PwC CEO Tom Seymour says company is a ‘massive profit-based training institution’

Mr. Seymour, KPMG President Alison Kitchen, and Accenture have been invited to the summit; Representatives from EY and Deloitte will not attend.

Recruitment of 1,500 graduates

PwC has hired around 1,500 graduates this year and lost about the same number due to staff turnover, as employers across the economy struggle to hire and retain skilled, experienced workers.

The high turnover comes despite PwC leading the way on pay transparency, increasing staff pay by an average of 9 per cent and increasing bonuses across the company.

“That turnover number, as much as we want it to be lower because it costs us a lot of money, it’s actually a huge contribution to skills in this country,” Seymour said.

The firm is in talks with clients to build skilled workforces by providing training in a variety of in-demand areas, such as cloud computing and cybersecurity.

“One of the things that we’re talking to some customers about right now is if we would work and partner with some organizations to build a workforce, train them on our system for, say, two, three years, and then transfer the workforce. to them,” she said.

Seymour said Australian companies needed to bring back work they had sent abroad and the government would need to increase immigration levels.

The Morrison government capped Australia’s total migration inflow to 160,000 a year before COVID-19 hit, and migration fell into net negative territory during the pandemic.

Additionally, around 600,000 temporary visa holders have left over the past few years, leaving huge gaps in the healthcare, construction and hospitality industries.

Business groups are pushing for the migration cap to be raised to at least 200,000 over the next two years, but other groups say this alone will not solve the shortage of skilled workers.

“There’s also an article on how we train and retrain Australians… if you look at what we’ve done in our Adelaide skills center, we now have around 500 people in Adelaide who are cloud engineers and cyber professionals, Seymour said.

He said that while the cost to clients of using the Adelaide hub was “not that competitive” compared to operating from Manila in the Philippines or Bangalore in India, it offered the benefit of keeping data in Australia and higher quality work.

“I think the Adelaide center around cyber and cloud is now better value for money than centers abroad. That’s a great opportunity for skills in Australia, tapping into a new market and bringing those jobs back to land.”