Public & Regulatory Affairs

Understanding the expectations of stakeholders and incorporating them into our work

Thanks to over 5700 colleagues in the Netherlands, our contact with clients, and our partnerships, PwC is in close touch with society. We continuously ask ourselves how we can help to improve societal trust and ensure sustainable progress. To be able to keep answering this question in a world that is changing faster than ever before, we also actively converse with our societal stakeholders. This allows us to better understand their expectations and to incorporate them into our work.

The views of our stakeholders help us to become a better organisation and to offer relevant services as auditors, tax advisers and consultants.

Understanding the expectations of stakeholders: PwC stakeholder dialogue

1v1 discussions

During the course of the year, we hold so-called stakeholder meetings with our clients and colleagues, as well as with politicians, supervisory board members, civil servants, NGO’s, opinion makers and academics. During financial year 2022/2023, 37 of such 1v1 discussions were organised.

Each stakeholder meeting is conducted by a member of the board of management, often assisted by a member of the supervisory board, a young colleague or a content specialist. A report is compiled for each meeting. This report is then used as input when identifying the common theme and the most important messages of the stakeholder dialogue for different groups of stakeholders.

Number of formalised stakeholder discussions per stakeholder group, per financial year

	2022/2023	2021/2022
Civil servants	6	5
Colleagues (incl. groups)	6	4
Supervisory board members	0	4
Clients and suppliers	6	8
Umbrella organisations	4	5
NGO’s and social partners	7	3
Opinion makers	2	4
Politicians	4	3
Regulators	0	1
Academics	2	8
Total number of meetings:	37	45

Annual cycle

Output from the stakeholder dialogue is one of the sources we use for our internal dialogue about the long-term strategy of our organisation, our way of communicating, and the choices we make when defining business operations or fine-tuning our services. We then inform discussion partners from last year about specific changes or actions (and the public via our annual report), which helps to complete the whole cycle. We repeat this cycle every year because public expectations are subject to change.

Key messages PwC stakeholder dialogue 2022/2023

Be a social organisation for everyone
Have a positive impact on society and communicate it
Build for the future as a learning organisation

Be a social organisation for everyone

Being a good reflection of society requires us to actively consider being a social organisation for everyone when attracting talent. In addition, PwC has many large companies as clients, while the Netherlands is home to lots of small and mediumsized organisations too. Our stakeholders advise us to engage with these types of businesses more often and use PwC’s knowledge and experience to help them improve their performance.

Have a positive impact on society and communicate it

PwC can fulfill its ambition to build trust by contributing to major social challenges. Our stakeholders tell us that it is through our services for clients that we can have the greatest impact on society and that we should communicate more about the positive impact we are having. In short, they say, be good and tell people about that.

Build for the future as a learning organisation

Our stakeholders encourage us to more frequently broaden our horizon beyond the short-term and become future-proof. They urge PwC to challenge the status quo, for instance by being constantly mindful of the pros and cons of the way PwC in the Netherlands is currently structured. A future-proof organisation sometimes requires a different mindset, courage and agility according to our stakeholders.

Helping to sustainably improve audit quality

The audit profession is always on the move. This can, for example, be attributed to changing laws and regulations, as well as changing public expectations in fields such as sustainability, fraud and continuity. PwC wants to help sustainably improve audit quality. We thus examine how things can be improved or done differently, and talk about this with our stakeholders.

Contributing to a sustainable tax system

Everyone has to deal with taxes. Rules tend to change regularly, and the tax system can be perceived as complicated. PwC wants to help improve the system and make it comprehensible, by sharing knowledge about existing laws and regulations, and by sharing ideas about what can be changed or done differently.

Contributing to a sustainable society

A sustainable future can only be realised with a healthy planet and a society based on socio-economic cohesion. This sustainable future will offer appropriate and meaningful employment for all, together with equal opportunities in an inclusive society. PwC wants to contribute to this sustainable society by offering our services, sharing knowledge and making ourselves heard in public debates.

In dialogue about sustainable progress

Dialogue allows us to understand how stakeholders feel about sustainable progress and what role they foresee for organisations like PwC. Besides 1v1 discussions as part of our stakeholder dialogue, we do this in many different ways.