The past two years has brought a seachange in technology enablement at PwC, led by Chief Information Officer Rebecca Thomas.

Thomas says when designing their new office space at Auckland’s Commercial Bay in 2020 they had no idea how much it would be tested with the pandemic and lockdowns that followed. “How we work today was unimaginable just two years ago.” 

The team upgraded all personal hardware - mobile phones and laptops.  All laptops have data cards, all staff have a choice of the latest iPhone or Samsung phone.  They strengthened the organisation’s resilience by moving all its compute power to dedicated data centres and kept up a rigorous programme of cyber security upgrades. 

The Commercial Bay offices have state of the art video conferencing and audio-visual facilities, desk occupancy software and several other innovations allowing hybrid working to prevail. 

The Auckland workplace design has been replicated in PwC’s offices throughout the country in the last two years, further leveraging the investment that was made.

Along with the move from Quay Street to Commercial Bay, the team has implemented SaaS including Salesforce, Google Suite, Workday, and most recently Oracle. 

Thomas is passionate about getting people internally and externally excited about the possibilities of technology. To this end she has developed Inspire workshops to give staff and clients around the country a taste of virtual reality and the metaverse.  

“The idea is to inspire our people to create solutions to important problems with innovative technologies,” says Thomas. “These workshops are also to be delivered through our PwC Foundation to low decile schools in Auckland and across the country.  We hope to inspire children towards careers in technology.  I am very passionate about these technology experiences for our underserved communities as I have firsthand experience of what a difference they can make.”

Commitment to diversity and sustainability

In 2020, Thomas took on the role of Corporate Sustainability and Net Zero Lead at PwC in addition to her CIO responsibilities.  She has been completing a post-graduate qualification in Sustainability and is interested in the role technology can play in environmental and social aspects of sustainability.  

Over the last 18 months Thomas says they have created PwC New Zealand’s Sustainability Strategy using a citizen-led approach. Their strategy aligns to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and measures, targets and actions extend across ESG – Environment, Social and Governance domains.  

With a commitment to achieving Net Zero by 2030, Thomas and her team have used technology and data analytics to create dynamic data dashboards that measure the organisation’s emissions weekly and make this available throughout the leadership team.  This data has allowed each department to create impactful carbon emission reduction plans that are then tracked through the dashboard, says Thomas.  

Through the Inspire workshops they hope to partner with other NZ businesses to deliver high impact inclusion programmes.  

“When I became CIO in 2017 our team had a staff satisfaction score of 52%, attrition was high, diversity was low across gender, ethnicity, and career stage.  In 2022 our staff satisfaction score is 91%, we have a team of more than 40% women, from 15 nationalities and we have people in all stages of their career.  We have committed to developing the industry in New Zealand and have more than a third of our team in the first five years of their career.  We have six young women in our team.  We have 25% Pacifica.  It is this diversity that has created the magic.”