Written by Lynne Rainey, Partner at PwC.
PwC’s Lynne Rainey speaks to Sync NI about why diversity in work is one of the company’s core values.
We don’t just need diversity in the workplace, we depend on it. It isn’t limited to gender, ethnicity, race or socioeconomic factors - it also includes neurodiversity - different types of learners and personality styles. This combination is invaluable to our organisation, our clients and our communities.
As a business, much of our client work focuses on transformation as the need for businesses to be able to adapt to shifting demands has become critical. The ones that do this best will be the ones that grow; and that includes us too. By embracing diversity, we’ve been able to build out different revenue streams. In this last year, rather than hunker down and do what we’ve always done for clients, we launched an entirely new unit in the firm - our £40m Advanced Research and Technology Centre (ARC) and began recruiting software engineers.
The work this team is doing is focused on solving problems businesses will face in the next decade and beyond, and places Belfast at the heart of the UK firm’s future technology plans. We will be recruiting 800 people over the next 4 years, and in the process forging stronger partnerships with academia and businesses through collaboration. It’s only made possible by looking beyond what we already knew and challenging ourselves to do more. ARC sits within the Belfast-based Operate business, which is itself a great example of our innovative thinking. It’s radically transformed how the firm has supported clients through major delivery projects, and it’s gone on to become the fastest growing business in the UK firm.
Our success in thinking differently is built on attracting a diversity of people and we do this through a variety of channels. I’m extremely proud that over the past three years we’ve launched two degree apprenticeship programmes with both of our local universities and continued to fund the Assured Skills Academies with the Department for the Economy and Belfast Met. These not only expand our options for talent recruitment, but support people who might not have believed they had a chance to work for us traditionally, driving social mobility. On our Business Management higher level apprenticeship which began in September, students include a former teacher, a mature psychology grad (who is a foster mum), and a school leaver. The diversity of thought, of background, of life experience in this one cohort is tremendous. Ultimately, when we combine different perspectives in the workplace, it fosters innovation, creates a progressive culture and enables us to bring better solutions to our clients.
We need people who bring different strengths to projects so, in some areas, we need people who’ve come up through the firm; and in others, we need people who join from elsewhere with different working experiences. And we know very well that far more people are choosing other ways of working. This brings its own challenge as we work out what the role of the office is in the future of work. In a hybrid world, where some people find it easier to come back to the office than others, we’re aware that we need to make sure remote working is not a barrier to development. Prior to the pandemic, we’d already introduced ways of eliminating unconscious bias to ensure everyone has equal access to opportunities and to support their career progression and we’re monitoring it closely now.
Diversity in work is one of PwC’s core values and it empowers us to be a stronger advocate for it outside our office. In addition to different types of experience, we also need different levels of experience. This is one of the reasons why we recently expanded the support we give to women experiencing menopause, to help them stay in work. According to a 2016 survey, menopause is the reason a quarter of women have considered leaving their jobs. Given that Northern Ireland has the lowest female labour force participation in the UK (70%) we can’t stand by and watch as experienced, talented, focused women feel they have no option but to quit work. I personally supported a colleague through the menopause and saw at first hand how our flexible approach meant she could work from home when she needed to, or take time off, without judgement. These simple allowances mean she’s still with us as a valued member of the team. This whole issue about supporting women in work is something I’m passionate about and through it, I’ve established a group of stakeholders - in the third sector, business and government - who are collaborating to improve the reality for women in the workplace in the region. It’s difficult to quantify the benefits this brings the firm, but we know that we’re doing what’s right and living our purpose: to build trust in society and solve important problems.
But diversity is also about things that can’t be measured as a KPI - like diversity of thought - and just last month, our firm was recognised for the diversity of thought that we bring to the work we do with charity partners. By changing our approach, supporting a theme rather than a single group, and combining charities together with a shared goal, we created Into Tomorrow - a sustainable initiative aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in our society to change their lives. It challenges everyone to think differently about a critical issue and as a result, it’s genuinely saving lives. We’re about to mark the graduation of our first cohort of young people who started the programme in 2019 - all homeless, many addicts, all feeling they’d missed their chance at a meaningful life. Each one now has a home of their own, is either in training or has a job. Our team - which partners with Hummingbird NI, TAMHI and the Bytes Project - was given the BITC ‘Investing in your Community’ award, and they also won the PwC UK Care award in November.
It’s easy to say that increasing diversity is difficult. It isn’t. But it does require commitment. This year for the first time, we’ve collected and published our socioeconomic and our disability pay gaps, on top of our gender and ethnicity pay gaps. We have more work to do on our action plan but doing this helps us to shine a light on the areas on which to focus. Since we reported on the ethnicity pay gap last year, we’ve overturned it. This helps us to not only attract but also retain our talent, ensuring we create a sustainable future for our business.
If our goal is a vibrant and competitive economy, supporting a prosperous future, then we must all work towards developing a diverse, outward-looking and inclusive society. We’ve progressed a lot in recent times, and this year in our Future of Government report, Northern Ireland was named the best place in the UK to live, raise a family and start a business. Imagine how much more we can achieve by doing more.
This article first appeared in the Winter 2021/22 edition of the Sync NI magazine. You can download your FREE copy and sign up to receive future digital editions here.
