How PwC is investing billions in digitally reskilling the workforce

The business community is now confronted with the problem it has feared for years: many people do not have the digital skills needed to perform the work of the future. And with the unprecedented pace of technological advancement across industries, the future is upon us now. 

The pace of change is only going to continue to accelerate, and hiring new talent to manage disruption in the short term is neither scalable or sustainable. To stay competitive in the global economy, US businesses must invest in digital education and new skills for their employees.

At PwC, we are in the business of people and one of the most important things we do is to continuously scan the horizon to help our clients (and ourselves) prepare for what will affect people in the future. My firm’s own leadership team sees the digital skills inflection point emerging today, and we are acting now. 

Today, the PwC Network announced a landmark global commitment, New World, New Skills. We're investing $3 billion globally in tools, technologies, and individuals to innovate our business, while continuing to deliver value to our clients and communities. This means giving our 276,000 people critical skills to help them grow and develop now and in the future as lifelong learners. We are not aware of any other organization that has made a commitment of this size and scale, nor anyone that has committed to upskilling their people as we have.  

This effort is a great example of what we mean when we talk about leading with purpose as a firm. This investment helps solve an important problem, and the shared value of our effort is obvious: We are preparing our people’s careers for the future, as well as creating opportunities for them to apply their new skills to tackle the challenges of tomorrow for our clients and communities. 

We have already begun to rollout our strategy, and some of our clients have adopted our digital upskilling efforts as well. We are focusing first on accessibility of new skills for all of our people without regard to title, tenure, or role. We are meeting them where they are through PwC Digital Fitness, an innovative app that allows our people to assess their level of digital knowledge and create customized learning paths to help them continuously learn and upskill themselves. Digital Fitness delivers bite-sized and engaging learning assets to help our people think differently and unlock their innovative creativity at scale. We are also giving employees the tools and the time to find, build and share thousands of technology solutions and digital assets in our Digital Lab -- changing the way we solve problems by embracing emerging technologies and delivering both greater efficiency and higher quality in our work. We’re bringing this all together in real-world applications that help our people apply their new skills, and deliver value in new ways to our clients and the communities we serve. 

This effort, for example, reaches into classrooms across the country to help teachers and students develop their own digital skills. If only 10% of educators feel confident teaching technology concepts, our future talent pipeline is at risk. Our firm is starting where technology education is needed most, in low-income school districts. We are teaching students about the Essential Eight technologies with the help of CODE-E, a life-sized humanoid robot engaging directly with students and sharing first-hand the inspirational potential of new technologies. We’re also working with nonprofits like DonorsChoose.org to deploy PwC Digital Fitness and provide it to educators free of charge. This is happening now: already, 26,000 teachers are using this powerful tool. 

For technology leaders setting digital upskilling strategies, there are a few actions scalable for any organization:

1. Commit to upskilling everyone: Inclusivity yields inspiration. The challenge of preparing talent for the future impacts everyone at every level and role throughout your organization. Leaders and Managers throughout the organization must recognize development and upskilling as a business priority. 
2. Inspire a culture of constructive disruption. Many organizations are working to integrate emerging technology into their operations or services, but this doesn’t necessarily produce a digital organization (in fact, it makes focusing on upskilling at scale all the more important). What leaders really need to achieve (and what talent wants) is a culture of continuous innovation and constructive disruption, where individuals are empowered to make things better for their coworkers and their clients. This digital culture inspires and motivates employees wherever they are in their digital journey. Learning should come at your talent in full “surround sound,” accessible - but flexible - to accommodate the demands we all face today.
3. Enable tech learning with the right investments, assets and processes in place. Employees should be empowered not only with digital tools and resources, but also the time (and organizational support) to apply what they have learned. To achieve change at scale, employees also should be encouraged to share what they’ve learned with colleagues and management. The acquisition of new skills and demonstrated impact needs to be celebrated, as does the considerable effort your employees will be putting in to make the change happen.  

We are leading our firm and other companies during an extraordinary time. The upskilling of talent at scale is arguably the most important business issue of our age, and the practices and approaches that helped us get here will not take us where we are going. It will take truly collective action to build a workforce equipped with the digital skills necessary to support sustainable and successful careers in the future. The value of this effort reaches across business and industry into government, education and society at large. The stakes for getting this wrong are certainly high, but the potential returns when we get this right could not be more compelling. 

We are truly privileged to have this opportunity to lead, and could not be more excited to announce this remarkable investment.