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Diversity & Inclusion

At PwC, we are working towards an inclusive culture that values differences – one that allows us to be ourselves every day, and that empowers us to realise and discover our full potential.

We know that when we bring together the perspectives of individuals from diverse backgrounds, life experiences, preferences and beliefs, we can create better outcomes for our clients, people and communities.

Our strategy

Promoting Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is an important part of our values and strategy.

We have a Partner who oversees D&I efforts and reports to the Country Management Team. There is also a team that drives D&I efforts throughout the year in line with our focus area of Valuing Differences, our theme since 2015. This theme guides us in creating awareness and continuing dialogue around unconscious biases.

Read about the two D&I initiatives that resonate with our people - Lunch with a Stranger and Human Library; and two new D&I programmes in FY19 - Parents' Network and Unconscious Bias awareness workshops.

Our actions

We are constantly reviewing our policies and practices to find ways to enhance D&I at PwC, such as:

Being open to employing people with disabilities
Expanding our talent pool to people with non-degree backgrounds and graduates from diverse disciplines
Promoting an inclusive culture in the firm with initiatives to encourage our people to appreciate and value differences in gender, background and ethnicity

We also participate in national level programmes that support the advancement of women in the workforce:

30% Club
- Pauline Ho, our People Partner, leads a workstream of 30% Club and spearheaded a Board Mentoring Scheme to identify women who are board-ready, and pairing them with experienced directors based on criteria such as professional experience and interests.
- We have launched 4 mentoring cohorts to date and 5 women have been placed on boards from these groups.
Career Comeback
- PwC Malaysia is a strong advocate of women who are keen to return to work.
- Active participation in the Career Comeback Programme run by TalentCorp.

Our results

We are proud of what we have accomplished through our D&I efforts. But we acknowledge that there is still much to be done. Our notable achievements include:

An inclusive workplace - 77% of our people believe PwC has an inclusive work environment where individual differences are respected and valued (source: PwC Global People Survey 2019)
A diverse workforce with the following demographics:
- 42% of our Partners & 51% of our Managers are women
- 82% of our people are millennials or younger; and 14 who are above 60 years old
- 6 ‘differently-abled’ colleagues (3 visually impaired, 2 physical disability, 1 person of short stature)
- Workforce comprises people from 14 countries
- Recruited 20 women returnees since 2015 through the Career Comeback Programme
British Malaysia Chamber of Commerce (BMCC) Excellence Award for Diversity 2019.
TalentCorp's Career Comeback ReIGNITE Award 2018
Best International Organisation, Life@Work Award 2017
Special mention for Human Library, Life@Work Award 2017
ACCA Malaysian Sustainability Reporting Award for Best Workplace, 2014 and 2015
CEO champion, Life@Work Award 2014

For International Women’s Day 2019, we featured a few of our colleagues from different departments in sharing their appreciation for their female colleagues through a video.

Diversity & Inclusion initiatives

Lunch With A Stranger

Launched in September 2015, Lunch With A Stranger (LWAS) is a platform for people across our different departments to meet over lunch and runs from April to November yearly. This initiative helps us break down work silos, meet new people, dispel biases and stereotypes, and promote inclusion.

Each weekly session focuses on a topic that's relevant to our people, ranging from experiences working abroad, wellbeing, International Women’s Day, and the PwC Values. We have hosted a diverse range of external guests as well: our clients, nonprofits such as TFM, Picha project and Make-A-Wish Foundation, and even a card game developer. Below are the number of LWAS sessions and participants over 3 years. We are pleased that the numbers continue to increase. Participation rates for 2019 are not ready at time of reporting.

	2018	2017	2016
Number of LWAS sessions	32	37	38
Participants	391	385	259

Human Library

We have moved away from D&I awareness talks to using experiential learning, where one can experience diversity in real time. “Human Library” is a platform for people to have conversations with those who are often stereotyped and face discrimination in our society. These may include the homeless, refugees, single fathers, substance abusers or members of the LGBT community.

In 2018, we ran this session for the third time in collaboration with Impact Hub KL. Through Human Library, we aim to create a safe, positive, non-judgemental, learning environment where the opportunity to "read" these "human books" will encourage us to challenge the assumptions, stereotypes, and misconceptions that people may have towards them or others like them.

	2018	2017	2016
Participants	103	151	146
Number of ‘books’	8	9	10

PwC Malaysia: Human Library 2017

Human Library is back for the second year. We read stories of different "Human Books" and challenged the stereotypes we may have towards them. Check out pictures from our Human Library event here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/pwcmsia/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10155836823564099

Addressing unconscious bias

In our effort to understand how our own preconceptions play out in the workplace, we have developed our own Unconscious Bias (UB) workshop and ran a pilot in 2018 for Directors and Senior Managers based on real-life examples and bias-prone areas in our talent lifecycle from recruitment to promotions.

Our desired outcome for the UB workshops is for our people be aware of instances where bias can happen, so that their actions or decisions will be more inclusive. We also hope to improve retention and employee engagement and to better onboard experienced hires.

We have two workshops planned for 2019. Our first workshop in July 2019 had very encouraging results:

Workshop contained relevant information. 100% agree & strongly agree with "I am able to use the information I have learned to address my own UB"
We were able to improve understanding of UB for participants. Scores for "I am aware and I understand what UB is about" : 3.92 (before) ; 4.58 (after).

Parents' Network

The Parents' Network aims to be an avenue for parents at PwC support each other and to be supported through different programmes which include:

Plan B Childcare: An option for parents to drop off their children at nearby daycares around the Kuala Lumpur office on an emergency basis, subsidised by the Firm
Lunch with a Stranger x Parents: Riding on our Lunch with a Stranger (LWAS) initiative, we have LWAS x Parents sessions every last Thursday of the month, hosted by different parents on various parenting topics ranging from dad’s role as a parent to empty nest syndrome.
Resource sharing : Monthly newsletters are sent to all parents at PwC which includes a summary of LWAS x Parents for those who missed the session, updates and parenting articles / promotions. Content on balancing work and family is also available through a shared Google Drive.
Parenting Pals:
- A mentoring programme designed to connect soon-to-be/new/existing parents with experienced parents on themes related to juggling parenthood and career, recently launched in July 2019.
- The objective of the mentoring relationship is to share guidance and insights on parenthood; give support to new parents in transitioning to their new ‘role’ at home, helping them navigate a significant life-changing period while balancing work demands; as well as helping to support the mental and emotional wellbeing of new parents.
- We have a group of mentors covering different themes:
  - planning/pre-children (eg. conceiving, childbirth experience),
  - transition back to work (eg. reduced work week, juggling life as a working parent),
  - life as a parent (eg. working dad, single/young parent),
  - others (eg. schooling options).