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PwC has told its 26,000 UK employees that it will start monitoring their office attendance in the same way it does their chargeable hours, as the Big Four accounting firm adopts a stricter hybrid working policy.
In a memo sent to staff on Thursday, seen by the Financial Times, managing partner Laura Hinton said that the firm would begin sending staff their working location data every month, adding that employees must now spend “a minimum of three days a week” in the office or at client sites.
The location data will also be sent to employees’ career coaches at PwC, said one person familiar with the details. The new policy will take effect from January.
“We will start sharing your individual working location data with you on a monthly basis from January as we do with other data such as chargeable hours,” Hinton wrote in the memo. “This will help to ensure that the new policy is being fairly and consistently applied across our business.”
She added: “We all benefit from the positive impact of a hybrid approach, but the previous guidance of at least two to three days a week was open to interpretation.”
The decision is one of the first firm-wide policy changes since Marco Amitrano took over as senior partner in July.
A number of big UK employers are pushing to increase office attendance after shifting to hybrid working during the pandemic. Rival EY started monitoring its UK employees’ office attendance this year, using swipe card data.
The Big Four accounting and consultancy firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — are also contending with a market slowdown amid a tougher economic environment, with PwC warning staff in July to expect lower bonuses and pay rises. The firm has also scaled back a pandemic-era perk of allowing staff to take a half-day on Fridays during the summer.
Amitrano’s predecessor, Kevin Ellis, was vocal about the importance of staff working from the office or client sites. The firm said the new policy was designed to “formalise our approach to working together in person”.
In the memo, Hinton wrote: “Our business thrives on strong relationships — and those are almost always more easily built and sustained face-to-face.
“By being physically together, we can offer our clients a differentiated experience and create the positive learning and coaching environment that is key to our success,” she added.