is that in three years, the way we work and develop will look quite different than it does today. Our employees will have more agency to grow and develop and more experiences and connections needed to build upon their opportunities at PwC. They will have more transparent access to skill development and varied career opportunities at the firm, access to industry-leading learning and development programs to foster inclusive leadership, more personalized and customized benefits and rewards that meet their needs today and tomorrow, better tools to help support flexibility and well-being and continued  connection even if they pursue a path outside of the firm.

Solution – Scope & Innovation

In April 2022, we launched My+ for all of our community of 65,000 in the US and Mexico. My+ is PwC’s biggest and boldest reimagination of our people experience, which is already changing the way we work, focused on using technology to personalize careers at PwC, all while keeping our clients’ needs at the center. Our people experience was built on continuous listening — through our annual Global People Survey and mid-year People Survey and other informal and formal listening channels — to help shape our approach.

With My+, we are delivering an experience that is changing the way we work and gives our people greater personalization within their careers, through a focus on leadership development, benefits, well-being and transparent opportunities. This is not a one-size-fits all approach, as our people need the agency to grow and develop, as well as have the experiences and make the connections they need to expand their opportunities at the firm. 

The journey to bring My+ fully to life will not be linear. My+ is both a cultural and digital transformation that will take time for our people to adapt. We are utilizing multiple channels and engaging with our employees to gather feedback and using data-backed analytics to continually adapt our people experience.

Results & Impact

Since we launched My+ this spring, we have invested in and implemented a number of new development opportunities, well-being and benefits options, and opportunities for employees to build skills, including:

• A simplified, tech-enabled, personalized learning platform that will give our people learning opportunities beyond their current roles.
• Launched an Inclusive Mindset badge to build and practice inclusive leadership skills — such as trust, empathy and listening.
• A development series featuring distinguished thought leaders talking about the human dimensions of leadership and coaching - courage, inclusion and resilience.
• An opportunity for 1,250 change agents and advocates to help bring My+ to life by listening, sharing that feedback, and helping us launch and use the tools and the technologies that we deploy.
• Doubling the number of free therapy sessions available as part of our mental health benefits.
• Enhanced parental leave that expands parental leave for all parents from eight to 12 weeks, allowing for additional time to bond with a newborn, newly adopted, or foster care child
• An additional week of firmwide shutdown in July to promote flexibility and well-being, in addition to our week-long shutdown in December.
• Tech-enabled vacation tools to make it easier to plan and take uninterrupted time off.

By embedding personalization and purpose, we aspire to achieve sustained outcomes of trust as well as engagement and retention, which will benefit our people and our clients. This year we’ve already heard employees share how My+ has driven their decisions to stay at the firm, increased excitement around learning and opened new skill development opportunities.

In a recent assessment of our tech-enabled development, vacation and benefits tools, data showed that:

• 19,000+ personalized learning plans have been built on our tech-enabled learning platform, My Learning
• Among 33,000 responses captured following our firmwide shutdown in July, 95% of employees had uninterrupted protected time;
• 43,995 active staff have visited Benefits Connect website, for a total of 409,469 sessions and 89% of employees have registered.
• In the four months since the launch of Benefit Pros, there have been 5,800 employees who have received personalized benefits support from their Pro.

These numbers and data, along with regular surveys and listening channels to gather feedback and overall sentiment, help us to identify ways to adapt the My+ strategy in the coming phases.

Long-term measures of outcome and overall success of My+ include:

• Increased satisfaction and engagement from our employees.
• Positive shifts in recruiting.
• Positive impact to our brand.
• Making a positive impact in the overall business community.

Conclusion

My+ will reimagine our people experience and continue to help our people meet their development needs and the needs of our clients. We know things aren’t going to return to how they were pre-pandemic, nor should they. The future requires flexibility, personalization, and a willingness to continuously innovate and evolve.

Throughout the three-year people experience journey, we will continue to evolve our benefits to meet the needs of our people today and tomorrow. We are helping our people understand and choose more personalized and customized benefits and rewards that can support them across their physical and mental health, financial, social, spiritual and emotional well-being.

Moving forward, we will focus on embedding well-being into the day-to-day for our people and teams. We will launch a new, integrated, tech-enabled talent marketplace that connects the needs of our business with our people’s goals, interests and skills, that will help guide them throughout their career by seamlessly integrating how they track their skills development, how they create personalized learning plans and how they explore and apply to open opportunities. We will also provide more leadership development opportunities, more varied career models, and reimagine performance management.

Not only do we want to position ourselves to attract, retain and develop the top talent in the industry to serve our clients, we are also looking to lead the way for the business community. Just as we are relentlessly client focused, we are unwavering in our ongoing investment in our people. Our people are the heartbeat of our firm, and that will never change.