Kimberly Jones never expected to become a widow in her 20s. But when a heart attack took away the love of her life, Jones found herself mending a broken heart while keeping up with responsibilities at work.
Today, Jones is 53, and is the talent strategy and people experience leader at PwC — the same company she was working for decades ago when her life turned upside down. Looking back, Jones says she was lucky to be working for a company that prioritized her personal needs at such a challenging time.
“I got so much support from the folks that I was working with at PwC, beyond expectations,” she says, pointing to a benefit that allowed her to take a leave of absence and ease back into work at her own pace. “They gave me so much on a personal level, that it also sparked my interest in being able to give that back to others.”
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In early 2020, when the pandemic hit and changed everything about our world, Jones knew those kinds of supportive and empathetic benefits would be more important than ever before to PwC’s 55,000 employees.
With Jones’ guidance, the company implemented new benefits to support caregivers and working parents. Existing care reimbursements doubled to $2,000 annually, and discounts were provided on nanny services, as well as tutoring and test-prep support and college admissions and financial aid guidance for employees’ children. Mental health resources, including coaching, therapy, group well-being sessions and meditation resources were also extended to employees and their families at no cost.
“It’s been such a dynamic learning experience for me,” Jones says. “I’ve been so grateful that I’m now in the type of role where I can directly impact the things that concern our people and have a really direct connection between what our people are telling us they need, and our top senior leaders who are in position to give it to them.”
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But as the lines between work and home became blurred amid the shift to remote work, Jones says she and the company noticed that employees were working longer and longer hours — and forgoing the use of vacation time in the absence of recreational travel.
“A lot of our people said, ‘Why should I use vacation when I can keep working?’” Jones says. “Well, that’s exhausting and people were getting burned out. So we started to educate our folks about the value of staycations so that you can rejuvenate, refresh, and recharge in other ways.”
To incentivize workers, PwC started to offer a vacation rewards program, offering bonuses of $250 to $1,000 when an employee took at least a week off at a time. Additionally, a “Fridays Your Way” program encouraged employees to focus on personal needs after noon on Fridays throughout the summer, and in a special thank-you bonus, PwC workers were granted a full extra week of pay in recognition of the year’s challenges and their committed response.
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While Jones cares about the needs of supporting all PwC employees, as a mother, watching the additional stress the pandemic brought to moms specifically was all too familiar. She knows that those moments of flexibility — which can feel small and even insignificant to a business of PwC’s size — can be life-changing for on-the-ground employees that are raising and supporting children.
As emails from working mothers started flooding the HR team’s inboxes, Jones sprang to action. A new leave of absence program allowed workers to step back for up to six months, while receiving 20% of their pay. Similar to Jones’ own experience decades ago during her own time of need and transition, employees have been allowed to ease back into a full schedule at their own pace.
“At the core of it, it has always been about how to make our people’s experience at PwC the best it can be,” Jones says. “That’s what I’m about, that’s what I wake up every morning trying to do. On our team, we can’t believe we get paid to do this because it’s so much fun trying to make the workplace fun, rewarding and good for people.”
