Peter H. Griffith is far from old, but he understands his employees today live in a different world than he did when he was starting his career at Ernst & Young LLP.
“I started in 1981,” he says. “That’s a different environment, and a majority of our people in our firm have started within the last five to six years, so when you think about those people, that does create a challenge.”
But that challenge is one Griffith, who today is vice chair and managing partner of the Pacific Southwest region, has actually spent a good portion of his career thinking about. He’s twice come back to the greener pastures at the professional services behemoth that employs more than 135,000 people, and he says the reason is simple.
“Ask anyone at the firm why they stay here, and they all say the same thing: Our people and the culture that they’ve created,” he says. “We’re very proud that we’re consistently recognized as a great place to work. I have the cover of BusinessWeek from last year where they named us the No. 1 best place to launch a career, and that means a lot to me, because I have a daughter graduating from UCLA, so I know students scrutinize these things.”
But while Ernst & Young continues to pile up best place to work accolades, Griffith can’t take his eye off his evolving work force. Beyond a more diverse employee base, the firm estimates that by 2010, approximately 60 percent of its client-serving work force will be from Generation Y, which is loosely defined as those born between 1980 and 1999.
So Griffith has taken a close look at the 2,200 people in his region and found out that flexibility is a key component of retention. He started by communicating to Gen Y employees on their level, created systems to promote flexibility and learned what it meant to be a leader who accepted the terms of a new work environment.
