PwC's Tech While You Trek: PwC’s Digital Upskilling Journey

Tune into this pilot episode of the Tech While You Trek podcast series to hear PwC's Vice Chair, Chief Products and Technology Officer Joe Atkinson and Digital Talent Leader Sarah McEneaney share PwC's digital transformation journey and what they've learned along the way. 

Transcript

Tech While You Trek Season 1 Episode #1:   PwC’s Digital Upskilling Journey

Adam (00:08):

Hello everyone. My name is Adam, and I'm your host for Tech While You Trek, a podcast from PwC on all things tech, including key lessons for other business leaders looking to drive digital transformation.   Each month, we'll release a couple episodes where you can learn how emerging technologies and trends are solving problems for individual consumers, businesses, and society in 15 minutes or less.

Today I have with me, Joe Atkinson, Vice Chair, Chief Products and Technology Officer, and Sarah McEneaney, Digital Talent Leader for PwC, who are going to share with us the firm's Digital Upskilling story and how you can benefit from the lessons learned so far. This podcast series has been one popular part of that upskilling agenda. Welcome, Joe and Sarah.

Sarah McEneaney (00:50):

Thanks for having us.

Joe Atkinson (00:51):

Thanks, Adam. Glad to be here.

Adam (00:52):

So I'll tell you what, Joe, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about why PwC chose to invest in digitally upskilling our workforce.

Joe Atkinson (00:58):

Well Adam, when we set out, it was pretty clear that the technology pace wasn't going to slow down. Everybody talks about the slowest pace of technology change is the change pace we have now; it's only going to get faster. And given that, and the challenges that our talent was feeling in the way that they were responding to those changes, adopting new technologies, we felt that we really had a role to play, an obligation really, to help them navigate through that disruption, both in the short term, and to position their careers for the long term. It was also key to our own relevance as a firm. Our clients were demanding more. They were expecting more, as they should. And as we continue to raise the game, we needed to make sure that we had the capability, the infrastructure, the process, and the investments to help our people play at that higher bar.

Sarah McEneaney (01:46):

I think it's really important to note that while PwC is a knowledge-heavy organization, of course our people and their skills are at the heart of what we've done, pairing them with the tools and technology, but I'll tell you when we talk to our clients about the same thing and their own digital transformation experiences, we do advise them that having a culture change at the heart of your technology change is one sure fire way to make it more successful.

Adam Hargus (02:09):

So, Sarah, can you tell us a little bit about PwC's digital upskilling journey over the past few years?

Sarah McEneaney (02:15):

At the center of it all, we're very, very committed to making sure everyone gets to participate. We call everyone at PwC a citizen, and our approach to upskilling is what we call citizen-led innovation. So all 55,000 in the US of our employees have been encouraged and expected to some degree to take part in upskilling. And that might be very foundational to meet someone where they are if they're really starting out on their journey, or it might be something more intermediate or advanced if they're already coming to us with some data science skills or a computer science background.

Adam (02:46):

So people are able to very much customize their experience.

Sarah McEneaney (02:49):

Absolutely. It's very flexible. It meets people where they are. And also even just the amount of time they want to spend and chunk that up, whether it's a few minutes here and there, or whether they want to do something more intensive for days at a time, the delivery methods are available. Whether it's things like this podcast or something more involved where they're working on a project, building bots and things with their teammates.

Joe Atkinson (03:09):

We're fortunate enough we hire a lot of really smart people. They realized very quickly that the way to get at this agenda was to take advantage of the assets that were being made available to them. And rather than prescribe that in a way that felt overly structured or overly sequential, obviously there's places where you want to structure and sequence things, but the way that you could invite them to engage in the agenda in different ways, that's been a really powerful part of why I think we've seen the success we have.

Adam (03:35):

So Joe, since this has been a multiyear experience, how have you measured success along the way? And what are some things you've learned?

Joe Atkinson (03:41):

There's a lot of traditional measures you could go to. You could go to courses taken, or you could go to how many people have completed the stack of things you want them to complete. But one of the lessons that we learned is if you're really going to engage people where they are, then you have to measure it much more holistically than that. And frankly, there's a lot more measurement we do as a management team than we allow, if you will, our people to feel. We don't want them to feel like every step of this journey is measured. We want them to feel like the measurement is about what it's about, which is getting these assets into their hands and helping them change the way they work. So we look at much more holistic measures. And one of the ones that we worry about a lot is do our people feel like they have the tools and technologies necessary to change the way they work. We look at that through our annual people's surveys. And we're really very excited that 81% of our staff looked at that and said, "I'm developing the skills I need to develop in order to be relevant in the future."

And I often counsel clients, when you're looking at digital transformation upskilling journeys, you have to be asking, what is the business outcome I actually want from the investments I'm making in my people. I want my people to be more relevant. I want them to be able to work smarter, not harder. And I want them to be able to deliver services to clients in the way that our clients expect them to be served. That ultimately translates into the profitability of the firm. And we have been fortunate enough that our people, in a citizen-led journey, our people have automated millions of hours of work that frankly they don't love doing, that our clients don't generally highly value, and that gives us better quality outputs.

Adam (05:11):

So Sarah, can you talk to us a little bit about some of the learning techniques or programs that were used to upskill the workforce?

Sarah McEneaney (05:17):

So what surprises some people is one of our primary goals with our upskilling around technology relates to the human skills. So we prioritize what we call human-centered design. And what that is, is using skills like storytelling and agile and design to bring what people are learning to life in insights that matter. But then on top of that, to get into the more technology-heavy stuff, we also have a digital fitness app, which is available even outside of PwC to anyone across the world can use that to learn basics of various technology topics, whether it's blockchain, internet of things, augmented reality, and so on. One of the flagship, I'll call it, programs we've had, and I've had the privilege of being involved with is what we call our digital accelerator program, where we've taken thousands of people out of their PwC day jobs as an accountant or a consultant or whatever it might be and given them two years to spend really, really investing in deeper skills and applying those skills immediately across our business. And that's every part of our business. So had a huge impact and really helped to drive that citizen-led innovation we've been talking about.

Adam (06:21):

So I hear the term gamification a lot. Is that an approach that we use?

Sarah McEneaney (06:24):

Gamification is really, really cool. We get a lot of user feedback on what elements of our learning channels and our learning experience have been fun. And gamification is right up there. It goes beyond the do you have a prize at the end of an experience, which of course we do in some cases, and that is an incentive. So we have digital badges, which are our micro credentials that people can earn if they've taken their knowledge and skills to a certain level. We have one in human centered design, which I mentioned earlier which has been very popular. People want to be able to celebrate, share, communicate their achievements but it's more about engaging people in a social way as they learn and kind of having them have a frame of reference of where they stand relative to various peer groups, however they define it. So as you would with maybe an exercise tracker or other devices you use in your life, having a kind of standardized point system or an ability to challenge your colleagues to different experiences has made it a lot more fun for people to engage versus having people feel like they're being measured in a traditional way.

Adam (07:26):

So we've also heard that we're investing in upskilling beyond PwC and sharing learnings in our communities and with our clients. Can you all tell me more about those investments?

Joe Atkinson (07:36):

If we believe what we say, that by equipping people with digital skills, new tools at their disposal, helping them see both the impact of digital disruption and the opportunity of digital disruption, if we believe that for our own people, then it goes to reason that you should believe that for the communities and the people that we engage with. That's purpose for us, that's a purpose-driven opportunity for us to have a positive impact in society. And there's a few examples of that that I would highlight. We have driven out a whole series of digital tools in connection with our Access Your Potential program, which really helps bridge the education and economic divide by providing individuals digital tools that can help them cross the bridge, if you will. Digital Fitness For the World, which is our digital fitness assessment. We use digital fitness as a way to help people understand the journey we were taking on at PwC. Just recently, we've opened that up so that anybody anywhere can download the digital fitness assessment app. They can use the tools and the content that's in the app to climb their own skill curve, if you will, and get a better understanding of how digital is shaping our lives at work, in society every day.

Adam (08:46):

So talk about how this kind of investment helped respond to COVID-19 and shifting to a virtual environment, as we sit here, miles apart from each other, recording this thing virtually.

Sarah McEneaney (08:55):

In my role, which is primarily focused on our human capital and how they are enabled by technology, I think we were all breathing a little sigh of relief that we have made such an investment before any of us knew of what was headed our way in terms of this pandemic. We have almost 300,000 people globally who've been taking part in a version of some upskilling across all of the PwC network. And we've invested $3 billion across the world to make sure that's been happening. Pairing that with our culture in general, which is one of flexibility and being able to operate in a distributed fashion as we serve clients all over the world, has served us really well in that our people didn't have a level of fear around working differently. And all of the tools that we've given them, as well as the permission to work digitally, has enabled them to open their laptop wherever they might be just as they did before the pandemic. But I think it helped us not lose as many beats if you will.

Joe Atkinson (09:51):

And one of the things that becomes a significant barrier to organizations that are trying to skill their people and take them to a different skill set, if you will, is not just resistance to change. It's actually fear of the change. People worry that they're going to fail at trying to apply new skills. Nobody likes to look stupid in front of their colleagues and their boss. And the one thing the COVID-19 crisis has offered all organizations, and certainly ours, is the necessity of change is driving speed of agility.

Adam (10:21):

I mean, it's an incredible testament that everyone was ready to go, such an enormous workforce. So then talk about the future state of this upskilling agenda.

Sarah McEneaney (10:27):

So we need to make sure that people keep going deeper in certain areas and at the same time, keep evolving what they're learning in so far as it marries up with our business strategy, which is, as you can imagine, constantly changing, especially in the world of COVID-19. And then as citizen-led being core to our strategy, we're really, really focused on having a community element to what we do, making sure citizens influence other citizens, and at all tenures. So whether that's an intern who just joined us or a partner who's been here for many, many years, the expectation is everyone is on this digital transformation and we don't expect it to stop.

Joe Atkinson (11:01):

The one thing that has become really evident, even pre-COVID-19, but certainly during COVID-19, is our clients have taken notice of what we're doing. They see it, they feel it, they feel it in the delivery. Things that used to be delivered one way are now delivered in much more tech-enabled ways. Reports that used to be stacked, even if it was a virtual stack of a PDF or what have you, are now much more interactive. We're providing visualizations to clients. We're automating tasks and making our clients' jobs easier when they're interacting with us. So we're now looking at how do we pull those assets together and really bring that product and technology integration along with those skills to the market with our clients. And that's a really exciting opportunity obviously for the firm. But I think in talking to our teams, very exciting for them because they're now seeing this opportunity to take the impact of what they're doing even more broadly to our clients.

Adam (11:51):

Which leads me almost seamlessly into my next question, which is what would you say to other organizations looking to take on a digital transformation of this size, especially in today's unique environment?

Sarah McEneaney (12:03):

I think it's fascinating we sit here in a world of incredible unemployment levels, but at the same time, people cannot still fill tech jobs. And you really just do have to do this for all of your people. There is no other talent out there who's going to solve this for you. And it's a great way to invest in your culture. The other thing I would say is we've been fortunate to have the sponsorship of our leadership team from day one. So this hasn't been an HR problem or a technology problem in a silo. This has been something sponsored by our business leaders, and that helps so much to bring that to life in terms of what we talked about with respect to tying it to the business strategy.

Joe Atkinson (12:38):

And to Sarah's point, one of the decisions we made as a leadership team from day one is this is not a bolt-on to the strategy. I always describe it when you see these strategy documents, and I've had the privilege of working with a lot of clients and organizations and I've seen a bunch, where you see a strategy and somewhere in the first few pages of the strategy is an asterisk. And underneath the asterisk, when you follow it down to the bottom of the page, it says something like, "And we're going to do everything in a tech-enabled way," or, "We're going to really do this in a digital way." That in my humble opinion is a recipe for failure in terms of large scale transformation that will stick in the organization. You have to start by understanding how it fits into the core of the strategy. And you have to execute the strategy in a tech-enabled way, not just as a support function, but as a core way of doing the work that you're trying to do as an organization.

The second piece, and Sarah's point is absolutely spot on, there are no tech jobs. There are no non-tech jobs. There are just jobs. And if you're going to equip people to succeed in the workplace, you have to equip them to be full, integrated, tech-enabled people that can have an impact on the organization. And that's everybody.

Adam (13:46):

So, listen, I really appreciate you all taking the time today. Before I let you go, was there anything else you wanted to talk about?

Sarah McEneaney (13:51):

The only thing I would say to folks listening who are yet to start this process in their own organization is it may seem scary or enormous to take on, but getting started is honestly half the work.

Joe Atkinson (14:00):

At the core of transformation is the transformation of people's talent. And if you can transform people's talent, they will take the technology agenda with them, because that's the best way to get there. And so Sarah's point about the biggest battle is to get started, it could not be more true. Get started. Start to signal that, I'll say, inspiration to your people that this is what it's about because it is what it's about. And I honestly believe your people will help you take that journey and you'll be inspired by them as much as they will inspire you.

Adam (14:32):

Sarah McEneany and Joe Atkinson, thank you so much for taking the time, stopping by, and virtually hanging out with us today on Tech While You Trek.

Joe Atkinson (14:39):

Thanks, Adam.

Sarah McEneaney (14:40):

It's been fun.

Adam (14:40):

Thank you all for listening to Tech While You Trek, and tune in for future episodes when we're going to be talking about all kinds of amazing tech topics with all sorts of incredible tech experts. So this has been Tech While You Trek. I have been your host, Adam, and we will talk to you again next time.

Speaker 4 (14:59):

This podcast is brought to you by PwC, all rights reserved. PwC refers to the US member firm or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates, and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity. Please see www.PwC.com/structure for further details. This podcast is for general information purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.