PwC’s $15m management fest on scrap heap before job cuts

The accounting giant nixed its annual offsite – complete with ice baths and bongo drums to ‘drive high performance from body and mind’ – to head off criticism around massive sackings.

As PwC Australia prepared to sack hundreds of staff in a mass redundancy round, the firm was already moving to head off potential criticism, nixing plans for its annual $15m four-day staff festival.

The firm told staff in November late last year the event at Cypress Lakes in the NSW Hunter Region – held in 2022 and 2023 – would not go ahead in 2024.

The decision came as PwC moved to slash 340 jobs across the audit and consulting giant, the first in several cuts to staff numbers as it prepared for its rounds of bloodletting amid a continued pullback on consulting and audit spending as a tough market was only worsened by catastrophic confidentiality breach revelations.

On Wednesday this week, PwC’s axe fell again, slashing a further 366 jobs, as part of a $100m cost-cutting exercise.

The situation today is a far cry from that week in May 2022 when 2700 staff poured into a luxury NSW resort under Tom Seymour’s leadership, marking the launch of The Outside.

The Outside was intended to celebrate PwC and its people, then the pre-eminent audit and consulting firm in Australia.

With its lavish $15m budget, PwC’s 2022 event invited partners, senior staff, clients, and journalists to a four-day, three night, festival in lush surroundings.

Prominent figures, including then-ABC journalist Stan Grant, were drafted in to speak to the troops, who were offered ice baths and bongo drumming exercises alongside a raft of activities to “drive higher performance from both body and mind”.

The event was held again in 2023.

PwC has been dogged by the scandal that exploded in early 2023, after it was revealed the firm’s tax practice had knowingly shared and misused confidential government tax plans ahead of their introduction in 2016.

The firm had then hushed up the scandal for years, fighting a cold war with the Australian Taxation Office over access to thousands of documents.

The conflict ultimately came to a head as the Tax Practitioners Board banned PwC’s former head of international tax Peter Collins and placed the firm on a good behaviour order.

Things worsened for PwC, with the firm’s government consulting arm iced out of new contracts.

This culminated in PwC selling the entire government consulting business in a $1 deal to Allegro Funds, soon after the resignation of Tom Seymour from the top job as the scandal surrounding the top partner grew.

PwC moved to cut the annual event, which cost $5000 per staff member, as the firm was facing up to the reality of deep cuts to its staffing numbers amid a continued profit crunch.

PwC had just lost the Westpac audit contract, worth circa $38m, and corporate Australia continued to keep a tight leash on spending in the face of a tightening economy.

Then head of people and culture Catherine Walsh, who announced The Outside in 2022 to much fanfare, warned staff the event was off.

Ms Walsh joined Qantas in January this year in the new role of chief people officer.

A PwC spokesman said the firm was “always looking at new ways of investing in our people’s learning and development”. “We look forward to rolling out new initiatives that help them thrive and celebrate their success,” he said.

Meanwhile, the latest round of job cuts will see the firm cut 329 staff and push 37 partners out.

Staff were reportedly given short notice and told to hand in their laptops before being walked from the firm’s offices

Sources told The Australian the latest round of cuts, which PwC noted were expected to play out over nine months, were likely just the latest in headcount reductions that would leave the firm “very nimble”.

They noted PwC must preserve its partner distributions, with the firm keeping the door open to new entrants to the upper echelons in its mid-year intake.

The list of partners who will leave the firm has been closely guarded, but sources indicated many who were being moved on represented senior figures in the firm’s leadership under Mr Seymour.

Others represented business lines that had been savaged by the pullback or too tied to Mr Seymour or his predecessor Luke Sayers’ vision for PwC.

Separately, PwC revealed in its response to a parliamentary inquiry it was “thoroughly investigating” Mr Sayers after receiving a complaint about the former CEO.

The firm noted Mr Sayers was “aware” of its investigation, but noted any probe would “take time as the firm forensically works through the materials and interviews relevant personnel”.