Case study of PwC: The implementation of permanent remote work poses potential threats on employees’ mental well-being and highlights the need for adaptive leaders in remote environment

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has promoted the implementation of work-from-home (WFH) in all fields, and many organisations are expecting hybrid or even permanent remote working to continue post-pandemic. With this complete change in working style, some employees struggle to adapt, which results in adverse effects for both individuals and organisations. With more reports illustrating higher burnout risks and critics of productivity when working from home, people’s awareness of employees’ mental health has risen. This report’s objective is to identify the existing problems with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) remote work strategies and provide insights for PwC and other organisations that plan to implement permanent remote work to understand the importance and solutions of these problems, mainly reducing employees’ burnouts, lack of innovation and lack of supportive environment. Also, this report aims at helping employees adjust to changes in working status and maintain good mental health. This report will analyse findings from PwC surveys, including quantitative data from closed questionnaires and qualitative data from interviews. By comparing the pre and post covid pandemic results and the score gaps between employers and employees, this report identifies three major problems PwC should address for working from home. According to the survey, the report has found that problems that need to be prioritised for PwC are high burnouts, low innovation, and unsupportive environments when working from home. Reasons for declining mental health in PwC relate to employees’ failure in detaching, setting boundaries between work and personal life, lack of flexibility in working hours, and managers’ assistance in managing workloads. The nature of working from home creates barriers for employees to interact socially with each other, thus resulting in lower inspiration. Moreover, the increase in distrust between leaders and managers and the absence of actions of many managers create an unsupportive environment for employees. Therefore, this report accesses PwC’s newly established strategy for reducing burnout rate and identifies the limitations and alternative methods. Moreover, this report offers practical solutions to increase innovation and trust from employees during remote working with rationales behind the suggested solutions explained. Therefore, the report provides specific guidelines for PwC to improve on for better WFH prospects.