16/01/2012

SYNOPSIS
In a scenario where organizations are trying to attract and retain employees using competitively high salaries, innovative policies, best in class infrastructure, job security, strong branding and clientele, Ernst & Young makes a different pitch by focusing on providing unique career experiences and holistic development to its employees through its program, Ernst & Young & You (EYU). The three pillars of the firm’s talent development framework are Learning, Experiences and Coaching. Together they provide employees with the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to be able to take ownership of their careers. The aim is to have a unique development plan that helps shape the career of each individual based on their potential, experiences and aspirations in the context of the business needs of the organization. This case study delineates the EYU program and its elements from an implementation perspective.

BUSINESS CONTEXT
Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services.  Maintaining their reputation as a leading worldwide professional services organization requires having, “The Right People with the Right Skills in the Right Place at the Right Time serving the Right Clients.” The emphasis, therefore, is on ongoing, rapid development of talent along multiple competencies. This necessitates a combination of several methods and programs that can be appropriately tailored and customised to address every individual’s unique development needs, which in turn are mapped to the business requirements. Diverse operational locations necessitate that Ernst and Young’s people strategy is driven consistently across the organization through a well-defined, standardized framework.
Ernst & Young’s culture and values are the key drivers of this uniform understanding of the people strategy and its implementation (Fig.1). The company uses the acronym “IDEA” to execute the people strategy through various organizational practices designed with the objective to Include, Develop, Engage and Attract a talented workforce.  The most critical practices that E&Y leverages as its competitive advantage are those which focus on employee growth through its talent development framework, EYU. This framework not only focuses on individual development but also on creating a unique career experience for every employee and in the development of leaders within the organization.

Fig 1: People Strategy at Ernst & Young

EYU – A Unique Development Plan
The individual development framework, EYU, reflects the mutual commitment between Ernst & Young and its employees. It is the commitment of the organization to support its employees in achieving their potential, and the commitment of the employees towards taking responsibility for and owning their careers. Fig.2 depicts the EYU framework. It links the business context to individual development needs and forms the Unique Development Plan, which comprises actions along three basic elements referred to as three pillars: Learning, Experiences and Coaching. While the business context is determined by clients, the business and the needs of the communities Ernst & Young serves; individual requirements are determined by the roles, competencies and development needs of the employees.
The Competency Framework of Ernst & Young is at the core of EYU. Every employee assesses him or herself on the competency framework followed by an assessment by his or her manager. Gaps are identified with respect to the current and required competencies based on which a Unique Development Plan is arrived at for each individual.   Over 95% of employees at Ernst & Young have defined their unique development plan basis the EYU framework.
 

Fig. 2 Ernst & Young and U

Learning
EYU-learning provides employees with access to high quality soft-skill, technical and web-based training tailored to match their development needs.  A dedicated L&D team is responsible for in house development of soft skills training courseware as well as delivery of training programs. This is a practice driven by the belief that internal people understand the culture better, are able to relate to specific work scenarios and provide more relevant examples, making learning more effective. Some of the courses are mandatory, whereas others are role and milestone based programs which every individual needs to take upon reaching particular levels in their career.
Being a knowledge enterprise, technical training also plays a key role in defining the learning spectrum. From a new graduate to an experienced partner, E&Y offers its employees a comprehensive range of technical skills development programs that can be classified into solutions, methodologies, sector and industry specific training.

Experiences
At the next level, assignments are identified for the individual to get hands on experience in the identified area of development. The organization invests significant time on EYU experiences, as they are believed to be a very critical pillar. Experiences provide an opportunity to put knowledge into practice and develop new skills using a set of nine high-impact experiences comprising of customized activities. These experiences are:
1.    Service line specific experiences
2.    Quality service delivery
3.    Account development
4.    Coaching
5.    Leading change
6.    Recruiting
7.    Building a professional brand
8.    Community responsibility
9.    Mobility

Experiences do not involve any direct monetary expenditure like training. However, they do involve investment in terms of time and effort of the managers who are required to create relevant learning experiences, match it to the development needs of the employee, monitor and review progress on an ongoing basis.

Coaching
At Ernst & Young, Coaching is a meaningful conversation that helps transform learning and experiences into practical application on the job. In the EYU program, every people manager is trained to be a counsellor or a coach for his or her direct reportees. The organization gives high regard to the role of a coach and places a great deal of emphasis on ongoing sensitization on the ‘role of counsellor’ and people responsibilities of a manager. There are regular programs to train all people managers on giving effective feedback, coaching skills, development and continuous career development of employees.
The framework of learning, experiences and coaching can be explained through a simple example.

Presentation skills are essential to the role of a consultant, and enhancing skills on designing and delivering presentations can be a developmental need for an individual.  The Learning pillar of EYU framework comes into play when an individual picks up an instructor led or web based soft skill training course on Presentation Skills.   Under the Experiences framework, relevant activities can be identified, wherein the manager provides opportunities for the employee to make presentations to an internal or external audience. The employee is also allowed to shadow managers to learn how they go about making presentations. Further, in Coaching, the manager, who is also the coach, shares guidelines and tips on making effective presentations.  Hence, by discussing some of his own experiences and learning, the coach can help his counselee work on the identified developmental need. 

Beyond Career Paths – Creating Career Experiences
Ernst & Young’s talent development framework extends beyond just equipping an individual for his or her current role. It also aims to provide every individual with the skills needed to become successful in future roles.   Career conversations were initiated as a new tool, with the objective of helping employees identify and articulate their short and long term career aspirations and develop a framework to help individuals achieve them.

Career conversations are meaningful, future focussed interactions around an employee’s career aspirations and how the firm can support in aligning these with business needs.  These conversations help people explore and understand their individual career interests and also review where they are in their careers and how they want to progress.

In order to make discussions around performance and career aspirations more impactful, E&Y introduced the concept of TRIO meetings.  In TRIO meetings, the reporting partner has a joint discussion with the individual and his or her counsellor to understand the individual’s performance levels, development needs and career planning. These meetings not only help leadership get visibility and develop a connect with every member in their team, but also go a long way in reinforcing the leadership’s commitment to people’s growth and development.   These conversations are included in every employee’s unique development plan and are instrumental in not only helping them perform better in their current role but also work towards the future role they aspire to achieve.

For example, a Tax Advisor might have an aspiration to move into Mergers & Acquisitions. Upon engaging in a career conversation with his counsellor, the individual can work towards developing a road map to enable this transition. The counsellor can thus help identify and articulate an action plan to help the individual take up the new role. This may include undergoing formal and structured learning programs on financial modelling skills and understanding the M&A business.  A counsellor can also mobilise a short term secondment to the M&A team, to give the individual real time exposure. This will help the individual make a more informed choice about the movement.

The above example demonstrates that the focus is not only on creating career paths but also providing opportunities for employees to have a career experience that enables them to make meaningful decisions. Ernst & Young believes that when its people achieve their best, it can help its clients achieve their best too.

Today’s interns tomorrow’s leaders – Not an impossible dream
Internal leadership development is another high priority area at Ernst & Young. E&Y takes pride in the fact that almost all of its senior leadership is home grown. Every year, a good number of partners are added to the leadership, which gives tremendous confidence to employees who dream of growing into senior leadership positions.

Leadership development at Ernst & Young happens through diverse sets of programs at various levels. To begin with, the organization has a series of development and celebration programs organized for newly promoted managers, senior managers, and partners. The objective is to emphasise the importance of their role and equip them with skills that can help them transition successfully into their new role.

As part of its leadership development agenda, senior managers identified to move into partnership and leadership roles in the future, participate in the Leadership Track Development Workshop (LTDW).  LTDW uses a development center methodology to do a realistic evaluation of potential strengths and development areas of the target group. It clarifies leadership role expectations and gives the participants a solid understanding of the firm’s business and strategy. The facilitator group consists of experts from around the world, skilled professional actors to engage participants in role plays while the L&D team and leadership group observe, assess and give feedback to participants.

An example of a typical simulation covered in the LTDW would be, “ In a chance meeting with a person in the lift who appears to be a potential client, you are required to introduce Ernst & Young to the person and make sure that in the next four minutes you convert him or her into a client.” Such situations, which are easy to imagine but difficult to handle appropriately, are simulated in a learning environment for senior managers to acquire specific skills at the development center.
Partners are the highest level of leadership in Ernst & Young. Globally and in India, candidates with potential to be partners are selected through a highly structured and rigorous process called Global Next Gen.  The program builds the skills and capabilities through three experiential leadership challenges focused on its - markets, business and people.  It aims to create new partners with strong market leadership skills, a global mindset, wide networks and a broad understanding of the business. 

Starting a couple of years in advance, the identified employees participate in various forums and provide inputs on various initiatives and organizational processes.
Ernst & Young lays strong emphasis on Succession Planning to build a robust and diverse leadership pipeline. The company takes into account both the available slots and people within the organization to ensure that the necessary resources are identified and are ready for any existing or future positions that are or may become vacant.

What’s next?
E&Y has always endorsed a strong need to provide its people with the best possible development opportunities and challenging experiences to help them evolve into leaders within the firm, profession and communities at large.  Keeping this objective in mind, building further on the leadership development framework to groom future leaders will continue to be a focus area for the organisation.  The spotlight will also be on adding more meaningful offerings to its already well established bouquet of learning and development opportunities. 

SHRM India’s Conclusion
The talent development framework focuses on a holistic competency development program. Given that competencies are understood to be a combination of knowledge, skills and attitude, the individual development plan in EYU, through its three pillars of learning, experiences and coaching, can be seen as a unique way to build competencies. Learning is provided through training programs designed to deliver the required knowledge; experiences help in acquiring the necessary skills and coaching brings in the required ability and attitude. By emphasising on these three pillars, the framework helps to ensure that the unique development plan translates into meaningful action and provides requisite business results.

EYU is four years old and has since its implementation played a key role in nurturing E&Y’s employees’ professional growth and development.  Right from its conception,  the strong business case for people development and high engagement levels within the company have contributed significantly to the success of the program. The robust online system which helped ensure compliance, reporting and providing continual feedback on progress has been a key driver in the successful deployment of EYU.  This backed by strong endorsement by its leadership and an explicit value proposition has helped E&Y lay a very strong foundation to its objective of helping today’s professionals grow into tomorrow’s leaders.