EY Fires Staff for Attending Multiple Training Courses Simultaneously

Various US employees in the United States were dismissed by Ernst & Young for simultaneously attending several online classes in a learning week. The company claimed that this went against their global code of conduct and ethics. Some fired workers alleged that multitasking is deeply rooted in EY’s workplace culture and the company never gave any kind of warnings.

The British newspaper The Financial Times, which broke the news first, interviewed a number of workers who were fired last week. The fired employees complained that EY did not give a warning against attending more than one class at the same time.

As stated by one of the former workers, “Their emails marketing EY Ignite actually encouraged us to join as many sessions as our schedule allowed. We all work with three monitors. I was hoping to hear new ideas that I could bring to the table to separate myself from others.”

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The fired workers criticised EY’s workplace culture, claiming it encourages multitasking. As one person put it,  “If you are forced to bill 45 hours a week and do many more hours of internal work, how can it not?.”  An EY associate is known for handling two client calls simultaneously, turning their camera on and off based on who they were chatting with, according to another former employee. He stated, “I know a partner who will do two (client) calls and switch their camera on and off depending on who he is talking to. If this is unethical, then that is unethical, too.”

EY called the firing an “appropriate disciplinary action.”  The company again stated that taking more than one training class simultaneously  breach the company’s code of conduct. EY Stated, “Our core values of integrity and ethics are at the forefront of everything we do. Appropriate disciplinary action was recently taken in a small number of cases where individuals were found to be in violation of our global code of conduct and US learning policy.”