In an increasingly competitive labour market, companies need to build trust and enhance transparency to attract the right people and create long-term value.
With 26% of workers planning to quit their jobs in the next 12 months, organisations need to look at how they can increase their attractiveness in the market and engage their workforce.
Workforce Sustainability reporting offers companies a way to hold a mirror up to their own activities, ensuring their policies and practices are aligned with global and local regulations and standards, and demonstrate publicly that their workforce practices are delivering for both the company and its workforce. And that’s especially important as younger generations, who care a lot about social and environmental issues, account for more of the workforce.
PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears 2023Opens in a new window Survey highlights the need for organisations to place more importance on paying a fair and adequate wage with 14% of employees around the world struggling to pay bills every month, and another 42% say once they cover their expenses, they have little or nothing left over (up from 37% in 2022).
“Workforce Sustainability Reporting is an impactful way for an organisation to communicate a clearly defined purpose and the progress it is making in the pursuit of its organisational goals. This goes a long way in building trust with its people and broader stakeholders.”
Parul Munshi,PwC Singapore
Responsibility for Sustainability Reporting can sit across a number of functions such as finance, risk management, and sustainability itself. But increasingly, the people function will need to play a leading role.
To facilitate organisations to do the right thing for the right reasons for their workforce, the people function will need the right data and analytics, enabled by the right technology to stay ahead of mandatory Sustainability regulations. So no matter where your organisation is on its Sustainability journey today, it’s important to monitor how workforce Sustainability strategies and policies have material impacts on your workforce.
While we see plenty of companies publishing sustainability reporting, it’s often fragmented and inconsistent. This makes decision making for stakeholders—whether investors, customers, employees and policy makers—challenging. But Workforce Sustainability Reporting doesn’t just measure sustainable value creation, it incentivises it.
With many aspects of Sustainability being fundamentally workforce issues, the successful implementation of any Sustainability strategy depends on the alignment of the workforce strategy to these objectives. Sustainability needs to be embedded in culture, behaviour, Total Rewards, and talent strategy; driven by authentic and consistent communication throughout the business.
“With the increase in mandatory Sustainability reporting, organisations are being forced to get their Workforce data in order. Those that get ahead of this curve, building a comprehensive data strategy that drives workforce reporting and actionable insights, will be best placed to send a clear message this organisation is motivated to do right by its workforce and can be trusted.”
Phillippa O’Connor,PwC United Kingdom“Understanding the breadth of Workforce Sustainability, and how an organisation can transform its workforce for a more sustainable future allows organisations to stay ahead of the regulatory requirements whilst doing the right thing for their people and for society. It is an area of huge opportunity and organisations who start now stand to gain the most.”
Johannes Smits,PwC SwitzerlandWe know that organisations want to go beyond corporate statements; they want to transform their workforce strategy and create policies and practices that attract and engage the workforce they need.
We also know that people want to work for organisations whose purpose and values align with their own. Workforce Sustainability Reporting enables organisations to:
Facilitating transparency in reporting and not cherry picking or greenwashing sets organisations up for the evolving regulatory landscape so they are ahead of any imminent changes.
In everything we do, we work as a community of solvers coming together in unexpected ways, here to build a human-led, tech-powered future. Learn more about our capabilities.
Today, PwC released the 2023 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey which details the attitudes and behaviours of nearly 54,000 workers in 46 countries and territories.
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Partner, Workforce Transformation, PwC South East Asia Consulting, PwC Singapore
Tel: +65 9660 5011
