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Ernst & Young
Overview
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services firms in the UK. About half of our 470 partners and 8,000 staff work in our London offices (which together form the largest Ernst & Young presence in any city in the world). In addition, we have offices in a further 19 cities around the UK.
Ernst & Young around the globe
Ernst & Young is also a global leader in professional services with some 114,000 people based in 140 countries. Around the world the firm is committed to pursuing the highest levels of integrity, quality, and professionalism in delivering a broad inventory of services to our clients. By connecting our people’s talents, Ernst & Young provides solutions to clients based on financial, transactional, and risk-management knowledge in its core services of audit, tax, and transactions
Motivation
‘I am extremely proud and appreciative of what our people achieve every day. In our business it is our people who enable us to succeed and we are committed to providing them with rewarding and challenging careers’. Mark Otty, Chairman Ernst & Young UK
There has been much public debate about the ‘business case’ for diversity and inclusiveness. For Ernst & Young in the UK there are overwhelmingly clear reasons why we must act.
To attract and retain our share of the talent pool: the most critical element in achieving market leadership is our ability to attract and retain talented people, so we must seek out talent in the widest possible pool.
To engage with our clients: client teams comprise people with many different outlooks, backgrounds, attitudes and beliefs and we are able to build better relationships if we, too, have diverse teams. We believe that increased diversity brings increased innovation to our clients.
To enhance our brand: we need to equip ourselves to identify and compete for global opportunities.
To do the right thing: we also know that respect for others and creating an inclusive work environment is the right thing to do, and that nobody wants to be part of an organisation that does not behave in an inclusive way.
Success in action
Alison Baker made partner in 2005 at the age of 34.
Alison sees developing the next generation of partners as a critical activity for EY and so she volunteered herself as the Partner Sponsor for our Accelerated Leadership Programme (ALP). The programme is a fast-track for high potential performers at around the point of their promotion to manager and takes them through a three-year experience of both formal and informal learning.
As a young, female partner, Alison has been a truly inspirational sponsor of the programme because of her commitment, enthusiasm, self-belief and professionalism.
She is close enough in age and experience terms to the ALP participants to really inspire them to get outside their comfort zones and realise their potential. In Alison’s words, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” She is passionately committed to creating a more diverse partnership by convincing our future leaders that being authentic and true to themselves is absolutely consistent with our organisational values and the expectations that we have of partners.
She is enormously proud of the fact that 29% of our home grown partner promotes on 1 July 2006 were women and makes extensive use of her own network of senior female business leaders (both internal and external) to provide mentoring and support to women who are at earlier stages in their careers.
The ALP programme combines some common, educational elements with individually tailored work experience, partner mentoring and coaching. All female ALP participants are offered the opportunity to have a female counsellor and partner mentor if they want.
From the outset, all of our business units are aware of the percentage of women within their eligible population and monitor their final selection for these programmes accordingly.
Impact
Below Ernst & Young identify some of its successes:
"At Ernst & Young we’re proud of the fact that currently 15% of our 470 partners are women, which is a higher percentage than any of our Big Four competitors and a great improvement on the year 2000, when the respective figure was 11%.
In the same five-year period we upped the % of female senior managers from 28% to 31%. Partners are admitted internally on 1 July every year and in 2005 and 2006 women represented 25% and 29% of those promoted respectively. The group admitted in 2006 included one woman currently on maternity leave and one on a flexible working arrangement.
Mark Otty, our recently elected Chairman, has raised the representation of women on the senior leadership team by appointing two women to what was previously a men-only preserve. He’s also joined the respected cross-corporate mentoring scheme run by Peninah Thomson, where the chairman of FTSE 100 companies and other blue chips mentor one of their peers’ most senior women. Jan Babiak, a member of the Leadership Team also takes part in this scheme.
This increase in diversity is one of the reasons why we have received recognition as a progressive organisation. Not only were we named one of the Top 50 places where women want to work in 2006, we have also been named as the 4th Best Big Company to Work For by the Sunday Times in March 2007, as well as being the Most Improved employer. In addition we have been rated as gold standard by Opportunity Now's gender diversity benchmarking exercise. Individual Ernst & Young women have won awards for First Woman of Technology, Young Accountant of the Year and Top 35 women under 35 and been shortlisted for numerous other awards. All in all, we see increasing benefits from our focus on women's development and careers."