This Wednesday, June 22, 2022, my class had a site visit at PwC. At first, I didn’t know what I would be walking into. So far the site visits have been a mix of tours, presentations, and Q&As. First, we met downstairs in the lobby where we checked in. Then we headed up to the ninth floor where we met our hosts. From there, I was expecting to be bombarded with tax and mergers, and acquisition information. But as a pleasant surprise, our class got to guide the conversation.

During the next hour and a half, we had a casual conversation where a lot of good advice was given. I will touch on two pieces of advice that stuck out to me. I learned that it’s important to make your career goals known to your employer. That way if an opportunity comes up, your employer might recommend you. Also, they told us that it’s okay to go into a job without knowing everything. You are there to learn and apply that information while you work. These two pieces of advice really made me feel better about going into the workforce.

I also learned that PwC gives you many opportunities and that they are flexible. Our hosts mentioned that as long as you’re a hard worker, the company will invest in you. Whether that be to send you abroad or put you on a new project. Also, as long as you hit deadlines, you are mainly in control of your hours. This helps with balancing your work and personal life by completing deadlines at your own speed while making time for yourself. This made PwC’s work culture very attractive to me personally. It shows that there’s room for growth and autonomy.

The second part of the site visit consisted of a tour of the PwC building in Charing Cross. I was very impressed with this tour. On the tour, we saw many innovative things. We saw tech rooms with impressive screens for presentations all the way to smart lockers to eliminate permanent office spaces. My favorite was that there was seating everywhere. There were chairs, tables, booths that were in their own boxes, etc. All of these seating places are shown on a digital map. Then, when you sit in a seat, there is a heating sensor that picks up your body heat. After 15 minutes of sensing body heat, the digital map marks a seat as taken. That way employees will know where they can sit. By having this system in place, PwC is getting rid of permanent offices and employees can sit anywhere. This is where the smart lockers come in. Employees can use a smart locker for a period of time to store personal items since they don’t have an office. However, the locker is not theirs permanently. This system feels like we are in the future with the heating sensors and all of the technology. On the other hand, it feels like I’m back in high school or college. This might have something to do because of the idea of lockers, but it also reminds me of a building on campus, Posvar. In Posvar, there are ways to book rooms to study, and there are many different seating areas like cubbies or booths in boxes. This is very similar to how PwC was set up. Maybe the next step for campus would be to implement the heating sensors.

Overall, PwC might have been my favorite site visit so far. I felt very welcomed and I was very interested the whole time. Who knows? Maybe I could see myself working there someday. Only time will tell.