EY fired dozens of US staffers for taking multiple online training courses at a time, according to a report.
The “Big Four” accounting firm claimed the employees had cheated, while staffers said the incident was just a result of the task-heavy work culture encouraged by the firm.
The company terminated employees last week after an investigation found some staffers had joined more than one online training class at a time during “EY Ignite Learning Week” in May, according to the Financial Times.
Several of the fired employees told the Financial Times they did not think they were breaking company policy by attending multiple trainings at once.
The training courses – which included topics like “How strong is your digital brand in the marketplace?” and “Conversing with AI, one prompt at a time” – counted toward the 40 continuing professional education credits that EY employees are required to complete in a year.
But EY said taking more than one training at a time violated the firm’s ethics policies.
“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. “EY US has terminated individuals who, after thorough investigation, were found to have violated our Global Code of Conduct and US Learning Policy.”
Despite the company’s history, staffers said EY’s reaction was extreme and unfair, claiming they had no idea that watching multiple trainings at the same time was against company policy.
“Their emails marketing EY Ignite actually encouraged us to join as many sessions as our schedule allowed,” one staffer who was fired 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 to separate myself from others.”
A second staffer who was fired said the firm itself “breeds a culture of multitasking.”
“If you are forced to bill 45 hours a week and do many more hours of internal work, how can it not?” the person said.
A third staffer pointed out the hypocrisy of punishing employees for multitasking.
“I know a partner who will do two [client] calls and switch their camera on and off depending on who he is talking to,” the staffer said. “If this is unethical, then that is unethical, too.”
EY is likely sensitive toward the arguable ethics breach since it was thrust into a scandalous limelight just a few years ago.
In 2022, EY admitted hundreds of its employees had cheated on their certified public accountant exams – and that the company withheld key evidence of the tampering from regulators.
The accounting firm was ordered to pay a whopping $100 million penalty – the largest fine ever levied against an audit firm, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Some employees took to Fishbowl, an anonymous messaging service for employees to review – and rant about – their companies.
Staffers questioned whether EY held any responsibility for the multitasking scandal, since its system allowed multiple training sessions to be open on Zoom at once and counted overlapping course credits.
Another Fishbowl user called EY’s response “just bizarre.”
“Perhaps reduce their rating, deduct bonus, or even delay promo, but simply terminating them effective immediately is just cruel,” the user wrote. “If this was so important, then implement better systems.”
The firm has since changed its language for future EY Ignite training weeks.
“You should not take any other learning while completing this activity,” EY wrote in an email to staffers ahead of a training event in August.
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