PwC announces a $12 billion plan to recruit 100,000 people and train 25,000 Black and Latinx students over 5 years

Business Insider ^ | 06/16/2021 | Kate Duffy

[SeekAndFind]

• PwC announced a $12 billion plan to hire an extra 100,000 people between 2021 and 2026.
• About 10,000 of these hires will be Black and Latinx students, it said Tuesday.
• The firm said it wanted to focus more on environmental, social, and governance advice to clients.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

PwC is spending $12 billion on a new plan to hire 100,000 people over the next five years.

"The New Equation" plan, announced on Tuesday, is set to pump money into recruitment, training, and technology at the firm, and focus PwC on giving clients more environmental, social, and governance advice, the company said. The professional services firm said it wanted to grow its 284,000-person global workforce by more than a third between 2021 and 2026.

PwC US is committing $125 million to prepare 25,000 Black and Latinx students for business careers as part of the plan, Tim Ryan, PwC's US chairman and senior partner, said in a LinkedIn blog post on Tuesday.

PwC plans to hire 10,000 of these students over the next five years, he said.

"We're going to get them ready for the workforce, to create internships, and training opportunities," Ryan told Fast Company on Tuesday. 

"Ten thousand will come to us, which is important, but we will be equally proud of the [other] 15,000 we're going to help because that then gets to solving the broader societal problem."

PwC currently has around 55,000 US employees and hires up to 8,000 Americans a year, the Financial Times reported.

The infrastructure plan also includes a $3 billion drive to double its business in the Asia-Pacific region, PwC said.

[SeekAndFind]

FROM ZERO HEDGE

Here's a breakdown of what the plan will entail, per the FT:

• Some 100,000 new employees will be hired, expanding the firm's workforce to 284,000, which is up 25% over the last five years already.
• $125MM for a US initiative aimed at finding 25Kjobs for students from racial and ethnic minorities over five years, including 10K within PwC. The US firm currently hires 7K-8K people a year in total.
• The firm will spend $3 billion, 25% of the total commitment, to double its AsiaPac business, which booked $6.4 billion in revenue in 12 months to June 20202.
• PwC will launch ESG-focused "trust leadership institutes" in the US and Asia to help "train clients in business ethics and the rudiments of ESG."
• PwC Global Chair Bob Moritz says the firm is "going to massively invest to redefine itself and rebrand itself to make sure we’re valuable for what our clients need and what the world needs."
• There will also be a $1 billion investment in quality control and automating audits. Ryan said that PwC planned acquisitions to improve its capabilities in areas including ESG, cloud technology and artificial intelligence.

The announcement marks the firm's "biggest strategic shift" since it bought strategy consultancy Booz & Co back in 2014. Clients are increasingly "scrutinizing the social impact of the businesses they back and its effect on their financial returns," the FT explained. In other words, PwC's announcement will likely be followed by similar publicly-touted investments in ESG-related know-how by the other Big 4 firms, not to mention other consultants like McKinsey, Bain and BCG. The first of those - McKinsey - is already struggling with a bit of a reputational problem from its role in the opioid pandemic, along with its work for foreign governments like the Saudi royal family and the CCP. They definitely can't afford to underplay it on ESG.

Already, the other Big 4 firms (Deloitte, EY and KPMG) are raising sustainability issues within longstanding practices such as in their audit and assurance business. Sources say ESG is being given "greater prominence within their businesses." EY has assigned Steve Varley, the former head of its UK business, as its first-ever global vice chair for sustainability.

[SpaceBar]

giving clients more environmental, social, and governance advice...

So being a whiny bitch Karen is now a business model.

[minnesota_bound]

PwC is the new name for the scandal ridden accounting firm. They still are involved in much corruption all over the world.

Google: pwc scandal

[Regulator]

So discrimination is now OK?

I thought it was outlawed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Oh Wait! Sandy Baby O’Connor...whose family owns thousands of acres in Occupied Mexico just outside of Bowie, Arizona...sez itz cool for “another 25 years or so” which I assume will just get kicked down the road again in 25 years when things don’t work out for the beneficiaries...

Waiting patiently for AG Garfinkel’s Doh-J to take them all to court over their discriminatory hiring practices!

[ConservativeInPA]

"We're going to get them ready for the workforce, to create internships, and training opportunities," Ryan told Fast Company on Tuesday.

The firm said it wanted to focus more on environmental, social, and governance advice to clients.

I guess engineering, computer science, and business are no longer valid workforce prerequisites.

[Robert DeLong]

PwC = PricewaterhouseCoopers

[Pollard]

I thought math was racist

[CatOwner]

PwC announced a $12 billion plan to hire an extra 100,000 people between 2021 and 2026. About 10,000 of these hires will be Black and Latinx students, it said Tuesday.

Why not more? 50,000? 75,000? 100,000? Only seems fair in today's society.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I don’t get it. Price Waterhouse Coopers is an accounting firm. They are CPAs who do audits and give business advice.

How they make some segway into environmental and social causes is beyond my pay grade.

[bgill]

Because the shade of someone’s skin makes them qualified for the job.

[Gay State Conservative]

But when all is said and done will they be able to count?

[Renfrew]

” focus PwC on giving clients more environmental, social, and governance advice”

While China trains 600,000 engineers each year, we are directing people towards useless jobs like this.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: PwC is the new name for the scandal ridden accounting firm. They still are involved in much corruption all over the world.

So, why are they still in business? The other big accounting firm, Arthur Anderson went bankrupt with their failure to prevent the ENRON scandal.

[minnesota_bound]

One scandal after another in many countries. Only reason to use them is if you want to bury bad data about your company.
They could be on every episode of “American Greed”.
Maybe call it “Global Greed”.

[John Milner]

Why are they hiring ‘extra’ people? I would think the most efficient way to run a business is to hire just the right number to do all the work. Extra people are just a drain on the bottom line.

Either that or the person who wrote this doesn’t understand the definition of extra.

[Robert DeLong]

I'll take your word for it. Since I don't have much exposure to them, but do know them by their old name, I don't pay much attention to them, nor do I read articles about them

Can't know everything. 8>)

So thanks for your information. Now I know more than I did a minute ago. 8>)

[Vaduz]

Must be a Biden quota tax loophole involved.

[chuckee]

Boy, if I was looking for a stock to short, this new PWC business model to hire the least and the dullest to substantially staff their company sure provides me incentive to short it.

[Republican Wildcat]

“Latinx” - term of the woke whites for Latinos.

[Chode]

shareholders must be thrilled...