We want everyone to feel included, supported and safe in the work environment. Due to the pandemic, we took a decision, globally, to postpone our annual Global People Survey scheduled for FY20, to FY21. In 2021, 82% of our staff and partners in South Africa participated in the survey, and the results positively showed that despite the disruption experienced in 2020/2021, a higher proportion of our people rated their work experience more favourably. 

We observed increased favourability across key indicators of our people experience, including our people engagement index (78%), which focuses on value alignment (84%), pride to work at PwC (89%), keenness to recommend PwC as a great place to work (72%) and belonging (70%). The majority of respondents also expressed satisfaction with the quality of our technology (90%), resources provided to work well remotely (97%), growth and development, and aspects of diversity and inclusion. Our people also indicated a need to continue to improve our efforts in certain areas, particularly in how we prioritise wellbeing and flexibility, how we reward and recognise our people and the need to provide even more opportunities for staff across levels to connect more with leaders - the latter was understandable in light of our changing way of working.

Developing and coaching  our people

We develop our people through a combination of on-the-job experience, coaching and formal learning programmes. As mentioned, each person in PwC is assigned a team leader and a coach. We have 1 419 coaches and 578 team leaders in PwC South Africa. Team leaders care for and manage between 10 and 15 people. Coaches are responsible for assisting their coachees with career planning, development and the opportunity to learn from others using discussion and exchange. We have made significant progress with the coaches from our Advisory and Assurance lines of service, with most of them completing our Coaching Lounge training on the principles of performance coaching.

As part of our transformation strategy, our talent activation programme is designed to support high-performing African, Coloured and Indian (ACI) talent. Participants team up with senior partners who provide them with additional exposure to business opportunities, mentoring, advocacy and teaming. Currently, 125 senior managers and associate directors are enrolled.

Our vision is to develop leaders who have the skills, opportunities and confidence to lead in our increasingly diverse, complex and interconnected world. The results of the programme were evident in the high percentage of partners and associate directors who were promoted from the pool of engagers. In 2022 the programme will be expanded to include our managers.

After a pilot with our graduate programme trainees and extensive consultation with the PwC leadership team, we introduced a revolutionary development and assessment tool to the firm. Through an artificial intelligence (AI) and gamified video-enabled digital tool, we have access to real-time data and information on all of our potential leaders in the firm. Guided by external industrial psychologists and executive coaches, our people can focus on areas of development and understand their preferences, strengths and team dynamics within the PwC Professional context, helping them to plan and measure their own development and contribute to our community of solvers.

We are focused on supporting our people on their personal learning journey and have created a range of opportunities for them to develop the technical, digital, business and leadership skills they will need, to be able to work at their best in the new world of work. 

Our people have access to a number of formal training opportunities, which are delivered in different formats. These include modularised face-to-face, virtual classroom, elearn and blended learning. Our global network’s learning management system, Vantage, houses all our formal and informal learning. Vantage consists of thousands of curated self-paced learning assets from some of the globe’s top learning institutions, including TED and Harvard Business Review, and has collaborative learning functionality that enables our people and their teams to create and share learning that is relevant to them. All our local training interventions are also loaded onto Vantage for easy access for our staff. Our access to high-quality global programmes, which we tailor for our specific market, enables our workforce to develop skills that support mobility across Africa, as well as the rest of the world. 

During the year, our firm invested R84.5 million in skills development for all staff. Employees each received an average of 74 training hours per annum. We invested R20.2 million towards the formal education of our workforce in the form of bursaries. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing in 2021, we continued to innovate and use our technologies to run our training virtually so that our people could continue on their learning journeys. Google Classroom, Jamboards, Meet and Webcast were some of the technologies we leveraged. We held regular virtual webcasts, upskilling our people on many different topics around audit methodology, risk assurance, accounting technical and more. On average, 822 staff members across South Africa attended each session. Our people attended 315 353 hours of virtual training (virtual classroom and online training) in FY21, with an average of 51 hours per person.

We have continued our digital upskilling journey, offering all our people intermediate level training in data analytics, visualisation, and robotic process automation, as well as regular digital events and meetups supplemented by curated learning assets that are available on Vantage. In FY21 we also started offering advanced courses on data analytics and visualisation. In FY21, 2195 staff members in South Africa completed some form of digital upskilling. Our staff completed an average of eight hours of digital training each for the year.