Interview with…
Shannon Schuyler, Corporate Responsibility, PricewaterhouseCoopers

How do you define your employer brand in one or two words?

Leadership. We strive to demonstrate our responsible leadership in the marketplace and convey a shared purpose to deliver lasting value to our clients, people, and community.

What differentiates you from your competitors?

Overall, it’s the experience that we are able to deliver to our clients and to our people. It is the level of expertise, quality of work, depth of relationships and the values and behaviors that guide our actions. 

What are you working on right now?

The Corporate Responsibility (CR) team is currently working with the Dean of Notre Dame to document some of the highlights and brand-defining aspects of being a signatory to the UN Global Compact.  We have also recently completed our first CR vendor survey, which was comprised of a series of questions to better understand the commitment and actions of our suppliers related to their social responsibility agendas.  As we review the data gathered, we will be reaching out to the vendors to share best practices, build meaningful partnerships through common goals, and offer our client service expertise to make recommendations on tracking results and enhancing processes, as appropriate.

What new initiatives have you developed?

A significant part of our CR strategy is to develop programs and initiatives that are sustainable and occur on an annual basis, so that we are enhancing efforts versus creating new ones.  However, this year, with our announcement around reducing are carbon footprint 20 percent by 2012, we have developed related programs to support that aggressive goal.  Most recently, we launched Green Week, which was a firm-wide initiative that included daily communications from our CEO outlining our commitment to better respect the environment. There was a different focus each day; for example, what individual actions our employees can tale, what an office can do as a team, how we can support our clients through sustainability service offering and how our efforts link to technology and cost management. Green Week culminated in local events where our employees used “human power generators” to see just how much energy is required to charge a cell phone and power a normal light bulb versus an incandescent bulb. 

How does the talent market perceive you as an employer?

We get very positive feedback from our current staff, students on campus, and potential experienced hires in the marketplace about our brand, reputation, and overall positive perception of our firm as a responsible leader.  Given the current economic conditions, having a reputation for doing the right thing and acting with integrity is critical to drive loyalty and pride in any organization. We believe that our actions at PwC are a critical aspect of fostering sustainable business in the marketplace and our commitment seems to be embraced and understood by the broad pool of talent in our communities.