Committed to Diversity and Inclusion

We are dedicated to creating an understanding, accepting and supportive workplace for all our people

PwC’s vision for diversity and inclusion is to “foster an inclusive environment where all of our people are able to develop to their full potential, regardless of background or personal circumstances, and where we leverage diversity to deliver the highest value for our people and our clients”. We take pride in the diversity of our workforce and view it as a competitive advantage to be nurtured and promoted.

Over the past year, we have strengthened our focus on diversity and inclusion in both our Women in Leadership/Retention of Women (WIL/ROW) and broader diversity efforts. This has included revisiting our three-year diversity and inclusion strategy (struck in 2009) and realigning our FY2012 deliverables to revitalize our thinking in this area. We’ve set aspirational goals for gender diversity and aligned our WIL/ROW and broader diversity efforts to best leverage our resources.

Some of our other achievements this past year have included:

• New resource investments – we hired Sandeep Tatla to lead our national diversity and inclusion strategy. As a lawyer, adviser, strategist, educator, facilitator and trained mediator, Sandeep brings a multidisciplinary approach to the practice of diversity and inclusion to PwC, and is a regular speaker on various diversity-related topics.
• Diversity training – in FY2011, we continued to offer our people a suite of diversity training programs that included cultural awareness and delivering/receiving feedback. To date, we’ve trained more than 50% of our managers, senior managers, associate partners and partners (approximately 20% of those in FY2011). We’ve set a target to train an additional 15% of this group in FY2012 and hope to maintain that level moving forward.
• New Diversity and Gender Toolkit for Coaches – we provided all members of the firm who have coaching or performance review and management responsibilities with an interactive webcast that provides practical guidance on how to apply the diversity lens to the annual review process.
• PwC Global Diversity and Inclusion Council – our former CEO, Chris Clark, and Women in Leadership/Retention of Women (WIL/ROW) Partner Chair, Susan Allen, sit on PwC’s Global Diversity and Inclusion Council. The Council was formed in early FY2011 with four key objectives: educate and raise awareness, share and communicate best practices, identify and recommend global actions, and reinforce a diverse and inclusive culture. The Council members serve as advocates for diversity and inclusion within their local firms, review territory-developed targets and report the local office’s performance on diversity annually. This will be an important part of PwC’s diversity strategy in FY2012.
• Engaging men in our WIL/ROW initiative – in FY2011, more than 30 male partners joined the national network of WIL/ROW Champions. These Champions facilitate gender- awareness discussions with partners and associate partners in their respective offices during regularly scheduled business meetings. The objective of these discussions is to enable all of our partners and associate partners to understand and speak to:
  • the business case for gender diversity
  • the WIL/ROW initiative and our four key focus areas:
    • raising gender awareness and engagement
    • skills development, coaching and evaluation
    •  workplace environment, barriers and solutions
    • accountability and measurement:
      • the influence of gender norms on men and women in the workplace
      • local and national gender metrics—our aspirational goals for gender diversity
      • local strategies and the small things we can do on a daily basis to foster gender diversity

Gender: Our Women in Leadership (WIL) and Retention of Women (ROW) initiatives are experiencing success through a number of activities, including one-on-one mentoring relationships, dedicated women’s business networks and profiling the experiences of our female leaders to our people and the marketplace. Our firm’s Canadian Leadership Group now comprises 22% women, up from 17% last year.

Our WIL/ROW initiatives include:

• Mentoring Connections: Mentoring is a key component in effective and sustainable career development for women at PwC. This program encourages one-on-one mentor relationships between female senior managers, associate partners and partners and volunteer male and female associate partner-mentors and partner-mentors.
• Briefcase Moms: Launched in 2007, PwC worked with an external facilitator to develop a program to address the practical and emotional issues that are unique to working mothers. The program brings PwC women together to share and learn from each other regarding work life quality challenges.
• Women's Networks
  • Internal: One of the goals of WIL/ROW is to provide more opportunities for women to connect with other women at PwC to make role models more visible. In events across the country, such as panel discussions and luncheons, women connect and learn from senior women about their personal and professional paths to success.
  • External: Women have the opportunity to connect with and strengthen their relationships with women in the business community and expand their professional contacts through various professional forums and social events.

Culture: Our broad focus on cultural diversity and inclusion is vital to our overall strategy to become a more inclusive firm. Our Mosaic ERG that connects visible minorities and new Canadians at PwC is just one example of our progress in this area. Other examples include:

• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): ERGs encourage staff members who are connected by some common dimension of diversity to come together to network, build relationships, and celebrate differences and commonalities.
• Employment Equity Program: We focus on recruitment strategies to encourage job applicants from four designate groups: women, visible minorities, persons with disabilities and Aboriginals.
• Persons with disabilities: PwC has a formal disability management program designed to proactively manage injuries and illness among our staff to facilitate recovery and reduce absence. We also recognize the opportunity to increase our representation of staff with disabilities and are actively taking measures to recruit in this area.
• Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) initiatives: We sponsor events such as Out on Bay Street, a national recruitment event for GLBT MBA and undergraduate students. As a founding member of Pride at Work Canada/Fierté au Travail Canada, we also sponsor corporate pride networking events in Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto.
• Collaboration with external organizations: We collaborate with a variety of community and outreach organizations that support and encourage workplace diversity including Catalyst, The Conference Board of Canada’s Council on Inclusive Work Environments, INROADS and the Toronto Board of Trade’s Diversity Forum. We also support organizations such as DiverseCity, which provides advice to help improve the representation of ethnic and racial groups in leadership positions.

People