At 284,000 employees, PwC is one of the most powerful professional-services firms — and Bob Moritz, the company's global chairman, wants his employees to be excited about lifelong learning.
Moritz joined PwC more than three decades ago; he said he'd stayed engaged because he "was challenged every day to do something different." Now he and his leadership team are asking some employees to stretch their skill sets and learn more about meeting clients' needs around environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, issues.
The ESG training is part of PwC's "New Equation" plan, introduced earlier this month. The goal is to focus more on how businesses can improve society by meeting the needs of all stakeholders: clients, employees, and the public.
PwC says it's also making a $12 billion investment to hire another 100,000 people by 2026. PwC US will train 25,000 Black and Latinx students on in-demand job skills, ultimately hiring 10,000 of them, the company said.
The plan is launching into a labor market turned upside-down. As the economy recovers from the pandemic recession and hiring picks up, workers around the world are planning changes. In April, 4 million Americans quit their jobs. Meanwhile, reports of burnout in demanding fields like consulting are increasing.
Even before the pandemic, PwC was making bold moves, including the announcement of its "New World, New Skills" program in 2019. Under that program, employees who agreed to receive training on new tech skills would be guaranteed a job with the firm.
Insider spoke with Moritz about the genesis of "The New Equation" and how it would affect hiring and recruiting practices. "We have to role-model internally to make sure that we are doing the right things in the eyes of our major stakeholders," Moritz said.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
PwC US is going to invest in training 25,000 Black and Latinx students on in-demand job skills. PwC then plans to hire 10,000 of those students. Are there specific competencies you're looking for that would determine whether a student gets hired?
It's a combination of technical competencies, but those can be gathered over time.
It's the other competencies that are going to be equally, if not more, important. It's the EQ. It's the global acumen. It's the softer skills that are going to be really important. And it's going to be equally as important to see people demonstrate their ability to take risks, learn, and adjust accordingly with speed and confidence.
And this concept of agility is going to be really important. Because today's person that gets hired for moving into a tax role, or a legal role, or an audit role, or a consulting role — I can't guarantee that specific job is going to be there three years from now, when you think about the combination of what the world needs and the changing work that we do. There are certain competencies they're going to need. I'd need them to be agile enough to lean into the learning opportunities and then redefine themselves.
How would you measure agility in incoming hires or current employees?
What are the examples where you've had to lean into a new opportunity to digitally lead? What did you learn from that? How did you apply that learning thereafter? That could be as simple as you joined a new club at university, or you had to operate in a virtual way at university. That's a new way of demonstrating, "Hey, I'm agile. I quickly adjusted from the old world to the new world, and look at the outcome I delivered."
Those are the kinds of questions that now come up with the interview process to demonstrate people's agility and mobility. That's a good predictor of their future agility, mobility, and advancement going forward.
These questions were not the kinds of things you asked in interviews a few years ago?
In the past, if you were coming into the tax practice, you were asked a lot more technical questions. Now it's about tax, but let's also talk about how tax gets applied in this new strategy to an ESG agenda. How does tax get applied in a new workforce? So it's the application of that to the new themes, to get to these different outcomes, in the world of trust.
How has the pandemic and the racial reckoning that the US is experiencing informed the "New Equation"?
COVID-19 evidenced on a worldwide basis the disruptive nature of social inequities and what business, government, and community leaders have to do about that. How do you solve those problems to minimize those inequities? Six, seven years ago we saw those trends. We knew there was a potential for the world to be pulled apart.
Unfortunately, it did come to fruition, and it continues to come forward in a big-time way. So it did cause us to think about what we could or should be doing differently. We also have the responsibilities of business to play bigger in that space to try to force some change. In our space, we have the opportunity to ask people to be more transparent about that. And are they making progress in that regard? And how do you convene other organizations, governments, and community leaders to talk about this stuff?
Professionals at PwC who haven't traditionally worked with clients on ESG and DEI will now be working on that. How are you going to make sure they're equipped to do that effectively?
This plays nicely off what we launched about two years ago — we call it "New World, New Skills." It was a $3 billion investment where we would upskill our people. This just takes it to another level. Now we've got to teach them ESG, because every single piece of work we do now requires you to have some element of the ESG implications.
That gets to the $12 billion investment that we're making. We are putting all of our people through an ESG academy to upskill them, just like we put all of them through digital upskilling. This concept of "New World, New Skills" is a continuous learning exercise.
How are employees feeling about this?
In driving a change program, you need to make it very personal. When we first started the "New World, New Skills" initiative, the first thing they asked is, "I love the idea, but how do I have the time to do it?" So we have to find capacity to allow them to learn in addition to doing their day job.
There's a lot of excitement because they ultimately end up with more career opportunities, more job security, more advancement opportunities.
You've been with PwC more than three decades. What has kept you engaged?
It's a combination of hard work, luck, and sponsorship. That's gotten me to where I am today.
I liked what I was doing. I liked the people I was doing it with. I was challenged every day to do something different. It wasn't just the reward of compensation; it was the reward of continual learning and continued advancement. This is where my sponsors played a big role. My sponsor gave me the opportunity to go to Japan for three years. Another sponsor gave me an opportunity to be a lead engagement partner on a major client at a very early age.
I've had multiple times where I've had opportunities to leave. But I love what I'm doing, because every day I'm doing something different.
