As rates of employee stress continue to skyrocket, wellbeing remains top of mind for most HR professionals. At professional services firm PwC, the people team is taking an innovative approach to supporting its workforce: marrying employee wellbeing and recognition—in a way that is ultimately enhancing the employee experience and becoming a critical employee retention and attraction tool.
“It’s a win-win-win,” says Kim Jones, PwC talent strategy and people experience leader, about the organization’s My Milestone Rewards program, which is closing in on its first anniversary.
The initiative recognizes employees who reach milestone tenures with a menu of rewards offerings. In its first year, the program recognized about 7,000 employees—supported by an organizational investment thus far of about $22 million.
Employee wellbeing and recognition: a natural connection
PwC employees are eligible for recognition through My Milestone Rewards at their three-, six-, 10- and 15-year anniversaries with the firm—and then every five years after. PwC’s previous recognition effort focused primarily on promotions.
“We created this program to be able to reward more of our employees, not just those who are promoted, and we wanted to give them options to choose what’s most important to them—based upon where they are in their lives,” Jones says. “People want to be recognized for the work hard they put in for PwC and for our clients—and they don’t want a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Rewards vary by tenure and level, and are offered across four categories:
- employee wellbeing experiences
- purpose-driven experiences
- time away from work
- cash options
A director on Jones’ team just returned from a family trip to Italy to celebrate her son’s high school graduation, for which she used bonus time from the My Milestone Rewards program. A senior associate at the firm marked her third year with the company cashing in on a purpose-driven trip to Tanzania, while a director selected a three-day wellbeing experience at a resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for her 30th anniversary with the company.
While employees have picked rewards across all categories, the additional time off option has a “slight edge,” signifying the potential for recognition programs to feed into employee wellbeing efforts.
“It’s nice to open the aperture of your mind to the art of the possible,” Jones says about the “interconnection” of recognition and employee wellbeing. “You can’t think about things in silos: ‘There’s the rewards bucket here, and the wellbeing bucket here.’ Sometimes, you can cross the boundaries and find ways to check the box on a number of things that people say they need.”
The outsized impact of employee listening
Among the most critical aspects of getting My Milestone Rewards off the ground, Jones says, was listening to employee needs. Leadership tapped into its already robust employee listening strategy to fuel this effort.
PwC deploys an annual global people survey, typically conducted in the spring, which includes open-ended questions about how the firm can improve employee experience. In the fall, employees can participate in a “scaled-back” form of that survey. Leadership also leverages employee-led advisory groups called Staff Councils across the firm—some of which are organized around lines of service, some on geography—as well as its more than a dozen inclusion networks. PwC also utilizes a My Feedback tool, which enables employees to send feedback to peers and supervisors.
The People Experience Laboratory is another key contributor to listening efforts. The group is comprised of nearly 200 individuals who “represent all corners of the firm—across all lines of service, various practice areas, internal and external teams,” Jones says. The people team meets periodically with the PX Lab participants to get feedback on employee needs; they recently explored the unique circumstances facing working parents in the summer months, for instance.
Broadening the view of employee wellbeing and recognition
Feedback from employees about the My Milestone Rewards program has been overwhelmingly positive, Jones says. While the initiative is a boon to employee experience—and, ideally, a contributor to stronger employee retention—it’s also becoming a topic of conversation with candidates.
“It’s brand-defining,” Jones says. “I’m glad we’re on the leading edge of offering personalized options like this.”
My Milestone Rewards is part of an ongoing effort to broaden the view of employee wellbeing, Jones says.
For instance, the company has initiated two firmwide week-long shutdowns—the week of July 4 and between Christmas and New Year’s—and just relaunched the annual “Rock the Block.” The “summer Friday” program encourages employees to refrain from internal meetings Friday afternoons from June through August and use the time for what works best for them: administrative tasks, or to participate in learning or volunteering, for example.
The revamping of the recognition program is another “big first step” toward strengthening EX and employee wellbeing, Jones says.
“It has such great value, and we’re going to keep enhancing it every year as we get feedback,” she says. “And we’ll use this as inspiration to come up with new ideas to offer, both big and small, that continue to support our employees’ wellbeing.”
