At EY Canada, Jeannine Pereira helps design programs that prepare employees to lead, whether they stay with the firm or move on to new roles.Nick Kozak
Baby boomers are still sitting on board seats. Gen X and elder millennials are stepping into senior roles. Gen Z is redefining what work looks like.
Which means Canadian companies are facing a new challenge: How to build leadership pipelines that work across generations. At EY Canada, that challenge starts before employees join the firm, and it continues long after they leave.
“We grow people to be leaders, whether they stay with us and become a partner or a director — or an equity partner, or an executive director — or they go out in the market and become an entrepreneur or executive that leads another organization,” says EY Canada’s chief learning and development officer Jeannine Pereira. “We’ll actually deliver workshops to university students before they join, and then after they leave we offer networks and learning opportunities to EY alumni.”
Leadership training at EY Canada is not limited to those in management positions. Ms. Pereira describes it as more about mindset and character. Employees are automatically enrolled in programs designed to hone those skills throughout their time with the organization.
Interns, for example, are put through a foundational program called Luminate Academy, where they’re given technical, soft and leadership skills training.
“After you’ve been at EY for three years, you’re given the ‘new seniors program’ where you learn coaching, delegation and counsellor excellence; how to coach people, how to engage them, how to motivate them,” Ms. Pereira says. “When they make manager, usually around the five-year mark, we have another program called ‘horizons,’ and there we celebrate your leadership and offer things like keynote speakers for inspiration, or updates on the latest technologies.”
Even at the partner level, development continues. These employees are offered additional training through a partner workshop with global peers, complete with educational sessions and keynotes from global business leaders.
Maintaining the company’s long-standing commitment to leadership development in an increasingly multigenerational workforce has challenged EY Canada to deliver that education in new and creative ways.
“For Gen X and boomers, mentorship is usually face-to-face, maybe over coffee, but the newer generation is more used to working virtually and flexibly,” Ms. Pereira says. “Mentoring has also traditionally been about sharing advice with someone at a lower level, but we offer reverse-mentoring where younger people can share their knowledge and experience.”
The professional services company doesn’t explicitly cater leadership development programs to individual generations, but it has expanded how it offers that training to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse workforce.
“We don’t consider it from a generational standpoint, but we do try to accommodate different learning styles,” Ms. Pereira explains. “For example, we have more podcasts where you can learn different topics, which has seen lots of uptake, but that doesn’t mean boomers didn’t prefer it to a classroom, they just never had the option.”
Across the country, organizations are navigating similar challenges — trying to train future leaders while meeting the needs of a workforce that spans decades in age and experience. Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice-president of global recognition and research at Great Place To Work, says the highest-performing companies are those that adapt their learning models and communication styles.
“Over all, among the ‘best companies,’ what we see is a variety of approaches to learning and communication,” she says. “In the ‘best companies’ I also see increasing attention on neurological differences, and helping leaders understand how to communicate with those different audiences.”
Companies that consistently rank as top workplaces also tend to set clear expectations around values and behaviours, she adds. They connect career planning and skill-building to something larger.
“Purpose is a top driver for all generations, but we found that Gen Z is 3.6 times more likely to stay at their organizations when they believe their work is meaningful and more than just a job, so connecting work to that larger purpose is a skill leaders need to develop,” Ms. Lewis-Kulin says.
The finding is consistent with research that shows Gen Z is less interested in management than other generations. Young people are more likely to prioritize mental health and wellbeing, something that has traditionally been sacrificed in pursuit of leadership responsibilities.
“A lot of them simply do not want it because they’re not confident they can manage their wellbeing and stress with a heavy workload,” says Eddy Ng, a professor of equity and inclusion at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business. “That makes it a lot more challenging to appeal to this group of younger workers to take on leadership roles.”
Getting the next generation excited about leadership, Mr. Ng adds, will require organizations to evolve.
“Millennials tend to glorify work, taking a page from their boomer parents, and in that sense leadership development programs are more about giving them responsibilities over time: They thrive on challenges, promotion and recognition,” he says. “You can’t glorify work in selling leadership to Gen Z. They’re not looking for that. They’re looking to do something meaningful.”
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