EY has reportedly fired dozens of American staff for taking multiple online training courses at once.
Although the “Big Four” accounting firm claimed that its employees had committed misconduct, staff said the incident was simply a result of the heavy-handed work culture the firm encouraged.
The company laid off employees last week after an investigation found that some staff members attended multiple online training classes at once during EY Ignite Learning Week in May. According to the Financial Times.
Some of the fired employees told the Financial Times that they did not believe it was against company policy to attend more than one training session at a time.
Training courses – included topics such as “How strong is your digital brand in the market?” “Conversations with AI, one prompt at a time” – counts toward the 40 continuing professional education credits that EY employees must complete in a year.
But EY said that taking more than one training session at a time violates the company's ethics policy.
“At EY, our core values of integrity and ethics are at the forefront of everything we do,” the firm told the Post in a statement. “After a thorough investigation, EY US has terminated an individual who was found to have violated our Global Code of Conduct and U.S. Learning Policy.”
Staff said EY's response was extreme and unfair, despite the company's history, and claimed they were unaware that watching multiple training sessions at the same time was against company policy.
“Their emails marketing EY Ignite actually encouraged us to attend as many sessions as our schedules allowed,” one staff member who was made redundant on Friday told the Financial Times . “We all work with three monitors. I was hoping to hear new ideas that I could bring to the table that would set me apart from others.”
A second fired employee said the company itself “fosters a culture of multitasking.”
“If you're going to be forced to work 45 hours a week and do more hours in-house, why not?” said the person.
A third employee pointed out the hypocrisy of punishing employees for multitasking.
“I know a partner who can do two things.” [client] They make phone calls and turn their cameras on and off depending on who they are talking to,” the staff member said. “If this is unethical, then that's unethical.”
EY has likely become more sensitive to controversial ethics violations since its scandalous spotlight just a few years ago.
In 2022, EY admitted that hundreds of employees had cheated on the CPA exam and that it withheld key evidence of the fraud from regulators.
The accounting firm was ordered to pay a hefty $100 million fine, the largest fine ever levied against an audit firm, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Some employees turned to Fishbowl, an anonymous messaging service for employees to review and rant about their companies.
Staffers questioned whether EY was responsible for the multitasking scandal because its systems allowed multiple training sessions to be held simultaneously on Zoom and allowed duplicate course credits to be counted.
Another Fishbowl user called EY's response “absolutely bizarre.”
“They may lower ratings, deduct bonuses, or delay promotions, but simply terminating them immediately is cruel,” the user wrote. “If this is so important, please implement a better system.”
The company has since changed the wording for upcoming EY Ignite training weeks.
“No other learning should be undertaken while completing this activity,” EY wrote in an email to staff ahead of the August training event.
