Nurturing a culture of curiosity and continuous learning for EY people

Ralitsa Nenkova’s learning journey opens doors for her career aspirations. Voted one of the 25 most inspirational Women in Risk in the UK by the Chartered Insurance Institute, the London-based Director has a thirst for knowledge and a passion for what she can achieve in her EY career journey.

She is one of eight UK graduates to benefit from the EY Tech MBA set up just two years ago to help empower our people to build exceptional experiences and create fulfilling career paths. This degree offers all our people a unique opportunity to gain the knowledge, practical skills and experience to create long-term value for our clients, people and society.

Ralitsa is also currently participating in the EY EMEIA NextWave Communications Service Provider (CSP) training program to support her ambitions. In addition to being passionate about learning, she also works tirelessly with EY teams and with external organisations to advance the diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DE&I) agenda, including leading external partnerships for our Women in Tech network and supporting the insurance markets team as DE&I lead. She is also a supporter for the EY Foundation, an independent charity that works with young people from low-income backgrounds, for whom she just completed a fundraising trek of the Sahara Desert.

Discussing the EY learning programme, Ralitsa said: “This has been the best workplace development programme I have been part of in my whole career! It has added huge value to my wider team and clients, encompassing all the latest developments in technology.” 

Of the people who have completed the EY Tech MBA, 28% are more inclined to remain with the firm and six times more likely to be promoted compared to those who haven’t completed this training¹.

The MBA has supported Ralitsa’s career progression within EY.

Our EY people want personalised careers with success defined by them. We empower our people to build an exceptional experience, and this is how we attract and retain our diverse, talented and motivated people who are fundamental to our long-term success and help EY live up to its purpose.

That is the philosophy behind our approach to the EY learning and development programme. We think building a better working world begins at an individual level, helping to create careers as every bit unique as each of our 18,900 people in the UK. That means providing training and development opportunities that go beyond supporting job flexibility and advancement alone. We work together to build careers and bring out the best in each other.

Last year, we continued to invest significantly in learning and delivered almost 700,000 hours of formal training in the UK, the equivalent to 40 hours per person (660,000 in FY21).

Learning for all new – and even potential – recruits is something we value just as much as developing our more seasoned staff. We developed a week of virtual events to support school leavers, students and graduates with physical, mental, financial and personal well-being.

In May 2022, 12,500 of our people in the UK attended Learning at Work Week (LAWW) initiatives, double the number of attendances for the year prior. Learning at Work Week provided dedicated learning sessions which focussed on developing skills in priority areas including technology, markets, purpose and sustainability, as well as service line-specific learning opportunities, including the Consulting Learning Day and Tax & Law two-week long Learning Festival as part of the LAWW.

In order to drive everyday learning culture at EY, we continue to leverage what we call ‘The Magnificent Six’ on-the-job learning behaviours and tools. These are six behaviours we designed in the midst of the pandemic as a new approach to learning and development in our hybrid working world. 

Our EY learning and development team recognised the gap that was appearing as a result of remote working and the fact that many employees were missing out on EY experiences, such as learning by watching how senior colleagues manage clients or taking advantage of on-the-spot mentoring. The aim of the behaviours was to inspire and roll out best practice for creating developmental experiences, whether working on-site or remotely. They include finding opportunities for people to learn from each other via knowledge transfer, being accessible so people can learn from you and helping people to build a network of internal contacts, which is especially useful for our most junior colleagues or those who have changed roles.

Following the success of the EY Tech MBA, this year, we launched two new fully-accredited qualifications in association with Hult International Business School – the EY Masters in Business Analytics and the EY Masters in Sustainability. These programmes are free for EY people, regardless of rank or location, with the aim of helping them to gain experience and practical skills to support not just our clients, but the communities in which we live and work. 

The EY Master’s Degrees are built on the EY Badges programme, which aims to develop a range of future-focussed mindsets and skills, and provides externally recognised digital credentials, on the topics that our people select according to their interests and passion.  

There are some 250 badges on offer across 25 topics, such as technology, sustainability, and leadership. Data analytics, innovation, digital and cybersecurity are some of the most popular subjects. In the UK, at the end of FY22, we had over 4,200 EY Badges completed since the beginning of the programme in January 2018 and more than 8,000 in progress, with one in three EY Badges earned focussing on technology. During this year’s Learning at Work Week, 486 Badges were started, encouraged by a daily challenge to start learning a future-proof skill, such as technology or sustainability.

The EY Badges offering is designed as an opportunity to continuously improve, transform, and stay relevant. According to our FY22 study¹, those who completed EY Badges are 38% more likely to be rated a high performer and 20% more likely to be promoted.