EYUSSustainabilityReport2015

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US Sustainability Report 2015 2 — How our purpose begins with our people
Flexibility to develop
and grow our people
We believe that flexibility is crucial to the
EY Vision 2020 goal of developing the
highest-performing teams. As EY US pursues
flexibility for all our people, we encourage
them to focus on six key behaviors that
support flexibility:
• Trust your team
• Focus on outputs
• Set boundaries and
clear expectations
• Communicate effectively
• Embrace different
ways of working
• Work intelligently
Most EY US people are able to work flexibly
when they need to on an informal basis.
We also have flexible work arrangements
("FWAs") for those who need to flex more
consistently. Currently, 18% of all EY US
people on FWAs are men.
In the Global People Survey 2015, 82% of EY
US people agreed or strongly agreed that
their managers enable flexibility when and
where they work. In addition to measuring
satisfaction, we also measured engagement.
Our data shows that those using our informal
flexibility are more engaged, have better
perceptions about their flexibility and feel
better enabled by their managers.
Most importantly, flexibility has the
strongest relationship to retention of any
single item in the Global People Survey
2015. In a global study that combines the
Global People Survey 2015 insights and
business results, groups in the top quartile
of the flexibility measure, compared to those
in the bottom quartile, have 6.1 percentage
points higher retention. More than 2,400 EY
US men and women are on an FWA.
82%
of EY US people agree or strongly agree
that their managers enable flexibility when
and where they work.
Challenge
Achieving work-life agility
The demands of a professional services firm
often mean that a large number of our clientserving
professionals regularly work long
overtime hours and are unable to exhaust all
of their paid vacation time. It is a challenge
that grows more acute as we expand our
business and can affect our retention.
One of the actions EY US has taken to improve
retention and people satisfaction has been to
give our people an automatic carryover of up
to 40 vacation hours from 2014.
This enabled people who just couldn’t get
away the flexibility to use those hours by May
2015. Although we encourage our people
to take the time off they’ve earned and
deserve, we recognize that it’s not always
possible. By providing the extension, only
16% of EY US client-serving professionals
from staff to senior managers lost vacation.
The average vacation lost was 4.4 hours.