PwC seeks to drive an innovation culture with their ProEdge upskilling offering

The Situation: In the midst of the “Great Resignation” there is no topic more important than talent – how to attract it, cultivate it, and keep it. However, the narrative has tended to emphasize people and their relative satisfaction with current jobs versus available ones. The root problem is not actually people. The problem is the work itself. In many cases across industries, work is far too manual and lacking in innovation. If enterprises want to address their attractiveness as employers, they need to digitize rote work, enable employees to deliver more effectively, and take their employees on the journey to be part of the strategy.

The Situation is exactly where PwC found itself several years ago. As a leading Big 4 tax, audit, and consulting firm, basically a people-based business heavy on expensive skilled resources, it realized the need to amp value, quality, and tech-enablement while bringing down time-to-solution and cost. The firm decided to make a massive $3B global investment in its own digital transformation, pointed at upskilling its people and investing in technologies for supporting “clients and communities”. Four+ years into its journey, PwC has become a poster child for the topline impact of digital upskilling and investment in people, now taking its internal experience and bringing those solutions to clients. One of the most visible offerings is ProEdge, a digital upskilling platform, launched in 2021. As ProEdge hits its one-year anniversary, HFS checked in with PwC leadership on what it has achieved.

Enterprises rank “Improving digital fluency” as the #1 change in the way organizations work. ProEdge steps to the plate with its three-pronged approach

“This is the first time in our history that we’re truly looking at the fluency of business and technology coming together in a hybrid environment,” says Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst of HFS Research. Enterprise leaders agree. 600 executives across Global 2000 enterprises consider improving the digital fluency of the workforce to be the number one change in their organization’s ways of working in the next 12 – 18 months (Exhibit 1). To move from the skilling of the past to that of the future, organizations need to approach skilling in a much more dynamic and “snackable” fashion, and adopt a strategy of continuous, personalized learning.

Exhibit 1: Improving digital fluency of the workforce is ranked as the #1 change in the organizations way of work for the next 12 to 18 months

Sample set: 600 executives across Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS Pulse, H2 2021

The learning market is ripe with platform contenders and content, from LinkedIn Learning to Coursera and Degreed. PwC was the first out of the Big Four to launch a productized platform, which was adopted by 75 client organizations in its first year. This is not a “boil the ocean” approach. While the ProEdge platform is an end-to-end journey, it contains three distinct components which may be utilized independently: Plan, for skills identification, curated learning pathways, and skills gap analysis; Learn, for contextual, active learning with credentialing; and Share, the pillar for collaboration and sharing of digital assets. The key differentiator is the ability to bring these three functions together for clients in a seamless way.

A clear challenge for organizations is activating skills, so that employees don’t just learn but apply those skills into new ways of working. ProEdge aims to bridge the gap and embed a culture of innovation in the process.

When it comes to learning ecosystems, a key challenge is ensuring the employee is able to move from a learning environment into action, applying new skills in the work they do day-to-day. This is as much of a mindset challenge as it is a technical one, and an arena where PwC and its ProEdge solution is built upon as its own “client zero” case study. In FY 2020, PwC saw a 12.8% revenue improvement alongside a 3.1% headcount increase, correlating to a highly effective transformation initiative with learning and sharing as cornerstones, and in the process, building up solutions to problems that can quickly scale across the organization.

Similar to Zapier, employees can see, utilize, and collaborate with solutions that others are creating to automate routine tasks and focus on more strategic initiatives and actions. For employees to get to the point of collaboration, ProEdge focuses the learning arm on relevant content that is bespoke to the individual, which is just as critical as the evolution of content itself. ProEdge articulates 100k+ read-watch-listen assets, 6500+ premium courses, and 100+ ProEdge credentials through a fit-for-purpose platform, customized to the learner.

The Bottom Line: The larger context of learning encompasses the identification of skills the employee–or organization–needs to target, the right level of training, and the infrastructure to enable active, applied learning and collaborative capabilities. It’s not just what you learn, but what you do with it.

Organizations do not need to start upskilling with the breadth of the organization. They can see significant results from targeted approaches to skilling in key areas where there are known skills gaps or in an area where the organization simply does not have enough expertise for the amount of work it needs to get done. While PwC created this solution out of its own enterprise-wide approach to upskill their organization, ProEdge enables clients to utilize any of its three pillars both individually or combined to Plan, Learn, and Share, starting with the greatest area of need and a holistic capacity to scale.