PricewaterhouseCoopers
Working to maintain our people’s work-life
balance in spite of heavy workloads
The organisation
PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com/uk)
is the world’s largest professional services organisation providing
assurance, advisory, tax and HR consulting services to a range of
clients.
| Workforce |
|
| No. employees |
c13,500 in the UK |
| % female |
49% |
| % ethnic minorities |
c7% |
| % women returning after maternity leave |
c85% |
The challenge/s
Professional services firms, as highly client-centric organisations,
tend to be characterised by a long hours, macho culture. Profitable
growth depends on providing good work-life policies to attract top
talent; our employees are highly self-motivated and set themselves
extremely high standards. For such individuals, it can be exceptionally
hard to discipline oneself into achieving a better work-life balance.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has therefore been leading the drive to flex
and adapt corporate structures to respond to the increasing demand
- from the business and from our people - for flexibility and
work-life integration.
Response
“At PricewaterhouseCoopers we are transforming our business
to ensure that we continue to attract people with the skills and talent
that we need to deliver excellent client service. The key input to
the transformation process comes from our leaders; their behaviour
provides a key indicator of their beliefs and it is beliefs that form
the foundation of the business culture. Only by demonstrating their
own personal commitment to and achievement of a balanced lifestyle
and a diverse workforce will our leaders help our people to feel a
connection between policies/programmes and daily work-life which reflects
our mission to be a terrific place to work.”
Moira, Head of Human Capital, UK
Board
Principles - walking the talk:
- Employees are all different: the meaning of work-life
balance varies throughout an individual’s life
- Individuals must take responsibility for their own
work-life balance and be considerate of others’ needs.
- PwC seeks to achieve the optimum balance between
business and individual’s needs.
- Owing to habitual long hours’ working, managers
need support in helping their teams to work flexibly.
- Quality of output is more important than the number
of hours worked.
Policies all employees can apply for:
PwC LifeStyle:
- This intranet site was launched in 2001 and provides
practical advice, support and tools to help staff juggle commitments
in and out of work.
- It was developed with specialists in the fields
of work-life balance
- It includes information on pregnancy, childbirth,
parenting, eldercare, relationship management, stress, time management,
nutrition and health.
Business benefits:
- Improved staff satisfaction:
- c60% of employees said they were satisfied with their work-life
balance, compared to 40% in 1999;
- Improved staff retention:
- Increase in return rate from maternity leave from c40% in
1998 to c80% in 2003;
- Changing attitudes:
- Increasing acceptance of flexible working in its broadest
sense, for example, homeworking, flexitime etc, which promotes
a greater sense of trust between managers and staff and a greater
sense of personal control among individuals.
Issues
Despite this improvement, the fact remains that 40% of our people
are not satisfied with their work-life balance and this figure is
unacceptable. Our efforts therefore continue to improve the working
lives of our people and, in order to measure the success or otherwise
of our efforts, we survey our people every quarter using our “You
Matter” staff survey.
In practice
Jayne, an Audit Manager in Birmingham, works
about 90 days a year for the firm. I moved to a three-day week when
my first child was born in 1995 and then to 50% full-time when my
second child arrived.” Jayne usually works on Mondays and Thursdays,
but fits in client meetings and time for training courses, as required.
“Last year I worked 125 days. It’s fairly flexible, and
they key thing is trust. The firm trusts I’ll do the work
and won’t let clients down” she says. “My clients
know I’m part-time and have contact numbers out of work if
they need them.”
The future
At PwC we certainly don’t see this as an issue that’s
going away; quite the opposite. Doing business in the 21st century
means doing business against a backdrop of phenomenal change, be it
demographic shifts, globalisation, technological advances etc. All
of these pose a challenge to the traditional models of employment
and work.
There is thus enormous pressure to adopt new ways
of working. By promoting flexibility and work-life balance we will
have a competitive advantage over others, for the corollary is a business
which is flexible and adaptable to anticipate change and one which
stays ahead of the game.
Updated February 2004
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