Responsible Business

More than just doing the right thing

At PwC, being a responsible business means managing our operations with ethics and integrity and recognising that our responsibilities extend into our value chain. But it’s more than that – we understand that the most significant societal contribution we make is through the work we do every day. Our purpose, to build trust in society and solve important problems, combined with our values, provide the highest-level guide for our behaviours and actions. Equally important is our infrastructure for sound governance, independence, ethics and compliance. Read more about our approach to business ethics and conduct.

Realising the potential of our people

Our people are at the heart of our organisation. We are committed to attracting the best people and offering them exciting career and development opportunities. We employ people from diverse cultures and backgrounds and with a wide range of experiences. We are committed to making sure everyone who works at PwC feels comfortable bringing their true selves to work. An inclusive workplace enables us to embrace the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of all our people to create better outcomes for stakeholders and society. Read about our diversity and inclusion journey.

We have a range of initiatives to create a better working environment for our people. In addition to career counselling, coaching and mentoring, we have an established firm code of conduct and ethics helpline.

Through wellbeing initiatives, we have invested in helping our people work flexibly and manage their energy and personal wellbeing. Mental health is an important societal issue and through the introduction of trained Mental Health First Aiders we are supporting our people to better navigate conversations around mental health and identify when people may benefit from additional support.

Our New world. New skills programme is our planned investment in upskilling our people to develop the skills required to be successful in the digital world. This will primarily be invested in building the ‘digital fitness’ of our people, and in technologies for supporting clients and programmes to support our community.

Working with clients

The biggest impact we make comes from the work we do every day, helping clients navigate many of the complex systems - capital markets, tax and economies - that underpin society. We help these systems function and clients to operate within them effectively.

Trust lies at the heart of everything we do at PwC. It’s fundamental to fulfilling our firm’s purpose. One of the ways we build trust is by being transparent. As auditors, we’re also acutely aware of another trust driver: the quality of our external audits. That’s why we’ve introduced our inaugural Transparency Report showing how we maintain quality in our audit work. The report describes our policies, systems and processes for ensuring quality and the way we foster a culture of quality at every level of the firm. It details the Market Traded Companies we performed audits for and the total revenue from our audit and non-audit work.

Working with suppliers for positive change

At PwC, we expect the same level of integrity and business conduct from our Third Parties and their personnel as we do our own people. These standards are explained in our Global Third Party Code of Conduct.