PwC's office traffic light dashboard

There’s a news article about my previous firm PwC in the UK using a dashboard to track office attendance. To be honest, I think this is probably a non-news item as I’d wager a lot, if not the majority, of the major firms out there have some sort of dashboard. Of course, it’s probably started to cause an uproar among staff members.

I am in favor of flexibility, but generally want in-office attendance for most days of the week for those who live in the area. As a small firm, we do not track attendance and everything is done more on the honor system and a social contract. You come in when you can, and when you need to work from home/remote that is generally fine.

It’s been 7 years since I left PwC, and I only worked in the New York office, but my stance is that the firm was probably way too lenient back then even pre-pandemic. The nature of the business across most business lines is that you are often at client offices and/or traveling so there is an inherent not in office culture.

However, it was admittedly frustrating often when it was clear some people were abusing the system. People worked from home a lot, and often it was difficult to get in contact with some of them. When you’re trying to get your work done, and your work often relies on other people on the team, it was an incredibly frustrating ordeal.

For a large firm like PwC, you probably need to track attendance in order to make people actually adhere to firm policies. The firm is way too big and it’s too easy to abuse. All that said, everything starts from the top. And the most notable absences from the office were often the partners.

If you want your people to come into the office, leaders need to also set the example and come into the office. There’s going to be some growing pains with any culture change though and I imagine this will cause a bit of an uproar among staff.