Accounting and Consulting
Diversity of opinion
How Tony Anderson changed the thinking at Ernst & Young to better meet the challenges of an evolving market
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Chicago | February 2008
Tony Anderson has seen the world of business change during
the last 30 years, and he likes it.
With building diversity becoming a more common theme on the
lips of executives, Anderson, vice chair and managing partner for
the Midwest region of Ernst & Young, feels ahead of the curve
with the large impact he’s made in his territory with the 3,500
employees under his charge.
That’s because Ernst & Young, the juggernaut professional
financial services firm with more than 120,000 employees in the
U.S., is looking to integrate its culturally evolving staff. Anderson
estimates that Ernst & Young will hire more than 20,000 people
across its U.S. regions in the next year, with only 30 percent
being white males.
“If you think about those numbers for a second, think about
what work force you just created,” Anderson says. “Your ability to integrate that work force into the different aspects of the
business is what’s going to make the difference between having an inclusive, engaged group of professionals or if you are
just going to have representation.”
Building diversity has long equaled the realization of many
company’s value systems, but Anderson says that few are
adapting to the cultural change in business by really valuing
new talent. He wants to make the integration process a business benefit for Ernst & Young so that the new work force can
be a boon instead of an attempt to meet representation goals
without substance.
“It’s about how you engage them and how you involve them
in all the different activities we have in the firm, and that’s
where we need to take the lead,” he says.
So he’s changed the strategy to one that constantly thinks
about that changing work force for the Midwest region of
Ernst & Young, a portion of the business that does more than
$1 billion in annual revenue. Anderson went to his team with
the business value of building a diverse team and then built
systems to not just create jobs for new employees but ensure
that they have an active role in the company. Beyond that, he
has a hiring policy that values life experiences to ensure that
the best candidates get jobs, regardless of their background.
Understand the business imperative
As much as Anderson would love to believe everyone out there
would attack business with more morality, he knows the key to
changing people’s minds on diversity is to address the business
imperative.
“I think for a long time there were people talking the talk but
nobody willing to walk the walk,” Anderson says. “And, in a lot of
ways, you could argue that there was no reason to, there was no
business imperative, there was nothing compelling other than
doing the right thing. Today, things are different, and they’re different because you have a work force that is changing, so that’s a
big thing.”
Not only has the work force changed but so have the expectations of the industry. In order to survive in the modern world,
Anderson says you have to know that clients and customers will
require a modernized staff from your company.
“On the other side of the coin, you have clients that are increasingly demanding a level of diversity in the way we serve their
account,” Anderson says. “Now you have that business imperative,
and that’s been the evolution in the last 30 years that has had a big
impact on this.”
That understanding is how you start building the cause at your
company. Anderson regularly plays off that evolving dynamic in
conversations about diversity at Ernst & Young.
“The way I talk about it and deal with it is I go to the heart of the
business issue and make sure everybody understands it,” he says.
“We’re all accustomed to business issues and problems, so I bring
it back to, ‘OK, here’s the dynamic in the market, here’s the dynamic in sources of talent; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out
we better get this inclusion thing right.’ I always go back to that.
We can talk about doing the right thing, and that’s an important element, but nothing hits home more than the business reality.”
When you start that dialogue with senior leaders, Anderson says
you will find that you’re not the only one who has thought about
how important changing your thinking will be to the future of the
company.
“The interesting thing about this is, broadly across the firm, people are being touched by one of those two things: Either their
client has asked for it, or they’re seeing the different people that
are going to be on their account look different than they do,” he
says. “So there are a lot of places where people are starting to be
personally touched around the issue and the importance of the
issue, and that’s the revolution that we’ve had.”
Think inclusion
Anderson is polite-natured, but he will tell you very sharply that
if you really want to change the framework of your company, you’ll
have to lose the word diversity.
“You use the term diversity, I want to use the term inclusiveness,
and I think they are very different,” Anderson says. “I always get
concerned when we talk about diversity that we’re talking about
representation, we’re talking about hiring, and I don’t think that
makes the difference in an organization’s culture. It’s how people
are valued, how people are engaged when they are here because
you can have a lot of representation and they can all feel pretty
angry about being there.”
That means the first step in inclusion is thinking about the fact
that a different work force requires different means. Today, it’s the
job of the employer to think about what employees will need to be
successful instead of holding up blanket standards for everyone.
For many companies that means considering flexible hours for
employees with children or ensuring that minority employees are
hired with the message that they will be encouraged to move up
the ranks.
“The way I think about it is, have you created for those different
kind of groups a culture where they can succeed?” Anderson says.
“If you think about women, they have a lot of different challenges,
so are we going to be engaging on those issues, or are we going to
ignore them? If you think about minorities, they often come with a
completely different background, so are you going to embrace that
background and let it be something additive to what we do, or are
you going to ignore it?
“We need open dialogue with the issues, so this will be talked
about in our leadership meetings, and it will be talked about with
all of our people directly.”
Beyond that discussion, Anderson knows you might have to give
some people a little push in the right direction. At Ernst & Young,
giving those opportunities is tied to managers’ performance
reviews. Though Anderson is happy to let each manager figure out
the best way to involve everyone, he ultimately sets goals for inclusion so the issue must be addressed. By surveying employees and
finding out where they fit in with the team, he is able to ensure that
everyone is getting a chance.
“You have to get granular here because this goes all the way
down to how we do performance reviews of people and what they
do every day,” he says. “I’m a real big believer in accountability —
that if we decide we’re going to do something, then we ought to
hold all of us accountable for making sure it happens. I set out
very specific goals, not hiring goals, but how we are going to
engage this topic and build it into the way we’re going to evaluate the performance of our people.”
By creating those opportunities, you not only exceed the evolving expectations of customers, you also get a happier employee.
Anderson has seen the direct effect of these opportunities.
“You have to provide outstanding opportunities for people,” he
says. “People are hungry to learn to grow, and if you have an environment that breeds those two things, I think it creates incredible
loyalty. The other thing is creating opportunities for people to
advance. If you have great opportunities for people, you create a
significant amount of loyalty. We have the highest retention we’ve
ever had in the firm today, and why do we have that retention? It
goes back to engagement.”
Anderson says that a different employee base comes up with the
innovation needed for the future.
“Like anything else, if you have different people talking about an
issue that are thinking about it differently, chances are you are
going to come up with a better solution,” he says.
Hire by talent
For all Anderson’s talk about including different groups in Ernst
& Young’s future, he doesn’t hire with any numbers in mind.
Instead, he says that you have to hire like you always hired — so
long as you are giving everyone an equal chance to earn a seat at
the table. That means opening the doors to all candidates, and not
having a fit in mind for a position but instead focusing on what
type of values and experiences you want from a candidate.
“On the hiring side, I have always had a philosophy of hiring the
best athlete,” Anderson says. “I’ve always believed you can do a lot
if you have incredibly talented people. Now, the only modification
to that I would make is if you have an incredible athlete that does-n’t believe in that value statement, I don’t think you can hire them.”
When Anderson sees that someone has the talents fitting of the
position he’s interviewing for, he spends more time checking in on
the candidate’s value system to make sure he or she aligns with the
future Ernst & Young is building.
“I talk to people, and as I engage with them, I’m always thinking
about looking for whether or not that person’s value system is
aligned with ours,” he says. “So, it’s the best athlete that has value
systems consistent with ours.”
In that conversation about values, he can get to the heart of
another matter that helps him sort out the best candidate: experiences. Whether he is hiring someone straight from college or
another senior leader, Anderson says experiences don’t come by
gender or background but by how you handled the lot you were
given.
“I typically go at it by talking about the experiences that they had,
so I ask what they did, why did they do it, and how they did it,”
Anderson says. “It tells me a lot about their value system. So I don’t
ask them directly about their value system, I pick at it from understanding the things they’ve done in their career or their college
experience, and when you talk about the what, when and how,
that’s how I build my own thinking around the value system.
Not only does the explanation of experiences and the value system
help you get a better feel for the employee’s fit for your company’s culture, but Anderson has noticed that it helps weed out candidates who
can talk a big talk without having the credentials to back it up.
“That’s where the art of interviewing comes in because people can
mislead, and I think that’s where you come in and really have to be
inquisitive about the things they’ve done,” he says. “And if you find
inconsistencies that should raise flags, then you match that up with
whatever feedback you get externally and look for inconsistencies to
find out if they really are what they say.”
HOW TO REACH: Ernst & Young, (312) 879-2000 or www.ey.com
