About this report

Our stakeholders are people or organisations who we have worked closely with or who have an interest in our business. We actively engage them to obtain feedback on issues that are of shared interest, from accounting development to corporate governance and talent attraction. We do this through the following channels:

• Our people through the annual Global People Survey, townhalls and focus groups 
• Our people who volunteer for our Corporate Responsibility (CR) programmes via email and face-to-face interactions
  throughout the volunteering programme
• Our clients through client satisfaction surveys 
• Regulators and professional associations through our participation as board or committee members 
• Our potential recruits through social media, via their campus advisors and initiatives such as the Trust Builders Challenge
• Charity partners who benefit from our CR programmes through personal feedback and survey forms at the end of each volunteering programme
  

Not only does feedback from our stakeholders help determine topics of interest for the report; more importantly, it helps us improve our services and programmes to further add value to our stakeholders.

In 2015, we ran a survey to engage our biggest group of stakeholders, our people, on issues that are important to them. In September 2017, we ran four focus groups with 55 participants across all lines of service and levels. 

We found the qualitative feedback valuable and insightful and will consider engaging our people more consistently. The issues and feedback raised were analysed and validated at our highest governing entity, the Country Management Board team and were used to guide our CR strategy. 

Engaging other stakeholders

Media: We engage the media regularly, providing thought leadership publications that are relevant to the public and points of view on key business topics e.g. economics, audit and tax matters and governance.

Clients: Through our client feedback programme, our clients tell us that we do well in translating insights and technical knowledge into practical advice in helping them work more efficiently. A key area that they think we can do more of is to give an added dimension to the work we do - for example, in the form of sharing best practices, industry insights, out-of-the-box ideas and solutions.

We focus our Corporate Responsibility (CR) activities and reporting on the issues of importance to PwC and our stakeholders.

Feedback from regular engagement with our biggest stakeholders, our people, helps us identify the issues that are most significant – or ‘material’ – to PwC.

We use a ‘materiality matrix’ to map the issues that our stakeholders are most concerned about against those that have the biggest impact on our business.

You will read about topics that are significant to our stakeholders and to the business in this report.

We are cognisant that as we continue to engage our other stakeholders, the materiality matrix and reporting content may change.

Results of the survey helped us set directions, plan forward and make plans that would be meaningful and sustainable for our beneficiaries and our people. The strategy was validated with the Country Management Team and then shared with our people.

Please refer to the Corporate responsibility page for the CR strategy, flagship programmes, three-year plan and how they fit into the three CR buckets.

We’ll continue our focus on Education and Capacity Building (helping people build skills to meet their goals) and aim to be more strategic and focused in our efforts.