In an exclusive interview with HR Digest, Trent Henry, EY’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), shares key strategies driving EY’s commitment to diversity, innovation, employee well-being, and leadership development. Henry highlights EY’s unwavering dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I), emphasizing its integration into organizational values and business strategy. Through accountability measures and ongoing learning initiatives, EY fosters an inclusive culture at all levels. The interview also explores EY’s innovative talent management approach, leveraging AI for recruitment and lifelong learning opportunities. Henry discusses EY’s response to evolving workplace dynamics, including flexible work models and investments in emerging technologies. Through Henry’s insights, HR professionals gain valuable perspectives on navigating HR leadership in a dynamic environment.
EY has a consistently received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) since 2005, demonstrating a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. How do you ensure that these values are embedded within the organization’s talent management practices, and what strategies do you employ to promote a diverse and inclusive workplace culture?
At EY, DE&I isn’t just part of what we do; it is built into our organizational values, is integral to our business strategy and a proven driver of business results. Companies with greater diversity not only have higher retention, but they have higher revenues and operating results, as well as higher brand recognition in their marketplaces. With 74% of workers considering a company’s DE&I commitment when deciding to work there, according to EY’s recent Belonging Barometer 3.0, it’s also critical to attracting and retaining premier talent to gain a competitive advantage in today’s competitive talent environment.
Our DE&I approach is multifaceted. In addition to holding our leaders at the highest level accountable, we’re focused on building a culture that empowers everyone to become inclusive leaders through ongoing learning, coaching and mentoring. We track progress through standardized metrics and measurement. We’re also working to build equitable frameworks and values that our entire organization can stand on. This includes the formation of the EY Global Social Equity Task Force (GSET) which prioritizes cohesive global actions to address societally-rooted systemic inequities, including racism.
EY is known for its focus on innovation. How do you foster a culture of innovation within the HR function, and how does this translate into attracting, developing, and retaining top talent within the organization?
Our focus on innovation in talent is what allows EY people to build meaningful careers with impact. As an example, we’re using AI to enhance the overall experience as we work to attract and retain top talent. The efficiencies of AI allow our talent team to shift their focus from paperwork or interview logistics, to building relationships and interacting on a human level. It also allows us to more effectively match skills with opportunities, deepen the talent pool, better assess candidates and promote more often from within. Through EY’s Candidate Assistant, AI is able to recommend a job to someone they may never have thought of – or heard of – as they explore flexible career options that align directly with their unique interests and ambitions.
For existing employees, we encourage innovation through our culture of lifelong learning – where all 400,000 of our people can develop future-focused skillsets to seize new opportunities and constantly evolve their careers. To streamline this emphasis on skills, we developed My Career Hub, a tool that creates a skills profile for EY people, allowing them to market their qualifications and experiences across EY and identify gaps where they want to build competencies. The data also helps EY manage its workforce to meet current and future market demands.
With the rapid evolution of technology and changing work dynamics, how is EY adapting its talent management strategies to meet the demands of the future workplace, particularly in terms of remote work and digital transformation?
Technology, coupled with the shift to flexible work models, has transformed the workplace at rapid speed. We’re focused on meeting employees where they are and believe every EY person’s career is theirs to build. We put them in the driver’s seat of their experiences and empower them with the infrastructure, guidance and tools to help them grow.
We’re keeping a close eye on the evolution of emerging technologies like AI, which will be critical to advancing employees in the workplace. As these technologies mature at record-speed, they will only be as powerful as the training available to help employees understand how to deploy, use and manage them. That’s why we’re invested in upskilling and reskilling our workforce to ensure our people are equipped to work with future-focused technologies and ready to adapt to disruptions. For example, our EY Badges program, is a micro-credentialling program open to all EY employees, with a focus on future-focused skills, such as AI. Currently, we have more than 250 courses on offer and have awarded more than 410,000 EY Badges since launching the program in 2017.
Building on the success of EY Badges, we launched fully accredited master’s programs in collaboration with Hult International Business School. In 2023, we celebrated our sixth and largest ever EY Tech MBA cohort with 74 graduates and the first-ever cohort of EY Masters in Sustainability, and earlier this month celebrated our second cohort of the EY Masters in Business Analytics – totaling nearly 300 graduates across our three EY Degrees. This major career milestone concludes with a unique graduation ceremony in the metaverse.
Flexibility is an equally important part of our people experience. EY People Pulse surveys have told us that, on average, people now want to spend up to 1-2 days more remotely than they did prior to the pandemic, so we’re committed to offering flexible models. Through EY@Work, our global workplace transformation program, we’re evolving office designs to include more collaborative or hybrid spaces that can better adapt to teaming requirements and support different workspaces, so that all employees can thrive – regardless of their location.
How does EY, consistently recognized for its commitment to employee well-being—named as Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” and Forbes’ “America’s Best Employers for Diversity in 2023”—tailor its mental, physical, and emotional health initiatives to the diverse needs of its workforce, including older adults, veterans, and other subgroups? Additionally, how do these initiatives align with broader organizational goals, and what progress has EY made towards achieving its well-being objectives?
We encourage our nearly 400,000 people to bring their whole selves to work, so it’s important that we’re not just recognizing their contributions, but their wellbeing, which we address globally across four pillars: mental and emotional, physical, financial, and social.
Our programs tend to be tailored by country, but globally we offer more than 100 wellbeing programs, including employee assistance programs and wellbeing apps that focus on sleep and exercise, physical challenges, reimbursement funds for wellness-related purchases. We also offer expanded coverage and support for mental health and provide employees with proactive financial wellbeing tools to improve management and finances and reduce financial stressors, including budgets, property and family planning.
In addition to these wellbeing resources, we’re actively building a culture of care that includes wellbeing education and understanding and setting boundaries. We’re working to create opportunities for social connection, supporting individuals to maintain relationships outside of the workplace.
Listening is also paramount. We prioritize gathering feedback from our people so we can constantly evolve our offerings to support them where they are. For example, we recently changed our health benefits in some countries to include more access to mental health resources based on feedback we received from our employees. EY’s voluntary Self-ID program offers a range of choices to complete your personal data including sexual orientation, gender identity, cultural background, and socio-economic questions. While Self-ID dimensions are optional and confidential, the general data acquired contributes to the firm’s understanding of our teams, so we can better shape programs and experiences. A deeper understanding of our people and their needs helps us identify blind spots and to create more equitable systems, programs, policy updates, and processes across the local and global organization.
What key competencies or qualities should leadership development programs possess to effectively address the glass ceiling and promote diversity within the leadership pipeline?
Development programs are no longer a “nice-to-have” but are critical to empowering the next generation of leaders. There are lots of considerations in shaping these initiatives, but the most important one is ensuring they’re equitable – meaning they’re made available to all. When employees are given equal access to learning opportunities, it levels the playing field for leadership so that everyone can progress professionally – regardless of their background.
EY’s transformative leadership model is designed to develop purpose-driven leaders who bring out the best in themselves and others. It’s as much about mindset as it is about skillset – with a focus on honing curiosity, flexibility and agility. These are the qualities that will set EY people apart, help them create long-term, sustainable growth for clients and fulfill our purpose of building a better working world.
To help our people become more inclusive leaders and team members, we’ve developed a web-based, mobile-enabled virtual learning program focused on the foundational behaviors of inclusive leadership. Today more than 150,000 people have taken the voluntary Inclusive Leadership For All (IL4ALL) e-learning program, which teaches learners that it’s our everyday actions that matter and that they have the power to improve someone’s experience and influence just by how they show up at work. We also launched a follow-up e-learning program called Upstanding Interventions, to support EY people in creating more inclusive and equitable environments by intervening in situations of potential inequity. While these examples represent more formal learning opportunities, mentorship, sponsorship and coaching play a big role in developing inclusive leaders, too. The details of these programs tend to vary by region, but – regardless of where you’re located – having a mentor or sponsor helps to ignite personal growth, connections, adaptability innovation and career advancement.
For boards that haven’t embedded connecting culture into their work, what would you like them to know?
Recently, the world has seen heightened social, political and economic tensions, along with seismic shifts in the labour market. There’s an increasing sense of polarization that’s making people feel more like outsiders. We surveyed more than 5,000 working adults outside EY, at companies across the globe and found that more people feel lonely and lack a sense of belonging, which impacts physical and mental wellbeing – and ultimately performance at work.
With nearly half (41%) of workers identifying their workplace as where they experience the strongest sense of belonging, second only to home (62%), leaders cannot underestimate how making consistent and genuine efforts to foster a culture of belonging among employees impacts the bottom line. It’s often the catalyst for exceptional results.
When you cultivate trust with employees, they’re likelier to be happy and more productive at work. In fact, employees who can bring their full selves to work are much more likely to contribute their full innovative potential. This reaffirms the importance of an inclusive culture for business performance, but also retention, growth and supporting clients with the full strength of capabilities.
Looking back on your career journey, what pivotal moments or experiences have shaped your leadership philosophy and approach to HR?
Education was a cornerstone of my childhood. Despite losing my father at a young age, my mother was a university professor, which instilled within me a lifelong curiosity and love of learning that shaped my career. It wasn’t always upward mobility – it was more of a “jungle gym.” I’m not an HR consultant by trade and have moved five times during my EY tenure, none of which were part of a “master” plan, but they were instrumental in building my career. I got diverse experience working in different markets, with different businesses and people.
The biggest pivot happened during a trip to Silicon Valley when I was CEO of EY Canada. I was meeting with various leaders in the AI space to discuss how the US and Canada could work together on AI going forward. I got into an interesting conversation with a fellow CEO who told me that 10 years ago, their company could have hired whoever they wanted, but unless they could win the “war on talent” they were currently facing, they would struggle to maintain their market-leading position. To me, this proved too interesting a challenge to ignore. In that moment, I decided to jump into this talent role at EY at full speed and have never looked back.
The jump to talent has presented some of the most aggressive learning I’ve had at any stage of my career, but has been – and continues to be – incredibly rewarding to uplift our people to build exceptional careers and deliver the best outcomes for our clients and communities.
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Trent Henry, EY Global Vice Chair – TalentAs EY Global Vice Chair – Talent, Trent focuses on the convergence of talent and markets agendas for both the 300,000 + EY people and clients worldwide. This includes advising on and responding to changes and opportunities in the evolution of the global workforce. Photo: EY |
This profile was published in the April 2024 issue of The HR Digest.