By Beth Anne Whalen

Shannon Schuyler, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility for PwC, is one of the company’s top senior leaders, and launched the firm’s corporate responsibility efforts in 2007. After working in various client service, HR and marketing roles, Ms. Schuyler realized that PwC employees wanted a more formalized CR effort. She presented a white paper in 2007 to senior management, who promptly put her in charge of spearheading the effort at PwC—which focuses around employee volunteerism, diversity and the environment.

Ethisphere: You presneted a whitepaper proposing a CR program to PwC’s management in 2007. What inspired you to take on that task?

Shannon: I think there were a lot of things that were happening in 2007. This whole topic of CR was hitting the news and so people were beginning to seriously talk about it. I also knew, having been with the firm for 10 years, that we really had not taken up some of the more important environmental issues that other organizations were doing. I also think that personal things were changing for me. I had been with the firm for 10 years and had been in many different positions and seen a lot of different aspects and just needed to do something different and new. It was one of those things where if you sit down and think, “If I could just create what I believe is an ideal job, what would it look like and what are the things that would be a part of it?”

That really combined with the fact that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at PwC and I am very loyal to PwC. I knew that we had accomplished a lot of great things in the area, but there were some gaps there, too. I decided to put this place together since so much about CR was starting to hit the press and was making more inroads within businesses as being something that was important rather than just fluff. CR was becoming something that was additive.

E: Did you study what other companies were doing at the time?

S: We did. The fascinating thing is that you can’t help but pull up every single CR report there is when you go down this path. You end up thinking, “I don’t care if we’re like them or not, I’ve got to read McDonald’s and Starbucks’ CR report.”

That quickly became overwhelming because as a services firm we quickly realized that there were certain things that we do and certain things that we don’t do. The majority of the companies back then that really focused on CR were manufacturing companies or utilities companies. A lot of other organizations were toying around with different aspects of CR but had not pulled it all together. We really tried to look at everything we could to absorb it.

One of the things that I quickly learned was that you have to figure out what works within your organization. I think way too many times you have organizations that talk about the great things they do, but those things only work for them because of their specific make-up, revenue stream and the people and their industry. Then people try to do the same things within other industries or companies and it doesn’t work. A true CR program has to be born from within.

E: What have you seen changed in CR between 2007 and now?

S: I think the names have changed. We have to often ask ourselves what CR truly looks like for us. Is it citizenship? Is it philanthropy? Is it corporate responsibility? What is a part of corporate responsibility? Is it corporate responsibility versus corporate social responsibility? What finds its way underneath there?

I think there is a lot of push and pull about where the CR function sits inside an organization, too. I think at first it sat a lot within marketing and communications groups and government affairs. Now it’s finding its way within the strategy and business processes and has become more aligned with those overarching business goals.

You also have to decide how to attach CR to different groups such as the ethics group. Do you all work together? Do you have to be aligned from a reporting stand point? Is it all about that reporting relationship or is it all about a partnership between the different functioning areas?

A lot of those discussions have also shifted in response to globalization. In the last three years I have really seen how it’s not just about what you do in the U.S., but how are you really looking at that within a global context? So whether it’s things like the UN Global Compact, or even the things that are going on with Copenhagen, it’s not just about here. It’s bigger than just the U.S. and I think that people are starting to realize that the cultural norms and the differences when you get past borders are huge and add a whole new layer of complexity.

E: What sets PwC’s CR program apart from other companies?

S: One thing that I think we have done a very good job of is keeping CR within a very broad umbrella. We sat down and we had a discussion of what CR really means to us. We started with the very myopic focus of community service, because that’s kind of the foundation of what people generally think of when talking about acting responsibly socially.

Then we took a bigger picture approach to CR and aligned it with PwC’s identity and business. PwC is a people business. We don’t make anything. Our people are what translate our information, so what are we doing for our people? How have we created an inclusive environment? How are we creating a training environment? How are we enabling people to see what it looks like to be a leader?

Those questions are what we built our program on. For us it makes sense to be really engaged in youth and in math and in financial literacy because that’s what we do and that’s what we’re good at. The next most important aspect of CR to us was environmental work. Although we don’t manufacture anything, we don’t own a building, we don’t own a plane and so forth, we do have a lot of resources going a lot of places and we do have a huge energy footprint. Part of our CR program is figuring out how to continually operate in a way that’s better for the environment.

Globally we look at marketplace, people, and community environment being the pillars that really hold up our corporate responsibility efforts. To me, it’s impressive that we have been able to get people in the U.S., the UK, Australia and China all looking at CR in the same way. PwC is a network of firms individually owned and operated so we have a global entity but the firms are each run separately. So suddenly you have 156 or so territories that have agreement, and that speaks to the fact that we’re all in this together.

E: What are some of the specific challenges that you have had incorporating your CR program in different regions?

S: One of the most difficult aspects is simply getting people to have an understanding of what the different themes and words around CR really mean. For example, social inclusion means something and diversity means something. When you’re in different countries, each one has different accomplishments. Some countries have done a lot in terms of women’s issues and others haven’t. When you try to create global CR policies around particular areas like these, those can be challenging conversations because of different cultural norms.

For example, you can have conversations with people who are in Europe, Middle East and Asia and they don’t donate the way that we do in the U.S. because their government handles those types of things. Well, suddenly when a global disaster occurs and PwC develops a donation program, that can go against norms in those regions. You just have to be really open, flexible and sensitive to how people interpret different words.

E: What will success look like for PwC’s CR program?

S: Every CR professional at one time, whether they admit it or not, has said, “If I do this right, I won’t be in this job in five years because the whole thing will become a part of who we are as an organization.” Then, very quickly you realize that this is a much longer term effort. Success at PwC will be when CR is integrated into the entire culture. It will be when individuals in every facet of the company help set the strategy for CR and continue to focus on the nuances of the pillars that we have developed for the program.