Celebrating Learning at Work Week 2022 – How can we make learning part of our DNA?

“When you’re working on exciting projects with talented people and have access to a plethora of learning resources, you’re certain to learn every day! Given the speed of innovation in Technology, I try to remain curious, and make the most of regular opportunities to learn and continue developing my skills.”

As we continue to operate in a growing and rapidly evolving industry, I quite often hear people talking about the best way to stay relevant, fresh and thrive at work. If you ask me, the answer is simple: remain curious and continue learning! Even in the current marketplace, we must still find the time to focus on our own learning and development and fuel the curiosity and passion that keeps us learning. But with so much going on, how can we actually do this?

One thing I am especially proud of at EY, is the extensive and exciting learning opportunities we offer to our Consulting team. Whether it be short learning courses to build understanding on one topic, or larger pieces of learning when working towards an EY Tech MBA or Masters – there really is something for everyone.

This week we are holding our UK-wide Consulting Learning Day; a whole day dedicated to gaining skills and knowledge needed for continuous development. Our UK&I Consulting team have been given the opportunity to build their own agenda and select learning courses individually, based on personal preferences and interests. I am absolutely delighted that we have also invested in providing an additional 4 learning days to everyone in UK&I Consulting – giving us all the time and space needed to prioritise our learning and meet our own development goals.

Our team have recently caught up with Jonathan McNaught, a Senior Manager in our Data & Analytics team, and our Technology Learning & Development Lead. We talked about our continued focus and commitment to L&D across UK&I Consulting, and how best to make the most of these opportunities, both during Learning at Work Week and on a day-to-day basis. Here’s what he had to say…

How do you bring learning into your everyday role?

“Since we’re all juggling lots of competing priorities, I think it’s important to recognise that learning comes in many forms. I learn a huge amount from everyone I work with on daily basis – especially given the different perspectives, experiences, and ideas that everyone on the team brings. I try to engage in other learning regularly – be that a podcast during a journey, reading thought leadership on LinkedIn, or something more formal like completing one of our EY Badges.”

“When people say they create a habit of learning and adopt a growth mindset, to me that is about recognising that we are all learning, constantly, and taking advantage of the many opportunities available.”

What the best learning you’ve done recently?

“I believe Data & Analytics has the potential to transform public services: providing the insight that enables informed decision-making and delivers value to UK citizens. I lead our community of Analytics Translators – we foster collaboration between technical and business teams to unlock new ways of creating value through analytics. This requires our people to combine skills including communication, storytelling, data science, data management, data strategy, product management, agile, business analysis, and business design – so I’m always looking to develop in these areas! “

“I recently really enjoyed a deep-dive course on EY’s Transformation Realized methodology which explained how Humans@Centre, Innovation@Scale and Technology@Speed are at the core of value creation. I’ve used this learning in the development of methods and approaches to support our Insight-led Transformation approach, demonstrating how Data and Analytics can transform businesses through the application of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.”

“As part of the work of our Technology L&D team, we have a variety of initiatives to point our people to relevant learning. An example is “Find 15 on Friday” where we circulate a suite of bite-size courses to the teams across Technology to encourage everyone to engage in regular learning – even if it’s just 15 minutes every Friday!”

Who inspires you?

“I’m inspired by all the individuals around me who are passionate about learning – be that the network of Learning Champions across our Technology business, the amazing colleagues who work in our central learning team, or my counselees and wider teams who engage in deep conversations about learning and development of themselves and others.”

“You might have realised by now that I’m passionate about learning, and I feel very lucky to be surrounded by talented individuals. This includes leaders who value learning and continue to engage with training themselves. This role models for all of us that we never stop learning and we’ll bring the best insights to our clients and each other if we dedicate time to learning and developing.”

Jonathan completely embodies a true learning advocate at EY, and between client commitments and leading the Technology learning team, he not only prioritises his own learning, but enables and empowers his colleagues to do so and adopt a growth mindset too. It is behaviours like these that really do make a difference and help us promote learning and development within our team. Maybe we should all be more Jonathan!

Personally, one thing I have noticed is that with increased remote working and less time spent connecting in-person, the informal learning and interactions that happen naturally in the physical workspace are easily forgotten. At EY, we have been working hard to solve that problem for all our colleagues and last year launched our Magnificent 6 Behaviours:

1. Be inclusive: include your team in client and stakeholder interactions
2. Be accessible: so people can learn from you
3. Be a connector: find opportunities for people to learn from each other
4. Build the network: establish a network of internal support and expertise
5. Encourage a learning culture: invest in making it happen
6. Invest in development: plan to develop your people on projects

As we continue adjusting to a hybrid world, these 6 key behaviours can be adopted by leaders anywhere and everywhere to promote learning, development and wellbeing, not just for individuals but across teams too. So, if there’s anything you take from this when building learning into your DNA – let it be one of these!

That’s enough from us, this week I really want to hear from and learn from you. After all, what better time to share tips and tricks to learn from each other than during Learning at Work Week?!

So, how do you bring learning into each day and keep fueling that curiosity? It would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments!