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PwC announced today that it will allow all U.S. employees who can telecommute to work virtually anywhere in the Americas in the future.
The new policy will affect nearly 40,000 employees working in customer services, including consultants, auditors and tax specialists. The company claims it is the first professional services company to offer workers a permanent option to work from anywhere.
“If you’re a good customer service employee and want to work virtually, we’ll get there – period,” Yolanda Seals-Coffield, PwC deputy personnel manager, told CNBC Make It.
“The scale of the number of people affected by this is enormous,” she adds. “We don’t know yet how many people will embrace this, but it’s what makes it a great leap of faith from a leadership standpoint to give people that flexibility.”
PwC, a global network of independent companies, has a total of 55,000 employees in the United States, including people working in office services or IT support whose jobs require them to work in person.
After the announcement, workers will have two weeks to let their leaders know if they wish to opt for the work model from anywhere, although employees can review and modify to meet their needs as the time goes. time. The company will spend the remainder of the year transitioning and evaluating the working model by June 2022, with evaluations “at least once a year” to address areas for improvement.
The company will maintain its current approach to compensation, which is to compensate people based on where they live. For example, all PwC employees who live in the New York metro area will be paid based on market rates, whether they are entirely remote, in person, or working on a hybrid arrangement.
This is in line with the pay structures of many companies, including those of tech influencers like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google, who say workers who move to a cheaper market could see their pay cut. A handful of small businesses, including Reddit and Zillow, which also have work from anywhere policies for most employees, will pay all workers based on their work, regardless of where they live or where they work. work mode.
Prior to the announcement of the job from anywhere, PwC planned to bring most U.S. employees back to their offices on a hybrid schedule, expecting them to be on-site one to three days a week at from November 1st.
The new fully remote offering is the latest in the company’s commitment to providing more flexibility to employees over the past decade, says Seals-Coffield. Before the pandemic, 7,000 non-customer employees in the United States were already working on a fully remote model.
Executives hope that increased flexibility will help employee retention at a time when “the talent market is hotter than it has been in recent memory,” says Seals-Coffield. A recent PwC report found that 65% of employees in the global labor market were looking for new jobs in August, nearly double the share of workers planning to quit in May.
Many labor market experts attributed the record wave of spring and summer quits to workers feeling confident they could find new jobs with better wages, hours and working conditions, such as the ability to work remotely. . The share of online job searches for remote positions jumped 460% in the two years between June 2019 and June 2021, according to Glassdoor.
PwC executives also believe that a work-from-anywhere policy will expand the pool of talent from which they can recruit, which could contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The company will also need to consider whether workers more likely to telecommute full-time – including women, caregivers and workers of color – will have equal access to fair pay, support, training, and opportunities for advancement. than those who report to the offices.
Seals-Coffield said the company has spent the past 18 months developing leadership training for managing virtual teams, with an emphasis on “fairness between teams so that there is no impact “out of sight, out of mind” for people. “
PwC has made several efforts to improve flexible work options and employee benefits during the pandemic, which may have a disproportionately positive impact on workers and caregivers. In response to the challenges of caregiving during Covid, PwC introduced a 20% leave allowance for up to six months and doubled its emergency care allowance to $ 2,000 to cover relief costs for the child, spouse or elder care.
“What I’m most proud of is that we haven’t lost more women to turnover during the pandemic,” Seals-Coffield said, as the company has proactively created flexibility in the how the work can be done, including on reduced or condensed hours. .
The company has supported day-to-day flexibility by setting a company-wide goal of reducing meetings by 25% and giving employees on Friday afternoons protected time they can use for non-stop work. concentration or time off.
In the spring of 2021, PwC also made headlines for offering a vacation bonus of $ 250 to employees who take 40 consecutive hours of vacation at a time, up to once per quarter, for a total annual incentive of 1 $ 000.
To verify:
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