Driven by renewed demand for its consulting services, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is starting a significant hiring initiative and restructuring its U.S. advisory operations.
In an effort to provide more specialized, industry-specific assistance, PwC will increase the number of its current four advisory divisions to eight on July 1. The reorganization also entails integrating, rather than keeping apart, its managed services function, which entails the firm taking over a portion of a client’s operations, such as IT or HR, directly into each advisory group.
PwC restructures, plans on hiring thousands of more new hires
Deals; cyber, risk, and regulation; technology and business modernization; and managed services are the four primary divisions into which PwC currently divides its U.S. advisory business. Cyber, risk, and regulation will be divided into two sectors under the new framework. One will focus on overall risk and the other on cyber privacy and tech risk.
Five new areas of technology and business modernization will emerge: supply chain consulting, finance and HR transformation, strategy for particular industries, front-office consulting (including marketing and customer service), and cloud engineering with data analytics. There will be no changes to the deals group.
Approximately 15,000 of the 36,000 advisory professionals impacted by this structural change are based in India. As a sign of its confidence in a rebounding consulting market, PwC said it is actively hiring thousands of people for advisory roles and confirmed there are no layoffs related to this change. Tyson Cornell, advisory leader at PwC beleives the decision comes “from a position of strength.” “With the market rapidly changing, we are focused on how we evolve, concentrate our efforts, and utilize AI and technology to empower both our business and our clients” Cornell said.
Optimism after job cuts
After a period of cuts, PwC is optimistic. Last fall, the company eliminated approximately 1,800 jobs—2.5% of its U.S. workforce—primarily in technology and advisory, marking its first official U.S. layoffs since 2009. In May, PwC cut another 1,500 positions, mostly in the audit and tax departments. PwC also frequently uses performance-based evaluations to guide its hiring decisions.
Through its partnerships with Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and other tech companies, PwC intends to expand its consulting capabilities in domains such as e-commerce as part of its restructuring. In addition to the company’s current ten sector leaders who concentrate on short-term business requirements, it will designate industry leaders to supervise market trends across sectors, a more comprehensive strategic role.
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