PwC Sustainability Report

Guided by our purpose to build trust in society and solve important problems, we are committed to creating a sustainable future for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Tēnā koutou,

I am pleased to share with you our first Sustainability Report which outlines the progress we have made against our commitments for the year ending 30 June 2024.

As I look back at the past year, I am incredibly proud of our people and the meaningful contributions we have made to our clients and communities. At a time when Aotearoa New Zealand, and indeed the rest of the world, was continuing to navigate new levels of change and uncertainty, our community of solvers worked together to deliver amazing mahi that matters.

In this inaugural report we share this mahi with you and the progress we’re making across the key areas of our Sustainability Strategy: environmental stewardship; social equity; trust and transparency; and responsible business. It's an example of the work we’re doing to build trust through greater transparency, and demonstrates our commitment to being open and honest around how we operate and do business.

Some of the highlights include:

Te ara ā one: Environmental Stewardship: Successfully reduced our Scope 3 business travel emissions, and all our offices are now powered by purchased 100% renewable energy.
Te ara ā mahuta: Social Equity: Strengthened partnerships with NGOs to support the wider community, enhanced our initiatives in our graduate and intern programmes focused on creating a more diverse talent pipeline, and continued delivering positive impact in our local communities.
Te ara ā rongo: Trust and Transparency: Reinforced our high standards with all our people completing the annual compliance training and zero incidents of corruption. Additionally, we have launched our fifth Audit Transparency Report, emphasising our ongoing commitment to audit quality.
Te ara ā nuku: Responsible Business: Made progress in nurturing an inclusive culture through our People Networks and incorporating a kaupapa Māori approach via our Manaakitanga Programme. We have also invested in our people’s learning, preparing them for a digital and AI future with tools such as ChatPwC.

While we have made significant progress in some areas, we know our journey is far from over. We are also conscious that there are areas where progress has been slower than anticipated. There is still work to do and we remain committed to working alongside our clients and stakeholders to drive change and deliver a sustainable future for Aotearoa New Zealand.

I hope you enjoy reading our report and the case studies which detail the impact we are having within our business, our communities and across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Thank you for joining us on this journey.

Tēnā tātou i roto i tēnei haerenga nui.

Andrew Holmes
CEO and Senior Partner
PwC New Zealand

Our Sustainability Report

Renarena te ara ki Te Ao Tūroa - Strengthen our path to an enduring world.

In a time of increasingly complex environmental, social, and economic challenges, PwC New Zealand’s commitment to being kaitiaki (stewards) to pursue Te Ao Tūroa – an enduring world, has never been more vital.

Our Sustainability Strategy is founded on a commitment to exemplify sustainable practices that drive innovation and contribute to a prosperous society. Our strategy was developed through a series of internal workshops and a desktop materiality assessment, identifying areas where we could have the greatest impact.

During the year ended 30 June 2024 (FY24), we engaged with PwC New Zealand’s internal stakeholders to ensure our initiatives, and areas of focus, continue to reflect the values and concerns of our people.

To achieve this, we brought together key stakeholder groups across PwC New Zealand to reassess our material issues in light of the evolving business landscape and issues facing Aotearoa New Zealand. These groups included partners and representatives from our People Networks, Manukura Māori team, Pacific Village, People Council, Markets, Risk, and our People and Culture teams.

Through these discussions and aligning with industry best practices, including those of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, we conducted a materiality mapping exercise. This exercise helped us identify the topics that are most material to both PwC New Zealand and our stakeholders.

Our progress - Te ara ā one – environmental stewardship

Carbon credits purchased

Our PwC Global Corporate Sustainability team facilitates a global process for all PwC firms to purchase carbon credits. The network portfolio offers a range of credits in terms of project type and location that must meet PwC’s quality criteria. Globally, PwC joined the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance coalition, with PwC New Zealand committing to purchase carbon credits through the coalition from FY24.

For FY24, PwC New Zealand purchased jurisdictional REDD+ credits from Ghana, with credits pending issuance later this year to offset our scope 1, 2 and 3 (business travel) emissions that we were not able to reduce. More information around the quality criteria and eligibility can be found here.

Over FY24, a lot of our work has focused on supporting our clients with climate-related disclosures. As the first country in the world to have a climate-related disclosure regime, there have been significant opportunities for us in partnering with Aotearoa New Zealand’s corporate sector. This involves raising awareness and enhancing skills to equip clients with the knowledge they need to address climate risks and opportunities relevant to their business.

Our case study below, on the work we have done with The Aotearoa Circle, is an example of this. A key part of this has also been about helping to shift the narrative that many companies see climate disclosures merely as an obligation, demonstrating instead that climate and sustainability can present huge opportunities for business reinvention and growth – including using the insights gained from meeting compliance obligations to inform strategic decision making for the future. You can check out our latest thinking in this space here.

Case Study

The Aotearoa Circle

How we’re collaborating and partnering locally to accelerate the climate change agenda.

PwC New Zealand’s commitment to social equity is centred on helping to rebalance social outcomes for Aotearoa New Zealand, both within our organisation and through the mahi of our Manukura Māori, Equity and Hauora practices, and through our PwC Foundation’s literacy programmes, which are focused on positively impacting children's wellbeing through quality education. The PwC Foundation’s latest impact report highlights our mahi in this pathway.

Over FY24, our focus has been on continuing to strengthen our partnerships across Aotearoa New Zealand’s broad and diverse NGO sector. While we have always had good relationships with the sector, these partnerships were strengthened during the Covid-19 response period where community and not-for-profit providers – those who knew their communities best – stepped up and into supporting the needs of our whānau pounamu (our most precious people).

The Cyclone Gabrielle response case study below, outlines our continued focus in this area and we look forward to seeing our relationships with NGOs and the wider community continue to strengthen over the coming years.

In 2021, as part of PwC's global strategy, The New Equation, PwC New Zealand made a local commitment to increasing ethnic representation at all levels within the organisation, with a particular focus on Māori and Pacific Peoples. Over the last year we have worked to create more equitable career pathways into PwC New Zealand. We’ve continued to refine our approach to recruitment, focusing on improving ethnic representation.

This includes embedding cultural interventions in our recruitment process for both graduates and interns, including ensuring candidates who identify as Māori or Pasifika have a representative from the respective employee network group to provide support at various stages of the recruitment process.

Delivering on our commitments isn’t only an inward-looking area of focus however. FY24 also saw our Pacific Village working with students from schools with large Pasifika populations to create relationships – both with each other and with our people.

This involves teaching them about the work PwC New Zealand does and engaging them on the possibility of future opportunities and career possibilities both at PwC New Zealand and more broadly in the corporate world.

Our progress - Te ara ā mahuta – social equity

Ethnicity

Gender

Our pay gaps

Our gender pay gap primarily results from a gender imbalance in our most senior roles. Having more males in senior roles results in the overall higher mean hourly pay. Similarly, our partner gender pay gap reflects a higher number of men who have been in the partnership for longer and hold more senior roles and responsibilities. However, this is changing as the percentage of female partners increases. Female representation in Senior Leadership, including Partners, Executive Directors, and Directors, has grown from 35.5% in 2020 to 41% in 2024⁶.

This is a continued area of focus for us and we are working to close our pay gaps by implementing initiatives to achieve our gender targets and increase ethnic representation at all levels, particularly for Māori and Pacific peoples. You can read more about our gender and ethnicity pay gaps here.

Case Study

When Cyclone Gabrielle devastated communities across the country in February 2023, nobody in Hawke’s Bay escaped impact. The immediate aftermath of the cyclone demonstrated just how quickly day-to-day living can be severely impacted, with communities facing a lack of power, telecommunications, roading, and even access to basic essentials.

As many started to return to a sense of normality over the following weeks, the gap between those who were most severely impacted and everyone else in the region widened – not just from a social equity perspective, but also in terms of the cyclone’s environmental, economic, cultural and social impacts. Hawke’s Bay’s leaders, local government, iwi and hapū quickly realised a normal disaster recovery approach was insufficient, and that you couldn’t address one impact without addressing all of them.

At the request of the region’s Mayors, Regional Council Chair and mana whenua leaders, PwC New Zealand was directly involved in the establishment of the standalone Hawke’s Bay Regional Recovery Agency (RRA) – an agency separate to emergency management response, and one tasked with addressing the interconnected and wide-reaching impacts of the cyclone in a strategic, locally led, regionally coordinated and nationally supported way.

The scope of the RRA was – and continues to be – extensive, helping frontline agencies with everything from support for displaced whānau and the removal of silt and debris through to infrastructure and economic recovery and enabling the region’s industry to get back on its feet. PwC New Zealand’s role extended through into supporting the development of the first stage of the region’s recovery planning, including the creation of the first Regional Recovery Plan which was released publicly in September 2023.

Our role in the Cyclone Gabrielle response extended beyond recovery planning and leadership, however. Before the recovery engagement, our initial response was like that of any other concerned New Zealander, with our people freely donating their time, energy and efforts, and whatever resources they had, to make a positive impact in their local community and to support the Hawke’s Bay region’s recovery.

Hawke’s Bay’s Cyclone Gabrielle response

Helping to rebalance social outcomes for Aotearoa New Zealand, and making a positive impact in our local communities.

Our commitment to trust and transparency spans a range of key focus areas, including demonstrating strong, authentic leadership and governance within PwC New Zealand, continuing to build confidence through quality and transparency, and nurturing a strong purpose-driven culture built on quality, ethics, risk management and independence.

During the year, we continued to enhance our approach to governance, informing ourselves with what’s happening offshore and taking guidance from regulators, international ethics and governance standards and practices. We’ve further considered our approach to transparency and the range of reporting we’ve made publicly available, including our Audit Transparency Report, which we’ve been publishing since 2020 (see our case study below), our PwC Foundation Impact Report and our gender and ethnicity pay gaps.

Now through our inaugural Sustainability Report, we’re providing greater transparency around the four key pathways, or ngā ara, of our Sustainability Strategy, including our commitments under those pathways and our progress against them.

We are also currently underway on a phased project to enhance the overall governance of PwC New Zealand. Under the first phase of this project which is now complete, we reevaluated the levels of separation between management (partners on the Leadership Team) and governance (partners on PwC’s Board), and reconsidered stand down periods in order to create effective transitions. We’ll be progressing with subsequent phases of this project in FY25.

We believe transparency can serve as a catalyst for improvement. By publicly reporting on our successes and challenges, we continue to create opportunities for feedback and collaboration, including ongoing engagement with our stakeholders and discussions that can lead to innovative solutions and shared ownership of outcomes.

Our progress: Te ara ā rongo – trust and transparency

Case Study

PwC’s Audit Transparency Report

Continuing to build confidence through quality and transparency. We recognise that our reputation relies on securing the trust and confidence of our clients, and being transparent about how we work.

Being a responsible business is underpinned by our commitment to incorporating a kaupapa Māori approach to the way we work, nurturing an inclusive culture that fosters a sense of belonging, learning, and connection, making a positive impact in our local communities and prioritising the wellbeing of our PwC whānau through our new model, Te Hā, outlined in more detail below.

As part of incorporating a kaupapa Māori approach to our work, we have continued to embed our Manaakitanga Programme across our firm, which was established to help PwC New Zealand achieve greater alignment to the spirit of Te Tiriti. While PwC New Zealand is a private organisation, in living our purpose, we recognise we have a responsibility to lead and role model the way forward. This is particularly important given our role in advising iwi partners and others on Te Tiriti matters and fostering inclusion for Māori at PwC New Zealand and more broadly in society.

In FY24, our internal people networks have continued to grow from strength to strength, including the launch of three new networks which have helped to build a more inclusive culture: the Neurodiversity Network, the Christian Network and the Endo and Friends Network, for people living with a range of long-term medical conditions. We’ve also focused on cross-network events and working collaboration, encouraging our people to demonstrate that one single part of our diverse dimensions isn’t the only thing that makes us who we are.

Recognising that the future is digital, we have committed to being a responsible business by investing in our people’s learning, capabilities and tools over the past year. This includes our own GenAI tool, ChatPwC, which helps everyone adapt to a digital and AI future. It also enables us to progress as an organisation, providing our people with a broad distribution of skills and digital tools they need to do their best work.

NZD$9.6m invested in upskilling and digital investment over the past three years. This has exceeded our commitment of NZD$8m invested in three years as part of The New Equation launched in 2021.

Considering the economic conditions, 2024 hasn’t been easy for our people, and people across Aotearoa New Zealand. In light of this, we continue to focus on improving our wellbeing scores through programmes such as Te Hā (check out our case study below) and our regular quarterly wellbeing surveys (Taki). We also support our people to make a positive impact in our local communities through volunteering, charitable giving and our PwC Foundation On Board program.

Our progress - Te ara ā nuku – responsible business

Case Study

Te Hā is our evidence-based wellbeing model that brings workplace wellbeing to life in a science-backed and evidenced way. The framework we have developed is underpinned by the mental health continuum, and provides resources and support aligned to wherever any of our PwC whānau may find themselves on any given day.

While we’ve always had a range of tools and resources available to our people, prior to the development of Te Hā, they were ‘just’ a list of resources with varying levels of engagement and uptake. In launching our Te Hā wellbeing model firm-wide, we’ve been able to increase dialogue and understanding around the mental health continuum, helping to normalise conversations about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.

Unique to the success of the strategy has been our decision to adopt a ‘bottom up’ approach, with Te Hā Champions embedded across the organisation at every level. As Champions, these individuals role model the various ways to raise awareness of the resources available, signposting people to different pieces of information and letting them know about the resources available to them at any given time. Our Champions also have an important role to play at a senior level, with some of our partners normalising the mental health and wellbeing conversation through storytelling, including our PwC Leadership Live forum.

During FY24, we began introducing our quarterly wellbeing survey, Taki, a core component of our Te Hā wellbeing strategy, across all our business units. The survey is designed in a way that incorporates scientific measures into specific questions which, in turn, gives us evidence-based data and results to work with. This not only gives us an accurate way to identify and understand wellbeing trends or areas of concern, but it also enables us to develop or distribute targeted resources or information to specific teams or parts of the organisation, or to identify where further intervention may be needed.

Te Hā

Prioritising the wellbeing of our whānau. Our commitment to being a responsible business is deeply rooted in our commitment to prioritising the wellbeing of our PwC whānau. For us, being able to measure, understand and enhance the overall wellness of our people is critical.

Explore our FY24 WEF Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics Report

Download Here (PDF of 1.89mb)

PwC New Zealand receives power from the New Zealand electricity grid and pays for the same amount of renewable electricity being fed into the grid as it uses in its operations.
Direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by PwC in New Zealand. Scope 1 emissions include stationary combustion of fuel in all PwC New Zealand office locations, including diesel for backup generators and natural gas in commercial kitchens in Auckland and Wellington (kilowatt hours of energy consumed per office location).
Indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy (in the form of electricity, heat or steam) that PwC uses in New Zealand. Scope 2 emissions (market-based) include purchased electricity (kilowatt hours of electricity consumed per office location). Our Scope 2 emissions, including renewables consumption, are measured in accordance with the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance and RE100 technical criteria.
Other indirect emissions that occur because of the activities of PwC in New Zealand but generated from sources it does not own or control. Scope 3 emissions include business travel: Air travel (passenger kilometres travelled by cabin class and haul), land travel (kilometres travelled in taxi, train and car by fuel type) and overnight accommodation (number of nights in domestic and international accommodation).
PwC Partner, employees, graduates and interns have the option to select multiple ethnicities, and the published metrics reflect every ethnicity that individuals have identified, so the percentages of all ethnic groups can add up to more than 100%. This approach is consistent with the guidelines outlined by Stats NZ and Champions for Change, reporting at Level 1 for ethnicity as of 30 June 2024.
As part of the Champions for Change 2024 Report, our Power Gap closed after achieving more than 40% representation of women across Board, Executive Leadership and Senior Management roles. Data was reported as of 30 March 2024.
Percentage of submitted responses to our FY24 Global People Survey (GPS) who responded favourably overall (as opposed to neutral or unfavourable) towards people engagement-related questions.
Percentage of submitted responses to our FY24 Global People Survey (GPS) who responded favourably overall (as opposed to neutral or unfavourable) towards people well-being-related questions.