When accounting goes unaccounted for
Sounds like CFO Geoff Chatas and state auditor Dave Yost wanted to figure a way around a 15-year limit but it was to no avail, “Ohio State CFO Geoff Chatas said Yost discussed with him the possibility of letting Ohio State be the first to stick with the same audit firm, but the school opted to put the contract out for bid.”
A likely story. If you ask me, this has everything to do with the fact that Deloitte’s main color is blue while PwC has opted for slightly more appropriate hues.
As we’ve discussed, Big 4 firms are doing their part to marginally improve the frightening national unemployment number by embarking on epic hiring bonanzas in the coming years. FINS reporter Kyle Stock ran down Paula Loop, PwC’s Global and U.S. Talent Leader to find out the details on the firm’s plans and here are a few highlights:
Starting off – if unemployment doesn’t improve by 2012, Obama won’t be able to blame PwC:
KS: It seems like the firm is always hiring, how does that 45,000 compare with 2008 and 2009?
PL: It’s certainly higher than it has been in recent years. For the US, we’re hoping to hire around 10,000 this year. Those numbers are about 60% higher than they were for 2009 or 2010. About 6,000 of those are campus hires and 4,000 are on the experienced side.
Rumors of our acclimating to social media at a snail’s pace have been greatly accurate but only because we were waiting for The One:
KS: When PwC announced the LinkedIn [partnership], some articles said PwC has been slow to embrace social networking — is that accurate?
PL: Well, we were waiting for the right place at the right time. LinkedIn was a really good match for us.
Poaching, on the other hand, we’re all over that:
KS: I always try to ask about poaching. Is PwC hiring from competitors much these days?
PL: Because I think we are hiring more people, there’s more activity there. That’s always been a place we like to stay competitive.
Once you land those people, how do you keep them? Well, it helps if you come to grips with the fact that the last week of the year is pointless and you tell everyone to stay home. Secondly, you replace the old swag:
KS: Is PwC doing anything new to increase retention?
PL: We’ve had some great stuff on the retention front. We had an annual shutdown between Christmas and New Year’s where we closed our firm. That’s a terrific thing for us. I can tell you, you really get a chance to disconnect. Not only are you on vacation, but no one else is working. It gets people rejuvenated.
And we’re always doing stuff. Our new brand was a really great and exciting thing. We all have new bags for our computers that have our new colors for the new brand.
Right, the new brand! That was exciting. Sure, there might have been some kvetching at first but now that everyone has calmed down it’s really what makes us different from other firms:
KS: So how does the culture differ from a company like Deloitte?
PL: It’s hard for me to say on that, because I haven’t been a part of their culture, but I would say our new brand launch this fall really defines our culture. The colors are really vibrant and warm. We took that really long name and shortened it up. Our new logo can be really animated. I think that’s really what we’re trying to bring out in our culture.
PwC’s Paula Loop on Hiring 45,000 and the Firm’s Big Change [FINS]
Next up on our F100BCTWF watch is the former home of the next great superhero, PwC who slid a couple a spots from last year’s #71 but this does extend the streak to seven years on the list. We’ll dispense with any more pleasantries and get right to the particulars.
PwC – Previous rank: #71. Why so great? Fortune cites “flexibility” (you read that Times article too?), “training” and “ethics” (although a more robust appropriate email refresher is probably needed).
Stats of note:
• New Jobs (1 year): -1,100
• % Job Growth (1 year): -4%
• % Voluntary Turnover: 11%
• No. of Job Openings at 1/13/2010: 9,144
• Most common salaried job: Manager/Supervisor – $86,826
• % Minorities: 27%
• % Women: 48%
Comparing with last year’s stats, things have dropped off a bit as new jobs, % job growth and average salary have all gone down while turnover has gone up. Percentage of minorities is unchanged while percentage of women is down a tick. The brightest spot (or biggest pain in some of your asses) is the number of job openings, which has nearly doubled from last year and is nearly triple of rival Deloitte’s current number of openings.
Earlier:
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Plante & Moran #26 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Deloitte #63 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: PricewaterhouseCoopers #71
We kid, we kid. Obviously this was up prior to this year’s “Rank the Hotties 2010” email got loose as the old logo still lives on in Minneapolis.
Which begs the question, did the Twin Cities not get the memo on the launch? We don’t know if there is an internal disciplinary action for this sort of non-compliance but it does demonstrate a shocking lack of attention to detail.
Just in case you forgot gang, today is the official launch date for PwC’s new brand and logo. Despite the fact that everyone knew about this weeks ago, early October seems like the perfect time to remind people of how lovely it is to play Pong amongst the fall foliage, .
The other significant event of this day also reminds us of trees but not in a good way. You’ll remember that Bob Moritz stated in his FAQ (that don’t address color or shapes) that today would mark the day that new stationary would be put into use. This means that metric asstons of old PwC stationary, business cards, pens, tchotchkes, undies and so forth would be rendered completely useless.
This is especially awkward since P. Dubs just got done slapping themselves on the back for getting greener faster than a Whole Foods employee at sustainable living festival.
It’s entirely possible that the firm has undertaken various ideas to stem the amount of waste such as:
1) Encouraging everyone to use letterhead en masse running up to the logo launch
2) Having yard sales at offices nationwide to cut losses
3) They’re talking to the Met about a major donation to a future “Historical Corporate Crap” exhibition.
OR maybe they’re just having a giant weenie roast followed by s’mores for dessert (which we admit, would be pretty fun). If you’re engaging in a ritual of some sort and feel compelled to document the event, do get it touch with us and enjoy your fresh business cards.
Earlier:
Just in Case You Didn’t Think the PwC Rebranding Was Actually Happening