PwC Australia’s updated COVID-19 response

PwC Australia, like all businesses, has been responding to the COVID-19 crisis and the impact it is having on our clients and our market and today we updated our people on the next stage of our response, reflecting the economic outlook for Australia.

During the past three months, PwC Australia’s revenue has been down on prior year with varying impacts on different parts of our business. Whilst difficult to project in such a rapidly changing environment, we expect significant volatility to continue for at least the next twelve months.

We have today updated our people on the following decisions:

• Reduced Working Week Program (RWWP) - this will not be extended beyond 30 June 2020 with all employees being returned to their usual working arrangements from 1 July.
• Jobs - During the next 6 weeks, we will restructure parts of our Consulting and Financial Advisory businesses, as well as some of our support functions, which will result in some partner retirements and staff redundancies. We expect this will impact around 400 roles, approximately 5% of our workforce. Any restructuring will be completed by 31 July 2020. There will be no redundancies in Assurance.
• Promotions - We will undertake promotions and related pay rises during FY21.

PwC CEO Tom Seymour said, “We want to ensure our business is strong, is set to grow successfully and sustainably and is focused on our clients and their needs. Equally these are difficult decisions and we are saddened that making structural changes in some of our businesses will cause some difficult impacts.”

“We do not underestimate the impact this has on our people and we will work through this process as thoroughly and quickly as possible to bring our people certainty.”