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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 you cover?
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 led – Learning Fridays.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:11 What Learning Fridays are and how they began
00:05:28 How leadership was convinced to implement the initiative
00:09:47 Building a learning habit within the organization
00:12:03 Why learning is crucial at EY
00:14:33 Diversity of topics and the most popular sessions
00:20:28 Challenges and lessons learned from the program implementation
00:25:16 Cross-cultural collaboration and the global development of Learning Fridays
00:28:49 Evolution and automation of the registration process
00:34:05 The program's impact on the organization and employee engagement
00:36:09 Challenges and benefits of large-scale development initiatives
00:43:46 Key success factors of the program
00:48:10 Trust and autonomy in leadership development
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 employee training and 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 is what 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 hide the fact that I was the one who started this program in our organization.
"Learning Fridays" is an initiative we launched 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 book any invitations into 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, because I won't hide the fact that the training agenda for our employees at EY is very rich, and we, as a company, really attach great importance to development, training, and upskilling. This is, first of all, a market requirement, but also, above all, our employees are simply hungry for and eager for knowledge. 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 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 across 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 pride ourselves on 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 really only take time off in August.
Dr Ewa Hartman: Exactly. And this immediately brings up more 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, which means that during the hours when the webinars are held—the live webinars—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 from their work to something else 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’s also important. The year 2021 was essentially the year we were emerging from the pandemic.
It was a moment 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. Indeed, there were a lot of those, I would say, harder, technical trainings that are mandatory in our organization. They transitioned from in-person training to e-learning.
There was a lot of that. Like most organizations, we conduct employee satisfaction surveys to hear what our people have to say. In 2021, among many other things, employees told us they didn't have time to learn. While our training offer was very extensive, they simply couldn't find the time for it. So, we started thinking about how to carve out that time for them. That’s how we came up with the idea—and when I say "we," I mean those of us working in training for the region, because it was a regional issue.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: So they don't have the time, but they want to learn, right?
Anna Łyjak: They want to, but they don't have the time. So we started looking for ways to help employees actually develop, because they want to. We wanted it to be voluntary, but to designate a specific day of the week or month when the organization truly dedicates time for learning and upskilling.
We started wondering, "Okay, maybe it could be one day." Of course, in dynamic organizations where so much is happening, finding that day isn't easy. Mondays are no good because client meetings and projects are just kicking off. Wednesdays aren't ideal either, as people are usually in the middle of client projects.
"Maybe we should try Fridays?" They might not be perfect, but we had to find a slot somewhere. That’s how we came up with "Learning Fridays." From 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM, we offer a total of 12 different topics, with 3 to 4 sessions running each hour.
We started with 9 topics, and now we're up to 12. From the very beginning, we emphasized that this initiative was about building a habit of learning among our employees. It’s incredibly important that they not only have the opportunity to learn but also the desire to do so. This approach of fostering a lifelong learning habit really took root, and employees wanted to take advantage of it.
We wanted to build that habit by offering freedom and flexibility in choosing topics. Everyone has the right to choose what they want. I think what made it unique was that from the start, we communicated that you could choose one, two, or three topics. You could join the webinar flexibly—take a break from work, grab a coffee and listen with headphones, go for a walk, maybe walk the dog, or just step away from your desk to listen to something interesting. Most importantly, it’s about what the employee themselves wants to learn.
We don't dictate anything; we don't say, "Today, we're only doing AI webinars." No. We give them the freedom to choose topics that interest them at that moment. I think one other thing that characterizes this initiative and sets it apart is that we announce the "Learning Fridays" agenda 10 days in advance.
Employees don't know the topics ahead of time; they find out on the 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 in today's world, it's hard to predict what our calendars will look like a month or two from now.
It used to happen quite often that when we organized various virtual training sessions and sent invitations well in advance, many people would accept, but only 30-40% would actually show up because something important would come up—a work task, a project, or a client request—and they simply couldn't participate.
So we thought, "Okay, if we let them know two weeks in advance, they'll be better able to manage their calendars and say, 'Yes, this is the moment I can sign up for this topic.'" Employees really benefit from this because they know the agenda is coming, and they know what they need at that moment.
I know right now that I need to learn more about stress management because I'm dealing with a stressful situation, or I know I'm interested in mindfulness, so I'll join the mindfulness webinar. Nowadays, I feel like there's so much going on around us and we're bombarded with so many e-learning courses and trainings that people sometimes don't know what to choose. But when we show them the agenda here and now, they can say, "Okay, I know I want to learn this."
Dr. Ewa Hartman: You mentioned a few things that really intrigued me. The habit of learning. Right? So you wanted to build a habit of learning. How important is learning in your organization?
Anna Łyjak: Learning is of colossal importance. 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.
First and foremost, the development of hard, technical skills is essential for performing one's job, but soft skills are just as important. We place great emphasis on this at every stage of a professional career and dedicate time to it. We are a learning organization, and I believe that in today's world, you cannot afford not to be one, because you constantly need to upgrade and adapt your qualifications.
Just a few years ago, artificial intelligence wasn't even a topic in employee development training, but now, organizations that don't provide training in this area risk falling behind. So, it is extremely important.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: We will talk about that in a moment. However, I would like to capture a few key points as a sort of "recipe for success."
So, we don't set anyone's calendar too far in advance because things are too dynamic and volatile. We release information shortly before the topics go live. There are plenty of topics—12 on any given Friday—so there is definitely a lot to choose from. I have a certain amount of freedom, and at the same time, I have permission to go grab a coffee, take a walk, or simply switch off if I need to.
In my experience—having had the pleasure of participating in this program from the other side—I know that leadership sets the example. I meet partners there, and that is certainly one of the reasons for the program's success. We know that the learning process is respected, valued, and appreciated at the top just as much as it is further down the organizational hierarchy.
And here we have these topics, just as you said. Anna, what are they like? I know there are over 300 of them, right? We have hard skills and soft skills—could you give a few examples?
Anna Łyjak: Of course, the list is very long because, over the past four years, we have managed to create a portfolio of over 340 topics. We divide these into categories based on various areas that are extremely important right now.
This includes, of course, artificial intelligence. When we first started introducing these topics, they were general discussions about AI. Now, we are diving much deeper, conducting workshops and webinars on specific tools, though not during every "Learning Friday."
We also cover wellbeing, which is a huge area. I think it’s probably the broadest category for our webinars, as we have sessions on stress management, brain management, and how the brain influences our actions. We have mindfulness and topics related to assertiveness, but we also have plenty of what we call operational topics—webinars on Excel, PowerPoint, and effective presentation skills. And, perhaps to your surprise, the most popular ones—which always shocks me—are the Excel webinars.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: Go ahead.
Anna Łyjak: We get 700–800 people attending, even when I think we’ve exhausted the subject and surely everyone knows everything by now. But the fact is, we really segment these thematic blocks well. Every "Learning Friday" topic is a live webinar, which I think is valuable for employees because it’s a moment when they can actually listen to someone in real-time and ask questions.
We always see participants who are active in the chat. But getting back to the topics—I won't list all 340, but there are many, including those on mental resilience. We once had an amazing webinar with a "guest speaker"—we invite them once a quarter for a single session at a specific time.
We had a speaker who talked about a very important topic right now: mental resilience. During the session, they shared their own experience with professional burnout. I think it was such a powerful and important message to pay attention to early symptoms so that you don't end up in that situation.
After that webinar, I received so many messages from employees saying it was a fantastic session that added so much to their lives. That kind of feedback is what keeps us going and encourages us to do more, and not to be afraid of difficult topics. Don't be afraid of those tough subjects, because there will always be someone for whom it is very important and who will want to benefit from it.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: Exactly, and which topics are "evergreen"? You mentioned Excel, but what else?
Anna Łyjak: Yes, Excel is "immortal." I think "immortal" topics are exactly those that deal with how to handle difficult situations. Assertiveness, communication, stress management, emotional management—these are topics that employees are always eager to explore, but there are also many new topics emerging that are becoming increasingly important to them.
We recently introduced a topic on healthy eating. It covered how to build good eating habits, but also how to prepare meals that don't require advanced skills or a lot of time. Among the "immortal" topics we've had since the beginning of our initiative is building client relationships and how to nurture them. But above all, in our consulting world, it's about how to build and sell our projects to clients. So, those are the kinds of topics we cover. The diversity of these subjects shows, I think, that there is something interesting for everyone—something that is relevant to them at any given moment.
Dr Ewa Hartman: Anna, what about the difficulties? I assume there were some. Maybe moments of doubt, or the feeling: "This is huge. I don't know if we can handle this." Was there anything like that?
Anna Łyjak: You know, Ewa, I think we believed from the start that this was innovative. We believed it was something different. As you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, I have over 20 years of experience in training, and I had never seen anything like this before. An initiative on this scale—but, of course, we didn't know if the employees would like it. We believed it could be cool and interesting because nothing like it existed, but we didn't know how the employees would react. I’ll touch on this here because you asked about the decision-makers: we had tremendous support from our leaders from the very beginning of this initiative.
I think there was a great deal of trust and a belief that this form and formula for employee development would be interesting for everyone. I believe that without that support, this initiative wouldn't have been such a success. When we first communicated that this was going to happen, we asked the managing partners in all 29 countries to send a message to their employees. We framed it as a new format and encouraged them: "As your managing partner, I encourage you to develop and participate. It’s not mandatory, so if you have the time and your Friday allows for it, please join in."
We also asked the managing partners to send a communication to all managers—essentially from manager level and up—saying: "Listen, this initiative is coming. Please allow your people to participate." And again, I repeat, it’s not every Friday. It’s not that every single employee attends "Learning Fridays" every other week. We have people who participate, for example, once a year, or every other "Learning Friday," or they see that there are so many topics that they’ll join three sessions at once and then not participate for half a year because they are on a project and don't have the time. But when they see they have the opportunity, they sign up and join.
So, this voluntary nature, without any pressure, is what convinced the decision-makers to give it a chance. When we started this initiative, we only had an agenda for three "Learning Fridays." Just three. That was only for a month and a half, and I didn't know what would happen next. It was a very—to use a trendy word—"agile approach" to this initiative. We wanted to see if employees would even want to participate. Would the format be interesting? Beyond just signing up, would they actually attend? Well, the moment we launched the first "Learning Friday," it was a day I still remember. I still remember that first "Learning Friday" because the whole team was just on the chat, watching how many people were logging in. The registration alone showed us there was huge interest, and for that first "Learning Friday," we had over 2,000 participants across 9 sessions, which was a lot.
It was a lot. Compared to when we tried to host various webinars and only 30, 50, or maybe 100 people would join, this was a huge success from the start in terms of numbers. And that was what we were really interested in—reaching everyone, because our region is very diverse.
We have countries that employ over 3,000 people, and obviously, the local offering there is very extensive, but we also have countries with only 100-200 employees where it’s difficult to organize so many different topics locally. So, our "Learning Fridays" slowly began to take on the role of a provider of training and webinars on various skills—not just soft skills or Excel, but all sorts of soft skills you could possibly imagine.
Dr Ewa Hartman: And how did you navigate the multicultural aspect of all this? You have people from Kazakhstan, France, Finland, and Turkey.
Anna Łyjak: Yes, you’re starting to list the countries that joined us recently. That’s also interesting—our initiative is so well-known within EY globally that last year, in 2024, we started working from January on expanding this initiative to other regions. Not just our region of 29 countries, but we actually began collaborating with two other regions.
At EY, we are divided into regions, and at the time, it was the Nordic and Western Europe region. Other regions then approached us, suggesting we scale it up. For me, that was a clear signal that this was a truly ambitious and successful initiative—the fact that other regions, where I also thought the offering was already very rich, wanted to join us.
We started working in January, and by September, our initiative had expanded to those two additional regions, effectively covering nearly 70,000 EY employees. I can say that since the very beginning of "Learning Fridays," we have had employees from over 65 countries. So, there is this multicultural aspect—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 in whatever interests them. There are plenty of platforms that help people around the world gain this knowledge, and we also see that regardless of where our employees are, their needs are similar. We provide such a diverse platform for acquiring these skills and exploring these topics that everyone can choose what is important and relevant to them at any given moment, and what they want to develop in. So, I think we manage this aspect of many nationalities and cultures very well through the rich offering we have on "Learning Fridays," where everyone can find something for themselves.
And as I say, I think everyone, regardless of where we are from or where our borders lie, if we work in the same organization, the skills and competencies we expect are the same everywhere.
Dr Ewa Hartman: So, wellbeing and Excel will be just as relevant in Central Asia as they are in Western Europe.
Anna Łyjak: Exactly, team management, managing a distributed team. We even have topics on emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence—how to work across different cultures—these are also topics from our "Learning Fridays." Topics like how to adjust your way of thinking, and even your brain, to how we work in these different dimensions. How to manage these various dimensions in terms of the diverse employees in our teams, as well as the cultures we find ourselves in.
Dr Ewa Hartman: If you were to do something differently—would you change anything? Now, with the knowledge and vast experience you have?
Anna Łyjak: We have been evolving since the very beginning of the initiative. It’s not like we created a product, it started working well, and we’ve just kept doing it the same way ever since. We are constantly changing, constantly trying to create innovative solutions within our platform. When we first started, employees signed up via an MS Forms survey. It was just a simple survey where they clicked, we downloaded reports, and that’s how we sent calendar invitations to those who signed up for the webinar.
Now, we have a great, automated platform that is visually beautiful. Everyone can see how many spots are still available for a given webinar. With one click, an employee signs up for what interests them. They can sign up for specific times and sessions, and they immediately see their entire schedule for the upcoming Friday. And before they even get to their Outlook, the calendar invitations are already waiting for them, so everything is fully automated. But we are always focused on the employee experience, on that "user experience," to ensure it is as good, engaging, and simple as possible.
We also want to make sure employees don't have to search for where to find this initiative. I think communication to employees is also very important, and over these past 4 years, we have built a brand and convinced our leaders that the way we run "Learning Fridays" is effective and that employees want to use it. We have permission to send communication to all employees across our entire region once a week.
Because I think that nowadays, employees are flooded with various topics in internal communications. We decided that when it comes to training, we would send information about "Learning Fridays" once a week. And, of course, those who want to sign up will, and those who can't, won't.
Dr Ewa Hartman: So, operationally speaking, the sign-up process is as simple as it gets. You can track your own development path, which contributes to building a learning habit—because when I see my progress, I’m more motivated to keep learning. At the same time, you send a gentle "ping" once a week to remind people the initiative is active, and it just keeps growing, right?
You mentioned a moment ago that new countries have joined, but do you think there’s something specific behind it? Have you heard any surprising feedback, beyond the fact that it’s a good and valuable program? What else has motivated additional participants to join?
Anna Łyjak: I think the entire thematic agenda we offer is very important. We change topics constantly; we mentioned Excel, but even when we do Excel, we introduce new aspects of it.
Whether we’re doing training or webinars on wellbeing, we’re always introducing new topics. I think we’ve reached a point with this initiative where we’ve built a brand—which is incredibly nice and satisfying for me—where employees come to us and say, "You know, I know this great trainer I’d like to recommend because they do fantastic webinars and workshops on a specific topic, and I haven't seen that topic on 'Learning Fridays' yet."
"Great! Let’s meet with that trainer or facilitator and discuss the topics." Additionally, employees come to us themselves and say, "You know, I have this cool topic that I’d like to lead myself. I’d like to share my knowledge in this area. Can I?"
Dr Ewa Hartman: So, there is an opportunity for employees to lead sessions?
Anna Łyjak: Absolutely.
Dr Ewa Hartman: Great.
Anna Łyjak: That’s why, as part of our "Learning Fridays," we have both internal and external facilitators. I think we’re at about a 50/50 split. We have a lot of internal facilitators. And, actually, our geographical expansion has meant that we now have facilitators from France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden—these are our own employees who want to share their knowledge in a specific area because they find it interesting, they specialize in it, and they want 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, let's start with where we began. We started because our employees told us they didn't have time to learn. Every year, we track how this metric performs in our employee satisfaction survey.
After just the first year, we saw a 6 percentage point increase, which was significant. It was a powerful way to show that the organization is actually listening to us and that we have the space to learn. Additionally, after every webinar, we send out a survey to our employees asking them to rate the initiative, the specific session, and what they would like to hear in future "Learning Fridays," so we have a constant source of inspiration from within.
The initiative hasn't lost momentum. It consistently maintains a rating of 4.7 out of 5, which is very high for an internal development program. This shows that employees want to participate and enjoy the initiative. Furthermore, each year we see an increase in the number of unique users—new people who hadn't participated before but joined this year.
This shows us that it's worth continuing to develop the platform. Personally, it’s extremely important to me that when I talk to employees—whether during our internal webinars or in-person training sessions—and I mention "Learning Fridays," almost everyone knows what it is, has joined a session, heard about it, or plans to participate. It has truly built an internal training brand.
Dr Ewa Hartman: You’ve developed many programs in your 20-year career, and this one is massive. We keep hearing about its scale. My question for you is: what do you see as the benefit and the challenge of such a large program compared to, say, just hosting a single webinar every now and then?
Anna Łyjak: Well, you know, a single webinar every now and then would be easy to organize and manage. The complexity of our "Learning Fridays" offering might make it seem like a massive machine that’s difficult to run. In reality, we manage this initiative with just one person on my team handling the organizational and operational side.
We have tremendous support from our team in Bulgaria, who help us with webinar registrations and ensuring all employees have these sessions in their training history. They also ensure the sessions run smoothly. We have dedicated people producing every webinar, so it is quite an undertaking. However, it gives me immense satisfaction to provide employees with such a diverse range of choices. A single webinar would be fine, but we actually have topics or external guests we invite once a quarter, and we still do it under the "Learning Fridays" umbrella. Interestingly, we’ve also managed to convince many countries that if they want to do something locally, they should consider doing it on Fridays as well.
Not on the "Learning Fridays" themselves, but on the alternating Fridays. This helps build the awareness among employees that Fridays are for learning—a time when I can discover something new. It’s also crucial that for the webinars we host—and I always tell our internal and external speakers this—we keep them to a maximum of 60 to 90 minutes. We don't do longer webinars because that’s the window where people can stay focused and carve out the time.
We also ask our speakers not to try to cram all their knowledge into that hour, but rather to choose two or three tools that employees can implement immediately after the webinar. We don't want to overwhelm them with so many tools that they finish the session with a headache. Instead, we focus on those few tools so that after 60 minutes, an employee walks away thinking, "Great, now I know three specific tools I can try out and see how they work."
As I mentioned, our initiative is very "agile." Unlike a planned, single webinar where we might spend weeks or months preparing content and debating the best delivery methods, we take a very agile approach.
I often get questions from speakers like, "Should we do a trial session? Should I run through the hour just like the actual webinar so you can listen and we can refine the content together?" I tell them, "No. I leave that to you—you are the expert in this field. Prepare the webinar, we’ll launch it, and see how it goes."
If employees tell us in their feedback that something worked or didn't work, or if they would like a different format, I’ll pass that on to you, and we’ll plan the next session in a few weeks or months to see how that works.
Dr Ewa Hartman: So, learning on the fly?
Anna Łyjak: Exactly. Or, for example, we introduce a completely new topic that hasn't been covered before. I don't know how the employees will react, but I only find out once I launch it. Employees either sign up for the webinar or they don't. So, we test different topics, and suddenly it turns out that while we expected hundreds of sign-ups, we get fewer than 100. Then we talk to the presenter—maybe we should have framed it differently, or maybe the description wasn't catchy enough? And so, we change it again. On the other hand, we've had topics where we thought, "Well, this is just a filler for the agenda, let's just throw it in," and it turns out 600 people sign up because it’s exactly what the employees need.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: Do you remember a topic like that? 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 had many such topics, but I think one that really stuck in my memory is how this initiative found its place within the entire EY ecosystem. A leader from our region, a leader in the financial services sector, came to us and said, "You know, Ania, you have these 'Learning Fridays,' and I’d like to tell the employees about our solutions in the financial services sector so they know what we do as an organization." I said, "Great! Let's do a webinar as part of 'Learning Fridays'."
Our leader prepared everything and invited his guests, so there were co-presenters. I was nervous about whether people would actually sign up, because if they had to choose between, say, creative problem-solving or a topic on social styles—how to communicate better—would a webinar on financial services solutions really captivate them? We had over 1,000 people at that webinar. It showed me how important it is to show employees what we do, and since then, we’ve been hosting these types of webinars so employees are aware of our work and our projects.
Another session that was popular—though I knew it would be—was the one dedicated to new areas, specifically AI and Copilot. We had over 800 people who wanted to learn how Copilot can help us work more effectively.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: I’d like to summarize the key elements I’ve picked up that might be interesting for those watching who are planning to implement a larger program in their organization. It’s about flexibility. It’s about having a wide range of topics available. The topics are 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—as well as difficult topics, really attract participants. It turns out that culture doesn't play as big a role as we think, because we are all dealing with universal challenges—our internal struggles and what the organization is doing. Plus, do everything to keep it simple, simple, and simple again, right?
Ania, I have a slightly different question for you now. If you were on the jury for a competition called "The Supportive Company" and you had to provide three criteria, what would you say? What does it mean to be a "supportive company"? What does such a company do?
Anna Łyjak: For me, first and foremost—because it’s so close to my heart—it’s a company that invests in development and training. It’s a company that isn't afraid of different training topics and thinks about development innovatively, trying to share knowledge with employees in various ways while strengthening their need for growth and their hunger for learning. I often repeat this during onboarding sessions for new employees: we learn our whole lives, and we must ensure we keep learning. 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 huge financial investment.
"Learning Fridays" isn't a large financial investment because, as I mentioned, the team managing the content consists of only two people. Of course, we have support from our Shared Services Center for the administrative side, but we have 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 knowledge, or who have acquired it over years of work. Let’s use their resources so they can share with others.
I think employees believe it more when they hear things from their colleagues because it means it’s useful in this specific workplace; it means it’s something they should focus on or can learn from. And I think the third thing—I won't be revealing anything new, but based on my experience—is that a supportive company listens and talks. It listens to what its employees have to say, but above all, it engages in a dialogue.
It’s not a monologue from one side or the other, where employees tell us what they need and we just do everything, or where we as an organization tell employees everything they have to do. It’s a company that maintains an internal dialogue.
Dr. Ewa Hartman: I’d like to ask you something more personal. Do you remember a situation where, when you think about it, you can say, "Yes, the company gave me huge support here"?
Anna Łyjak: I think for me, a huge source of support was those two moments in my career when I was entrusted with the role of learning leader for the entire region. That was the moment I realized that 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 various ideas I had previously implemented locally in my role at the EY office in Poland, now on a regional scale. So, that was a moment where I felt my work was truly appreciated. And ever since I initiated "Learning Fridays," I’ve been 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 managers who really 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 moments in our business when employees really don't have time to learn, for example, during the very intense period 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, then employees won't receive communications about 'Learning Fridays' so as not to distract them." But then, 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 on "Learning Fridays," and to the leaders. The leaders also see the flexibility in this approach; we don't force anyone, we don't mandate it as compulsory. Because there are times when you simply need to focus more on work, on our clients, and on 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, that we are constantly developing these topics. We already have new topics that have appeared since September. We take a break in August, but we do it on purpose to build a bit of hunger for it, 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 certainly try to ensure that just as this initiative has taken root in our region, the Nordic region—which joined us in July, effectively merging us into one Europe Central region across 33 countries—is fully integrated. But 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 presenters, but also for 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 present it?" I said, "Of course, absolutely. Let's hop 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 user experience and how important it is to us. We are working in August on a new version of our platform—even more refined, even more automated, both for users and for the people managing this 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 have information: from which countries, from which business lines. 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 shape of the program.
And 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 for the next "Learning Fridays," they will already see the one scheduled for two weeks later. It's not that we just came up with this, or that I decided we would do it this way; it's actually because employees told us in their feedback that they would like to see two agendas to 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. Of course, I wish you huge success. May the program continue to grow. The fact that you want to cultivate a habit of learning resonates with me incredibly well. 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." So, I know that 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.
