How and why should you promote regular team training?

Software training or language courses are no longer enough in today's rapidly changing reality.

Both employers and employees increasingly feel that comprehensive, continuous development is a necessity today.

How can you ensure that training actually meets the needs of the company and its teams?

How can you coordinate education without compromising work efficiency?

What topics should be covered?

What mistakes should you avoid when organizing a webinar, and where can you get feedback after it ends?

These and many other questions Dr. Ewa Hartman answers Anna Łyjak, Europe Central Learning Leader at EY. Today's guest in our "Company That Supports" series has 20 years of experience in HR and has been leading training for a region covering 33 countries and nearly 27,000 employees for over 3 years. She will share, among other things, the secrets behind one of the largest projects she has managed – Learning Fridays.

1. 00:00:00 Introduction
2. 00:01:11 What are Learning Fridays and how did they start
3. 00:05:28 How leadership was convinced to implement the initiative
4. 00:09:47 Building a learning habit within the organization
5. 00:12:03 Why learning is crucial at EY
6. 00:14:33 Diversity of topics and the most popular sessions
7. 00:20:28 Challenges and lessons learned from the program implementation
8. 00:25:16 Cross-cultural collaboration and the global development of Learning Fridays
9. 00:28:49 Evolution and automation of the registration process
10. 00:34:05 The program's impact on the organization and employee engagement
11. 00:36:09 Challenges and benefits of large-scale development initiatives
12. 00:43:46 Key success factors of the program
13. 00:48:10 Trust and autonomy in leadership development
14. 00:51:25 What's next – future plans for Learning Fridays

Transcript

Dr Ewa Hartman: My guest has over 20 years of experience in HR, specifically in training and employee development. Throughout her career, she has provided consulting on training and qualifications, and has created development programs for employees at both local and regional levels. For over 3 years, she has been leading the training area for the entire region.

Currently, this covers 33 countries and nearly 27,000 employees. In 2021, she initiated the "Learning Fridays" development program, which we will be discussing today. Anna Łyjak, EY Europe Central Learning Leader, is someone for whom "the sky is not the limit." And why? We'll find out in a moment. Welcome, Anna.

Anna Łyjak: Hello. It's a pleasure to be here, Ewa.

Dr Ewa Hartman: We are here to talk about what I believe—though I haven't conducted a super-thorough study—is perhaps the largest development program on the planet: "Learning Fridays." Could you tell us a little bit about it?

Anna Łyjak: I'm very happy to hear you say that, because it really is a massive initiative, a very large undertaking, but also something very close to my heart, as I don't deny that I was the one who initiated this program in our organization.

"Learning Fridays" is an initiative we started in 2021. It's an initiative where every other Friday our employees can participate—and I emphasize "can," because it is completely voluntary. We don't force anyone, and we don't rigidly add any invitations to anyone's calendar. It is an initiative where they can sign up for live webinars.

As I mentioned, it takes place every other Friday, so, in fact, quite a few have taken place since we started. We have held over 70 "Learning Fridays."

Dr Ewa Hartman: Since the beginning of the program?

Anna Łyjak: Since the beginning of the program.

Dr Ewa Hartman: So, 70 Fridays, right?

Anna Łyjak: Yes, I would even say 78. Because we dedicated exactly 78 Fridays to the development of our employees. It was an initiative that initially seemed like it would be a small training project—and I won't hide the fact that the training agenda for our employees at EY is very extensive, and we, as a company, truly place great importance on development, training, and upskilling. This is, first of all, a market requirement, but above all, our employees are simply hungry for knowledge and eager to learn. So, it was a kind of platform to facilitate these trainings and enable the acquisition of additional knowledge on those Fridays.

Dr Ewa Hartman: And, Ania, roughly how many people have taken part in this program since it began? This is something that I think might surprise quite a few people.

Anna Łyjak: Yes, and I might also mention that the region where we launched this initiative is the Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe region, as well as Central Asia—so 29 countries, very diverse in terms of size and culture, where over 17,000 employees are employed.

I mention this historical context specifically because our region has grown a bit since July. However, as I mentioned, we have organized 78 such training Fridays, totaling over 750 live sessions.

Dr Ewa Hartman: 750 live sessions, that's right.  

Anna Łyjak: And there were over 133,000 participants in total.

Dr Ewa Hartman: That’s impressive, isn't it?

Anna Łyjak: It is impressive. I think it’s also impressive that this is one of the largest training initiatives at EY globally, because we are a global firm, and as I mentioned, we place a great deal of importance on development.

The offering is very extensive, but we take pride in the fact that, as a region, we are the only ones who actually do this so consistently. And, indeed, it happens all the time, without any breaks. We actually only take time off in August.

Dr Ewa Hartman: Exactly. And this immediately brings up further questions, and the questions are as follows.

The topic is the topic. The program is huge, it appears every other Friday, it has been running for several years now, and that means that during the hours when the webinars—the live webinars—are held, employees can take advantage of them, as you said, and they do, because we have thousands of people participating. And here is my question: how were you able to convince the decision-makers to allow such a large group of people to switch to something other than work every other Friday?

Anna Łyjak: Looking back, I think we managed to do it quite quickly. I think that, as we mentioned, we place a very high value on training and development, and our leaders really support that strongly. But maybe I’ll step back a bit in the history, because I think that matters too. The year 2021 was essentially the year of emerging from the pandemic.

It was a time when things hadn't quite returned to normal yet. At that time, the vast majority of our employees were working remotely, and training had to evolve; there was a lot of what I would call "hard," technical training that is mandatory in our organization. It shifted from in-person training to e-learning.

So there was a lot of that. We, of course, conduct employee satisfaction surveys, like most organizations, to hear what our employees have to say. And in 2021, among many other aspects, our employees told us that they didn't have time to learn. That the offering was very rich, of course, but they didn't have the time for it, so we started thinking about what we could do to provide employees with that time for learning. And that’s why we came up with the idea—and I say "we" as the people who worked in training in the region, because it was a regional problem.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: But they don't have the time, yet they want to learn, right?

Anna Łyjak: They want to, but they don't have the time. So we started wondering how to find the time for employees to actually develop, because they want to. We wanted it to be voluntary, but to set aside a specific day of the week or month when the organization actually dedicates time for learning, so that employees can upgrade their skills.

And we started thinking: "Okay, maybe it should be one day." And of course, it's not easy in dynamic organizations where a lot is happening to find that day. Mondays are no good because client meetings start right away and projects kick off. Wednesdays aren't the best either, because they are in the middle of client projects.

"So maybe let's try Fridays?" Maybe those Fridays won't be perfect, but we have to do something, we have to find that space somewhere. And we came up with the "Learning Fridays" idea. From 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM, we offer a total of 12 different topics, meaning we offer 3 to 4 topics each hour.

We started with 9, now we are actually up to 12 in total, but from the beginning, we said that this is an initiative where we want to create and build a learning habit among employees. Because it is extremely important that employees can actually learn, but also want to learn, and that this approach of acquiring a lifelong learning habit takes root in employees and they want to take advantage of it.

So, we really wanted to create this learning habit by giving freedom and flexibility in choosing topics. Everyone has the right to choose what they want, and I think what was also unique is that from the very beginning, in all our communication about this initiative, we said that you can choose one, two, or three topics. And you can join the webinar just as flexibly – whether you take a break during work, go grab a coffee and listen with headphones, go for a walk, maybe walk the dog, or just step away from your desk and listen to something else interesting. And above all, what the employee themselves wants to learn.

We don't determine anything, we don't say, "Oh, today there will only be webinars on artificial intelligence." No. We give freedom – choose the topics that interest you at that given moment. I think there is one more thing that is characteristic of this initiative and perhaps distinguishes it from others: we announce the "Learning Fridays" agenda 10 days in advance.

So employees don't know in advance what the topics will be or what will be on the agenda; they find out on the preceding Tuesday of the previous week that they can sign up for the upcoming "Learning Fridays," and that's when we announce the topics. The idea was that it's really hard for us to predict in today's world what our calendar will look like a month or two months from now on a Friday.

It very often happened that when we organized various types of virtual training and sent out invitations well in advance, many people would accept, but then only 30-40% would join because, as you know, something important came up—either at work, on a project, or with a client—and employees couldn't participate.

So we thought: "Okay, if we let them know two weeks in advance, we are more capable of managing our calendars and saying: 'Okay, this is it. This is the moment when I can actually sign up for a given topic.'" And employees actually use it that way because they know the agenda is coming, and they know what they need at that time.

I know at that moment that I need to learn more about stress management because I have a stressful situation, or I know that I am very interested in mindfulness, so I will join the webinar dedicated to mindfulness. In today's world, it seems to me that so much is happening around us and we are bombarded with such a large number of different e-learning courses and training sessions that sometimes people don't know what to choose. But when we show this agenda, here and now, I know that I want to learn this.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: You mentioned a few things that really intrigued me. The learning habit. Right? So you wanted to build a learning habit. How important is learning in your organization?

Anna Łyjak: Learning is of colossal importance, and I think we are an organization that places a huge emphasis on development and employee learning from the very beginning of their career and at every level.

Above all, the development of hard, technical competencies, which is essential for performing the job, but also soft skills. We really attach great importance to this at every stage of a professional career and allocate time for it, so it is a learning organization. I think that in this day and age, you cannot afford not to be a learning organization, because you have to constantly upgrade your qualifications and adapt them.

Just a few years ago, artificial intelligence was not a topic of employee development training at all, and now organizations that do not provide training in this area may go out of business somewhere. So this is extremely important.

Dr Ewa Hartman: And we will talk about this in a moment. However, I would like to catch certain things as a certain "recipe for success".

So we have this - we don't set anyone's calendar far ahead, right, because there is too much dynamics and too much variability. So, we release information shortly before the topics are released. There are a lot of topics, 12 on a given Friday, so there's definitely a lot to choose from. I have some freedom, but at the same time I have permission to go for a coffee or take a walk during this time, so that I can actually switch off.

From my experience, because I had the pleasure of participating in this program on the other side, I know that the example comes from above, because I meet partners and this is certainly one of the successes of this program. This means that we know that in fact this learning process is self-respected, respected and appreciated both at the top and a little lower in the organizational hierarchy.

And here we have these topics, just like you said. What are the botemats, Ania? I know there are over 300 of them, right? We only have hard ones, we have soft ones, could you give me some?

Anna Łyjak: Of course, the list is very long, because over the course of these four years, we have already managed to create such a portfolio of over 340 topics. And these are the topics that we divide into categories, from these different areas, which are extremely important now.

And this is, of course, artificial intelligence and also when we started introducing topics, these were topics that talked about artificial intelligence in general. We are already going very deep, we are already conducting workshops and webinars on specific tools. But, of course, not on every "Learning Fridays".

There are also topics in the area of ​​well-being, and that's a lot. I think this is probably the broadest area in which we organize webinars, because we have webinars on stress management, on managing your brain and how the brain influences our actions. We have mindfulness, we have topics about assertiveness, but we also have a lot of what we call operational topics, i.e. we have webinars on Excel, on PowerPoint, on effective preparation of presentations. And here, I may surprise you, but the most people interested - and this always shocks me - is that we have the largest registrations for Excel webinars.

Dr Ewa Hartman: You're welcome.

Anna Łyjak: And there were 700-800 people each, and it seemed to me that we had exhausted the topic here, that we really knew everything, and in fact we had the fact that we divided these thematic blocks very much. Because every topic on "Learning Fridays" is a webinar, as I said, live, which I also think is valuable for employees, because this is the moment when they can actually listen to someone live and ask questions.

We always see participants who are active in the chat, but let's go back to these topics, because indeed, I may not list 340 topics, but there are a lot of them, because we also have topics related to mental resilience in general. We once had such an amazing webinar with what we call a "guest speaker", because once a quarter we invite such "guest speakers" and then it is one session at a given time.

And we had a presenter who talked about what I think is a very important topic now, which is mental resilience. And during this session he talked about his burnout, his example of burnout. I think it was such a strong message and so important to pay attention to the symptoms that are there, that are happening earlier, so as not to lead to such a situation.

After this webinar, I received so many messages from various employees that it was such a fantastic session that contributed so much to the lives of these people, that such feedback, such comments are something that constantly drives us and encourages us to do more, but also not to be afraid of difficult topics. Don't be afraid of these difficult topics, because there will always be someone for whom it is very important and will want to benefit from it.

Dr Ewa Hartman: Exactly, and what topics are "immortal"? You said Excel, but apart from that?

Anna Łyjak: Yes, Excel is "immortal". I think that such "immortal" topics concern how to deal with difficult situations. Assertiveness, communication, stress management, emotion management. These are topics that employees are always happy to use, but there are also many new topics that are becoming more and more important for employees.

Recently we introduced the topic of healthy eating. And also how to create habits of good eating, but also eating that does not require much skill and time from us. Among the "immortal" topics that we have had since the beginning of our initiative, there is also the topic of building relationships with clients and how we can take care of these relationships. But above all, in our consulting world, how to build and also try to sell our projects to clients. So these are the topics. The diversity of these topics, I think, also shows that everyone can find something interesting, something that is important at a given moment.

Dr Ewa Hartman: Ania, what about difficulties? I assume there were some. Maybe moments of doubt, maybe a feeling of: "This is very big. I don't know how we will be able to bear it?" Was there such a thing?

Anna Łyjak: You know, Ewa, I think that we believed from the beginning that it was innovative. We believed it was something else. As you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, I have had over 20 years of experience in the field of training and I have never seen anything like this before. Such an initiative, on such a scale, but of course we did not know whether employees would like it. The fact that we believed that it could be cool and interesting, because there is no such thing, we did not know how employees would react. I might also make a connection here, because you actually asked a question about decision-makers. We had great support from our leaders from the very beginning of this initiative.

I think it was a lot of trust and belief that this form and formula of employee development, that it would be interesting for everyone. And I think that without this support, this initiative would not be such a success. Because at the beginning, when we announced that something like this would take place, we asked the managing partners in all these countries, 29 countries, to send communications to employees. That this is a new form, that we encourage it. "I encourage you, as a managing partner in a given country, to develop yourself, to participate. It is not obligatory, so if you have time and this Friday allows you, take part in it."

We also sent, and we also asked the managing partners to send, a communication to all managers, actually from the manager upwards, that: "Listen, there will be such an initiative. Let people take part in it." And I repeat, not every Friday, of course. It's not about the fact that every other Friday, all employees participate in "Learning Fridays". Because we have people who participate, for example, once a year, or participate in every other "Learning Fridays", or they see that there are so many topics that they will take part in three sessions at once, and then they will not participate for half a year, because they are on a project, they don't have time, and in fact, when they see that they have the opportunity, they sign up and participate.

So this voluntariness of the formula, without such pressure, is also what convinced the decision-makers to give it a chance. And when we started this initiative, we had an agenda for three "Learning Fridays". Just. There were only three Learning Fridays, actually for a month and a half, and I didn't know what would happen next. It was a very fashionable word "agile approach" to this initiative. Because we also wanted to see whether employees would want to participate in it or not. Will this formula be interesting? Will they participate in it, apart from signing up? And the moment we launched the first "Learning Fridays", it was such a day that I still remember it. I still remember that first "Learning Fridays", because my team and I were all just chatting, we were watching how many people were joining in, the registration itself showed us that there was a lot of interest, and at that first "Learning Fridays" we had over 2,000 participants in 9 sessions, which was a lot.

It was a lot. Compared to when we tried to do various webinars, with 30, 50, maybe 100 people joining in, this was actually a great success from the beginning, numerically. That is, what we were really interested in was reaching everyone, because our region is also very diverse.

We have countries that employ over 3,000 employees and it is known that the offer there, also local, is very large, but we also have countries where there are 100-200 employees and there it is difficult to organize so many different topics locally, so our "Learning Fridays" slowly began to take over the function of a provider of training, webinars in the area of various skills, not only soft skills, not only Excel skills, but also various soft skills, whatever we can imagine.

Dr Ewa Hartman: And how did you find multiculturalism in all this? The people are from Kazakhstan, France, Finland and Turkey.

Anna Łyjak: Yes, you are now starting to list the countries that have recently joined us. Because this is also interesting, our initiative is so popular at EY around the world that last year, in 2024, in January we started working on extending this initiative to other regions. Not only this region of ours, 29 countries, but we have actually started to cooperate with two regions.

At EY we are divided into regions and at that time it was the Nordic region and Western Europe, so subsequent regions contacted us to start doing it on a larger scale. So this was already a signal for me that this was truly a grand and successful initiative. That other regions, where it seemed to me that this offer was also very rich, are joining us.

And we started working in January, and in September our initiative actually expanded to these next two regions, so we actually cover almost 70,000 EY employees. And I can say that now, since the beginning of our "Learning Fridays" activity, we have had employees from over 65 countries. So this multiculturalism is - and how do we manage it?

I think that nowadays access to knowledge and training is available from anywhere in the world. Everyone can develop properly in what interests them. There are plenty of platforms that help people around the world acquire this knowledge, and we also see that no matter where our employees are, these needs are similar, but also that we provide such a diverse platform for acquiring these skills and these topics. Everyone chose what was important to them at a given moment and what they would like to develop. So here, I think, this aspect of many nationalities and cultures - we manage it very well through this rich offer that we have on "Learning Fridays" and everyone can find something for themselves.

And as I say, probably all of us somewhere, regardless of where we are from, where our borders are and also, if we work in one organization, the skills and competences we expect are the same everywhere.

Dr Ewa Hartman: Wellbeing and Excel will be important both in Central Asia and Western Europe.

Anna Łyjak: Exactly, team management, distributed team management. We even have topics on emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, or how to work in different cultures, these are also topics from our "Learning Fridays". Topics such as how to adapt your way of thinking, but also your brain, to how we work in these different dimensions. How to manage these different dimensions in terms of diverse employees in our teams, but also the cultures in which we find ourselves.

Dr Ewa Hartman: And if you had to do something differently, would you do something differently? Now, with this knowledge and this vast experience?

Anna Łyjak: We have been constantly evolving since the beginning of the initiative. It's not like we created a product and it started working great, we will continue to do it this way all the time. We are constantly changing, we are constantly trying to create some innovative solutions on our platform. When we first started, employees signed up via a survey in MSForms. Well, it was just a simple survey where they clicked, we downloaded reports and in this way we sent calendar invitations to people who signed up for this webinar.

Now we have a great, automated platform, graphically and visually beautiful. Everyone can see how many places are still available in a given webinar. With one click, an employee signs up for what interests him. He can sign up for specific hours, for specific sessions, and he can immediately see his entire schedule, what he signed up for next Friday. And before he can go to his Outlook, there are already calendar invitations waiting for him, so everything is already automated. But we constantly pay attention to the employee's experience, this "user experience", to make it as good, interesting and simple as possible.

So that employees do not have to look for where to find and how to find this initiative. I think that this communication between employees is also very important and over the course of 4 years now we have achieved this, built such a brand and also confirmed our leaders in the belief that the way we do these "LearningFridays", that it is good and employees want to use it. And we are allowed to send communications once a week to all employees in our entire region.

Because I also think that nowadays employees are bombarded with various topics in internal communication. We agreed that when it comes to training, we will send this information to employees about "Learning Fridays" once a week. And of course, those who want to sign up will sign up, and those who can't will not sign up.

Dr Ewa Hartman: So operationally - the provisions are as simple as possible. You can watch your development path, which means that you contribute to building a learning habit, because when I see my progress, I will be more willing to learn. At the same time, you remind us with such a gentle "ping", once a week, that the initiative exists, and the initiative is constantly growing, right?

You just mentioned that new countries have arrived, but do you think there is something special about it? Maybe you received some surprising information apart from the fact that it is a good and valuable program? What else prompted additional participants to join in?

Anna Łyjak: I think that the entire thematic agenda that we offer is very important. Because we change topics, we mentioned Excel all the time, but even when we use Excel, we introduce new topics from Excel.

If we do training or webinars in the area of ​​wellbeing, we are constantly introducing new topics. I think we are already at that point with this initiative and we have built such a brand, which is very nice and very satisfying for me, that employees turn to us and say: "You know, I know a cool trainer who I would like to recommend because he does great webinars and workshops on a given topic, and I have never seen such a topic on "LearningFridays".

"Great! Well, let's meet the trainer, the leader, and talk about the topics." Additionally, employees come to us and say: "You know what, I have a cool topic that I would like to run. I would like to share my knowledge in this area. Can I?"

Dr Ewa Hartman: So is it possible that employees can drive?

Anna Łyjak: Of course.

Dr Ewa Hartman: Great.

Anna Łyjak: Therefore, as part of our "Learning Fridays", we have both internal and external instructors from the organization. I think we are at that level - 50/50. So we have a lot of internal leaders. And also, our geographical spread means that now we have presenters from France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, but these presenters are our employees who would like to share their knowledge in a given area because it is interesting for them, this is what they specialize in, they would like to share it with others.

Dr Ewa Hartman: Are you able to determine what impact this program has on the organization?

Anna Łyjak: As I mentioned, that's where we started. We started with employees telling us they didn't have time to learn. And, in fact, every year we check how this indicator fares in our employee satisfaction survey.

After the first year, we had an increase of 6 percentage points, which was a lot. It really went a long way to show that the organization actually listens to us. We have this space to learn. Additionally, of course, after each webinar, we still send a survey to our employees, asking them how they rate this initiative, how they rate a given session, what they would like to hear on the next "Learning Fridays", so we also have a source of these inspirations from within.

And this initiative does not weaken. She still has a 4.7 on a scale of 1-5. This is very high for an internal development initiative. So we also see that employees want to like this initiative and want to take part in it. Additionally, every year we have an increase in the so-called uniqueusers, i.e. those new people who did not participate before but joined this year.

This also shows us that it is worth developing this platform. Moreover, for me, personally, it is extremely important that when I talk to employees somewhere, whether at our internal webinars or training courses that we have on-site somewhere, and I mention the slogan "Learning Fridays", practically everyone knows about it, has participated in it somewhere, heard about it, or plans to participate. So this is something that, as I mentioned, we've already built this training brand internally.

Dr Ewa Hartman: You have developed many programs in your 20-year career and this one is very big. We hear all the time about how big he is. My question to you is this - what do you think is the benefit and challenge of a large program? Such a large program and, say, one webinar every now and then?

Anna Łyjak: You know, one webinar every now and then, I think it would be so easy to organize and manage. The comprehensiveness of our "Learning Fridays" offer may seem like something very big, a huge machine that is difficult to organize. We are actually organizing this initiative, actually, now there is one person in my team who handles this topic organizationally and operationally.

We have enormous support from our support team that we have in Bulgaria, i.e. people who also support us in registering all these webinars, so that all employees have it in their training history. But also that these sessions run freely and well. We have people who produce each webinar, so it is some kind of enterprise and machine. However, for me personally, it gives me great satisfaction that we can give our employees such a variety of choices. And this one webinar would probably be good and interesting if it took place once in a while. And we actually sometimes have topics that, or external guests that we invite once a quarter, but we still do it as part of "LearningFridays". And I think what's interesting is that we also managed to convince many countries that if you want to do something locally, maybe do it on Fridays.

Not on Fridays when it's "Learning Fridays", but on every other Friday. To continue to build awareness among employees that Fridays are training Fridays where I can learn something. And it is also very important that in our webinars that we do, and also - whenever I talk to presenters who join our initiative, both internal and external - I always say: "This is a live webinar. It lasts from 60 to a maximum of 90 minutes." We do not do longer webinars. Because this is the moment when people still have the opportunity to focus on the content, when they are not distracted, and when they can spare that hour somewhere.

But we also ask the presenters not to try to convey all their knowledge in this hour, but to choose two or three tools that employees will be able to implement after this webinar. That is, in order not to overwhelm them with the multitude of different tools, that when they finish this webinar their heads will be bursting with the topics they learned about, just to choose those few tools where, in fact, we will spend 60 minutes on it, and then the employee will say: "Indeed. Now I know that I can try to implement the first, second, third tool and see how it works."

And, in fact, our initiative, as I said, is very "agile". We, unlike this planned, one-webinar, where we would probably prepare the entire content of this webinar for several weeks or months, discuss various forms, how to best convey it - we, again, approach it in a very "agile" way.

I often have questions from the presenters: "But listen, are we going to do a trial session? That, you know, we'll be here, and I'll talk about this hour just like during this webinar? You will listen to it, and then we'll refine this content together?" I say: "No. I leave it to you - you are an expert in this area, a specialist. Prepare this webinar. We will run it and see how it works."

If employees tell us in the feedback that this, this, this worked and something didn't work, or they would like to hear this form a little differently, I will tell you this and we will plan another session in a few weeks or months and we will see how it works.

Dr Ewa Hartman: So learning on the fly?

Anna Łyjak: Of course. Or, for example, we post a completely new topic that did not exist before. I don't know how the employees will react to him, but I'll only find out when I let him go. And employees will either sign up or not sign up for this webinar. So we post various topics, and suddenly it turns out that we thought there would be hundreds of entries, but there are less than 100. So we talk to the host that maybe we should have worded it differently, maybe there was something not so catchy in the description? Well, we're changing again. And in turn, we also had topics where we thought: "Okay. This will be, to put it nasty, fill a hole in the agenda, we'll post it." But it turns out that 600 people signed up and that's what employees need.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: Do you remember that topic? Besides Excel, of course.

Anna Łyjak: I wouldn't want to focus too much on Excel, so our viewers don't think that's all we do. We've covered many topics, but one that really sticks in my memory is how this initiative found its place within the entire EY ecosystem. A leader from our region, the head of the financial sector, came to us and said, "You know, Ania, you have these 'Learning Fridays'—I’d like to tell our employees about our financial services solutions so they know what we do as an organization." I said, "That’s a great idea! Let’s do a webinar as part of 'Learning Fridays'."

Our leader prepared everything and invited guests to co-host. I was nervous about whether people would actually sign up. After all, if they had to choose between, say, creative problem-solving or a session on social styles and better communication, would a webinar on financial sector solutions really excite them? We had over 1,000 people attend. It showed me how important it is to show employees what we do, and since then, we’ve continued to host these types of webinars so everyone stays informed about our work.

Another session that was very popular—though I knew it would be—was the one focused on new areas like AI, specifically Copilot. We had over 800 people join that one, all eager to learn how Copilot can help us work more effectively.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: I’d like to summarize a few key points I’ve picked up that might be interesting for those watching who are planning to launch a larger program in their own organization. It’s about flexibility and providing a wide range of topics. The subjects can be both hard and soft skills.

As you mentioned, even topics that might seem like they’ve been covered many times—like Excel, but also emotions, stress, and burnout—or even difficult subjects, really draw people in. It turns out that cultural background doesn't matter as much because we’re all dealing with universal challenges, both internal struggles and organizational changes. Plus, do everything you can to keep it simple—simple, simple, and simple again, right?

Ania, I have a slightly different question for you. If you were on the jury for a competition called "The Supportive Company" and had to choose three criteria, what would they be? What does it mean for a company to be "supportive"? What should such a company do?

Anna Łyjak: For me, because it’s so close to my heart, a supportive company is one that invests in development and training. It’s a company that isn’t afraid of different training topics and thinks about development in an innovative way—trying to share knowledge with employees through various channels while fostering a hunger for learning. I often tell new hires during onboarding that we learn our whole lives and must keep doing so. We shouldn't reach a point where we stop learning, because that’s a sign that it’s over. If we don’t want to keep learning, we aren’t growing. So, first, a company that invests in development—but as the "Learning Fridays" example shows, it doesn't have to be a massive financial investment.

"Learning Fridays" isn't a huge financial investment because, as I mentioned, the team managing the content is just two people. Of course, we have support from our Shared Services Center for the administrative side, but we have so many internal presenters. So, I would say the second criterion for a supportive company is leveraging internal resources. We have wonderful employees who come with great experience or have gained knowledge over years of work. Let’s use their expertise to share with others.

I think employees trust information more when it comes from their colleagues because it proves that the knowledge is practical and relevant to their workplace—it’s something they should focus on or can learn from. And I think the third thing—and I’m not discovering anything new here, but based on my experience—is that a supportive company listens and talks. It listens to what its employees have to say, but most importantly, it engages in a dialogue.

It’s not a monologue where employees tell us what they need and we just do it, or where we, as an organization, tell employees exactly what to do. It’s a company that maintains an internal dialogue.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: I’d like to ask you something more personal. Can you recall a situation where you thought, "Yes, the company really supported me here"?

Anna Łyjak: For me, a huge source of support was the two moments in my career when I was entrusted with the role of learning leader for the entire region. That was when I realized the company truly placed great trust in my knowledge and experience, believing I could handle it. They also trusted my constant creativity and drive to invent new things, giving me the freedom to unleash the ideas I had previously implemented locally at the EY office in Poland on a regional scale. It was a moment where I felt my work was truly appreciated. Since then, when I initiated Learning Fridays, I was also trusted that this idea and initiative could thrive within such an organization. I was given a great deal of freedom to develop it. I think if I hadn't had supervisors who trusted and believed in what we wanted to do as a regional team, this initiative probably wouldn't exist.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: So, trust, a great deal of autonomy, and at the same time, the opportunity to use your unique competencies and skills.

Anna Łyjak: Yes, I think it's also important that we try to listen to our employees, we bring up topics that are relevant to them, and we also talk to leaders about how they perceive this initiative.

You know, there are times in our business when employees really don't have time to learn, for example, during the very busy season for auditors when they have to complete all the formalities regarding financial statements for our clients. In those cases, we agree with the team leaders: "OK, employees won't receive communications about Learning Fridays then, so as not to distract them." But in the following months, they are more than welcome to participate.

So, I think we listen to each other—both to the employees, hearing what they want to hear at Learning Fridays, and to the leaders. The leaders also see the flexibility in this approach; we don't force anyone, and we don't make it mandatory. Because there are times when you simply need to focus more on your work, our clients, and our projects.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: And what's next, Ania? What are your plans for the future?

Anna Łyjak: Plans for the future? I think the plans are, first of all, to keep developing these topics. We already have new ones that have appeared since September. We take a break in August, but we do it on purpose to build a bit of hunger, and then we have what we call "back to school" in September, where we return to training. So, in the next period starting in September, we will definitely try to ensure that just as this initiative has taken root in our region, the Nordic region—which we joined with in July, making us one Central Europe region across 33 countries—will also benefit. We also want the Europe West region to benefit from our initiative just as strongly.

What's next? Again, I think a great success of this initiative is that we are at a stage where presenters come to us. We actually have a waiting list of people who would like to lead webinars for our Learning Fridays. A waiting list for both presenters and topics. Just last week, I was talking to a colleague from our organization, and she said, "You know, Ania, I have this topic. I've already presented it as a webinar for employees, but I think it's very interesting, and I haven't seen it on Learning Fridays. Could I lead it?" I said, "Of course, absolutely. Let's get on a call, set a date that works for you, and we'll put it on the agenda."

So that's one thing, but I also mentioned how important user experience is to us. We are working throughout August on a new version of our platform, making it even more refined and automated, both for users and for the people managing the initiative—the leaders. We are working on very modern tools that will allow us to analyze data, using data analytics, and we are introducing real-time reporting. Because when we are doing this for over 60,000 employees, we really need to know which countries and business lines are involved. Until now, these were more Excel-based reports, but now we really need to see which topics are trending in real-time and what the feedback is so we can decide what to introduce next. Since we already have over 340 topics in our portfolio, we need access to data to make better decisions about the future.

Another new feature is that we are now allowing employees to sign up for two Learning Fridays at once, not just one. They will see a rolling agenda, so they will be able to see the next Learning Friday two weeks in advance. It's not that we just came up with this, or that I decided it, but employees actually told us in their feedback that they would like to see two agendas so they could sign up in advance, because otherwise they forget, it slips their mind, and the session passes them by when they wanted to participate.

Dr. Ewa Hartman: Ania, thank you so, so much. I wish you tremendous success. May the program continue to grow. It resonates incredibly well with me that you want to cultivate a habit of learning. I think these are times when we absolutely cannot step off the path of learning. There is a beautiful saying: "In times of change, the world belongs to those who learn, while those who have learned belong to a world that no longer exists." I know you are here and you are constantly a pioneer in development. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and will be watching what happens next. Thank you very much.

Anna Łyjak: Thank you, I'll be happy to share how the initiative is developing in a while. Thank you very much.

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