Leading player on Japan’s wheelchair basketball team, Shimpei Oikawa
Now, Disability Inclusion Leader at PwC Japan
To achieve sustained success, companies need to recruit, retain, and support productive teams. In this chapter, we’ll share some of what we’ve learned this year about how companies can build productive workforces and organisations.
Today, the challenge of building successful teams may seem tougher than ever. For starters, the pandemic has led many workers to re-evaluate what’s important to them. As a result, one person in five is looking to move jobs in the next 12 months, according to PwC’s latest global workforce research. This ‘Great Resignation’ - combined with surging demand for people with specialised skills in areas like cybersecurity and ESG - is making it more challenging for companies to hire people with the right capabilities.
One person in five is looking to move jobs in the next 12 months.
The pandemic has brought another major shift. For many workers, hybrid working is now the new normal. Hybrid working presents a host of new issues for business leaders including how to build trust, foster productivity, and manage effectively when teams may rarely see each other face-to-face.
Well over half – 63% – of all employees expect their employer to offer a mix of in-person and remote work in the next 12 months.
In addition, employee expectations are growing for meaningful work, inclusion & diversity, and pay that keeps up with the rapidly rising cost of living.
75% of employees said they want to work for an organisation that makes a positive contribution to society.
These shifts add up to a challenging environment for companies that need to build the right workforce for sustained success. At PwC, we’re taking innovative approaches to help our clients solve these complex issues.
In this chapter, we’ll share some of our work in the past year that offers insights into:
We’ll share some of our work for clients as well as a few of our own internal initiatives within PwC. (See Our community of solvers for even more insight into how we are building and enabling our own global workforce of talented people.)
We’re helping clients strengthen their recruitment and retain their current staff amid the ‘Great Resignation’ and an intensifying competition for talent by, for example:
Below we share a few things we’ve learnt this year about how to win the competition for talent.
Competition for talented graduates is tough. Edge is the graduate programme of our Deals practice in EMEA and Asia Pacific. Edge is specifically designed to build a workforce that’s inspired, productive and loyal. Below we share 5 lessons we’ve learnt from Edge about how to attract talented people and help them have a great experience so they stay.
“With active support from Deals leadership, we are blazing a trail among global businesses in building and supporting an ecosystem of women recruits, mentors, and role models in the traditionally male-dominated deals sector.”
What motivates today’s employees to give their best? And which factors influence people’s decisions to join an employer - and whether to stay?
Our Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022 - one of the largest workforce surveys ever undertaken - suggests some answers. The findings, presented by our Global Chairman Bob Moritz at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos in May 2022, provide many valuable insights both for PwC and our clients. For instance, the research revealed what matters most to employees when they are considering a change in work environment. Pay is the top driver. But meaning is the next most important factor (with flexibility about when/where to work and a desire to feel productive/competent also among the top factors).
“Leaders need to engage with the desire of people to work for organisations that live up to their purpose and values, and offer a positive workforce culture.”
Our findings underline the need for business leaders to clearly articulate the company’s purpose and help staff find meaning and fulfillment in their work. In addition, bosses can better attract people by offering work flexibility and helping employees to feel productive and competent.
Our Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022 highlights another way to create a working environment that encourages loyalty. Many people assume that employee conversations about societal topics like climate, immigration, race, and gender equity are a potential source of discord - and a headache for HR. But they should think again.
Our Hopes and Fears Survey found that 65% of employees sometimes or frequently have workplace conversations about political and social issues. What’s more, they’re benefitting from the experience. So although most organisations aren’t supporting employees in having these conversations, they’d be better off helping people talk through thorny issues.
“The reality is that people are taking those social issues into the workplace. If leadership is not creating an environment for them to talk about these things, that's another disruption that causes people to be frustrated with their job and their work environment – and ultimately move on to something else.”
For example, PwC US holds ‘Candid Conversations’ to give staff a place to discuss challenging issues. Topics have included events in Afghanistan, Ukraine, race, LGBTQ+, and religion.
“Diverse workforces will inevitably bring differences of opinion about major societal issues into their workplaces. Leaders need to ensure these discussions can benefit teams rather than dividing them.The role of employers isn’t to tell workers what to think, but to give them a voice, choice and safe environment to share feelings, listen and learn about how these issues are impacting their colleagues.”
The Dutch Ministry of Defence is responding to the war for talent
The Dutch Ministry of Defence needs to recruit a new generation of soldiers with the technological skills for modern warfare amid intense competition for tech-savvy talent. We helped the organisation gain a holistic view of what’s needed to become the employer of choice by addressing three tough questions:
We’re now helping the Ministry modernise its employee value proposition to appeal to a new generation. For example, it’s changing the organisational culture to be less hierarchical and more answerable to employee’s preferences. And it’s creating flexible, tailored career paths.
We’re helping clients win the competition for talent by keeping (or rehiring) the talent they already have. Some companies are developing ‘leaving while staying’ programmes, helping people move jobs within the business rather than go elsewhere. At PwC US, the ‘Always a PwCer’ programme recognises and supports people’s desire to try roles at different companies, welcoming them back to PwC if they re-join.
In many professions, hybrid working is the new normal. Companies must adapt to this shift. Our Hopes and Fears survey showed that only 11% of respondents who are able to work remotely prefer full-time in-person working.
Companies that do not offer hybrid working to employees who desire it may encounter issues with retaining those employees. For example, our Pulse Survey of the US workforce shows that wages are employees' number one reason for leaving, but flexibility is a close second.
We’re helping companies manage the transition to hybrid working – for instance, by building strategies for being an inclusive leader in a hybrid environment. We’re helping clients get their workforce strategies right by identifying the ‘nonnegotiables’ that employees expect in the world of hybrid work. These range from one-to-one mentoring to responsible behaviour on social and environmental issues.
We know how difficult it can be to maintain a cohesive culture when a large part of the workforce regularly works from home. We’ve pinpointed three ways companies that offer hybrid working can maintain a strong company culture.
Across PwC’s global network of firms, we’re taking a range of approaches to give employees greater flexibility. It’s a key part of how we build a happier, healthier, more engaged workforce that delivers high-quality service and sustained outcomes for our clients. Here are some examples:
PwC Brazil: Reconfiguring office space to shift from desks
to collaboration spaces
PwC Australia (and many countries): Allowing
overseas remote working for a set number of weeks a year
PwC Canada: An app helps people find where their colleagues are sitting since people no longer have fixed desks
PwC Germany: With the Trust in People initiative, teams are encouraged to decide cooperatively how, when and where they work together
PwC US: The first professional services firm in the US to offer all client service employees the option to work virtually and live anywhere in the country“There has been a fundamental shift in the relationship between employees and employers. We can’t sustainably compete on compensation and benefits alone. We must take bold action to provide a personalised career experience that engages our people to stay longer and inspires top talent to join us.”
Technology offers many possibilities for empowering people to be more effective in their jobs. As we’ve seen, workers value competence and achievement. Below, we share some of the ways that we’re helping clients use technology to empower their people to work more effectively. In this way, technology can help companies be more productive while also helping people find more fulfillment in their roles. Below, we share five case studies that illustrate a range of ways that we’re helping clients deploy technology to enable greater productivity.
Helping nurses work better and smarter – and inspiring more people to stay in the profession
PwC South Africa collaborated on an app solution built by our innovation ecosystem. Now, nurses spend less time on administration and more time with patients. This helps improve care standards and health outcomes, benefitting patients and their loved ones. The app also makes nurses’ work more rewarding, enhancing the profession’s ability to retain existing staff and attract newcomers.
Transforming call centre productivity for a leading Australian telco
As a result of our work, Telstra’s call centres now achieve better productivity, employee engagement and customer experience with customer calls resolved 45% faster, a 10% increase in staff engagement and fewer call transfers. The key ingredient that delivered these outcomes? The combination of smart technology and human skill in deploying it. As with so many of our clients, Telstra’s success is truly human-led and tech-enabled. To learn more about Telstra’s story, read the full case study.
UK Athletics is using data to help its athletes go for gold
PwC UK helped UK Athletics harness the power of data to increase its athletes’ chances of success. They brought together a multi-skilled team of solvers from across the PwC network to build a cloud analytics platform and perform data cleansing, modelling, and analysis. Their work enabled UK Athletics to integrate, benchmark and analyse crucial athlete performance data including nutrition, strength and conditioning, biomechanics, sleep patterns, and injury history. Now, UK Athletics is gaining powerful new insights to help team members enhance their performance and win more medals. To read the full story, check out the case study.
Alex Cooke, Data Intelligence Partner, PwC UK, commented, ‘This has been a hugely exciting project with [PwC and UK Athletics] eager to push boundaries and develop new ways to help athletes win more medals. While the work we’re doing here is unique, it’s ultimately about using data to optimise your performance and achieve your goals which is important in any industry.’
Using VR to deliver more effective upskilling and build trust
VR can help teams’ confidence as they practise high stakes situations with no risk, leading to significant improvements in team dynamics, collaboration and productivity. The result is sustained positive outcomes for team members and the business as a whole.
Boosting the productivity of HR teams with a chatbot
This takes up time for both HR teams and staff, in turn reducing productivity. To tackle this challenge, PwC Canada developed an HR chatbot for our clients that answers the most common questions automatically via instant messaging. The chatbot delivers better experiences for new starters and HR teams and has reduced HR overheads by 15%.
Throughout this chapter, we’ve surveyed many of the challenges employers face from how to win the competition for talent to how to help employees find meaning in their work. This year, our Future of Work and Skills Survey pinpointed a range of ‘no-regrets’ moves that employers can make to build a workforce strategy that navigates some of these issues. The no-regrets moves include:
Business leaders may find these six moves useful as they seek to create a workforce strategy that helps to build a team ready to deliver sustained success for the business.
Sarah Brown
Director, Global Corporate Affairs and Communications, PwC United Kingdom
Tel: +44 7384 248 785
