Attractive place to work for a talented and agile workforce

This is the third pillar in PwC Malaysia's four-year priority. We are on a journey to create an experience that motivates our people to give their best, and to stay and grow their career with PwC. By making PwC an attractive place to work, we also aim to attract people with different perspectives and diverse backgrounds.

1. Enhancing our value proposition to attract and retain talents

We recognise that it is not all about work. Our people do their best when they are able to 'Be Well and Live Well'. Our people work hard and we aim to help our people achieve better work life balance through initiatives such as Flex+, Corporate Responsibility and #PwCWellbeing. Read about our initiatives below:

2. Increasing diversity of talent

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 our two D&I initiatives which resonate with our people - Lunch with a Stranger and Human Library.

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

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 - 73% of our people believe PwC has an inclusive work environment where individual differences are respected and valued (source: PwC Global People Survey 2017)
Diversity in educational background and experience: 16% of entry level recruits and 20% of experienced hires are from non-business schools
Strong female leadership - 42% of our partners are women; 51% of our Managers are women
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

Launched in September 2015, Lunch With A Stranger (LWAS) is a platform for people across our different departments to meet over lunch.

This 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.

In 2017, we hosted several external guests from organisations such as Teach for Malaysia, Cancer Research Malaysia, UEM Edgenta and Yayasan Hasanah, to name a few.

“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 a member of the LGBT community.

In 2017, we ran this session for the second 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.

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We recruit non-degree hires

We have been recruiting school leavers with A-Levels and STPM qualifications or diploma holders as Trainee Associates on the Earn While You Learn programme. As Trainee Associates, they will assist the Assurance team(s) on audit administration.

The programme gives them the opportunity to experience to full-time client-facing roles while pursuing their studies, part-time. They are given exam support, as well as exam and study leave throughout the programme.

Once the Trainee Associates complete the fundamental level of their chosen professional exams, they will progress to the mainstream Assurance career track as Associates. The Earn While You Learn programme has been in place since 2011.

Seasonal workforce model

To ease the workload of our client-facing teams during the peak audit season, we piloted a seasonal workforce model in 2015 with a team of five junior auditors who were offered employment on a fixed-term contract.

With positive feedback from our audit teams, we increased the team by 15 fold in just three years in 2017/18. The seasonal workforce has now become our new resourcing model for four to five months each year.

This arrangement offers the opportunity for the contract auditors to be offered entry-level Associate positions in the firm upon completion of their contract period. It also allows the firm the option not to extend their contracts beyond the busy season, depending on the business needs and their work performance.

"I've benefitted from the Career Comeback Programme because it has helped me rebuild my network and career."

Career Comeback programme participant

PwC is a strong advocate of supporting women who are keen to return to the workforce. We actively participate in the Career Comeback Programme by TalentCorp and the Women Returnee programme championed by the Malaysian chapter of "Lean In" ¹.

Since the inception of the Career Comeback programme in 2015, PwC Malaysia has recruited 15 women returnees. We have also tapped on this talent pool to pilot a career comeback programme of our own with five part-timers, providing them with the relevant experience and exposure to help them transition back into the workforce after a career break.

¹ Lean In Malaysia champions the #leanin movement in Asia, seeking to empower women to pursue their ambitions.