The management consulting and auditing company PwC announced its plans to launch a new two-year-long digital skills training course that will equip firm employees with valuable knowledge about innovative technologies on everything from drones, blockchains, and cleansing data to 3D printing.
The training program complements a wider company effort to increase the firm’s subject-matter expertise on innovative topics and technologies. According to an initial plan, the “Digital Accelerators” course will involve more than 1,000 PwC current employees. The “Digital Accelerators” program is scheduled to begin in January 2019.
According to PwC Digital Accelerators head Sarah McEneaney, because PwC is not “primary known” for its marketing consulting services, the company is now having to compete with other ad agencies and consulting firms to get more clients.
McEneaney shared, “My job is to future-proof our workforce. It just seems table stakes at this point that people should have more technical skills. It’s needed for us to remain competitive and to be responsible for what our clients are also going through.”
McEneaney also believes that this initiative will improve the efficiency of the employees and even though it is one of the largest single investment areas for PwC for 2018, it will allow the firm to cut down billable hours on projects when employees finish tasks faster and will help the company transfer any made savings to PwC’s customers.
The course participants will spend 10 hours per week in Digital Accelerator classes. The program curriculum is divided into 3 parts and covers topics related to automation, cybersecurity, drones augmented reality, information collection and blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The classes will be offered as both onsite as well as virtual training.
The company expects that their new initiative will lead to an internal employee expertise boost and to a significant decrease in costs for the PwC clients.
