Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young (E&Y) believe that sustainable culture change occurs when you educate everyone, particularly middle managers who make many of the day-to-day people decisions. These decisions can often be impacted by unconscious bias and stereotyping.

E&Y’s focus on this topic started in 2007. In 2008, they ran telephone training sessions for some 500 managers on the impact of unconscious bias and stereotyping. Then, motivated to accelerate the rate of change, and yet operating in a climate of financial instability, close scrutiny on costs and time away from clients, E&Y developed an innovative web based learning tool (WBL) accessible to everyone, anytime, anywhere.

Impact:

• E&Y aim to have all of their 3,000 managers complete this WBL by the end of 2009

"Reflecting the Consumer"

 Ernst & Young segment their market by client size and presence on the FTSE 350. However, there are a number of ways in which they direct their activity towards BAME clients in specific areas with the help of their networks and business groups.

A number of areas have been identified where it brings business benefit to target clients by ethnicity. These include Ernst & Young’s Islamic Finance Group, Japan Business Services group, China Business Services group and various country-specific tax desks. In all cases these groups have arisen to meet a business need to address clients in the context of their cultural or country identity.  Ernst &Young’s Japan Business Group (JBG) for example, comprises about 40 fluent Japanese speakers with strong links to service lines in UK and overseas.  The team is staffed with people either who are Japanese or who have a good understanding of the Japanese culture through living in Japan. This means that the way Ernst & Young market to clients has been developed from deep cultural awareness. In addition, Ernst & Young respond on an individual basis to specific client requests and needs: for example on whether they would like their E&Y team to be Japanese speaking or not.  E&Y’s Human Capital team also contains a Japanese speaking team serving Japanese clients.  In addition, they have a Japan Business Programme for recruitment which recruits two Japanese-speaking people a year into their graduate trainee scheme with a view to increasing their capability to serve Japanese clients.

Typical clients include Hitachi, Nomura, Honda, Sony and revenue in FY08 was $91m and in FY07 $68m.

“Leveraging D&I in partnership with our networks to attract and retain the best talent from the broadest pool”

This is a leadership case study in which Ernst & Young addressed race diversity through partnerships with three of their BAME networks, leading to a key change to their strategy - to set targets to double BAME representation at Board level by 2010 and openly talk about this action. 

Highlights included repositioning their Accelerated Leadership Programme to be more accessible to BAME employees and hosting a reception for over 300 black parents and children to market career opportunities in the sector.

Impact:

• Increased BAME representation on Accelerated Leadership Programme from 8% to 19% in the last three years, including admission of their first black partner to the UK partnership.
• 20 network members now in formal mentoring/buddying schemes and over 400 staff have attended business and personal skills sessions.
• Over 150 people have attended external community and
  business network events and E&Y BAME networks hosted nine events for staff and external guests