On Aon Insights: Resilience Across Industries

On Aon Insights: Resilience Across Industries
August 7, 2023 7 mins

On Aon Insights: Resilience Across Industries

On Aon Podcast: Measuring Wellbeing

Episode 5 explores the journey of workforce resilience across the finance and technology industries, how to approach the transformative power of AI and the tactics that result in the greatest impact in workforce resilience plans.

Key Takeaways
  1. There are varying priorities that affect an industry’s approach to workforce resilience.
  2. In this episode, experts discuss effective responses to the increasing demand to build a resilient workforce.
  3. Tune in to listen to various examples of the importance of workforce resilience in the tech industry.

Sheena Singh:
Welcome to the On Aon Insights Podcast, where we explore the hot topics surrounding the issues that matter to you. Today our world is more volatile than ever, overloaded by data and compounded by complexity and uncertainty. Important decisions are often being made without the right information, the right insight and more importantly, the right advice. This is where we come in. From traditional areas like managing volatility, retirement and health to new challenges like environmental, social and governance factors, technological and digital disruption, we'll bring together Aon thought leaders, industry subject matter experts and senior business professionals to give you the clarity and confidence to make better decisions.

I'm Sheena Singh, senior vice president in our healthcare industry vertical, and it's great to be with you for this, the first season of On Aon Insights, where we take a deep dive into the issues that matter to the world's business leaders. This season, we're exploring workforce resilience with episodes featuring insights from Aon experts about the new world of work and the ways organizations can take action now to create an empowering work culture.

In our last few episodes, we've explored multiple angles on workforce resilience. But what about different industries? Does resilience mean something different depending on where you work? Organizations in different industries may have different priorities and targets such as cutting costs or pushing for growth. All of this has an influence on how a business approaches workforce resilience. For example, consider the financial sector. Historically, financial institutions have been focused on optimizing costs, so they may be prioritizing upskilling and reskilling rather than hiring new talent, as it's more cost-effective. That builds a certain kind of resilience. On the other hand, the technology industry has been focused on growth. They've typically prioritized hiring new talent with expansive benefits and rewards, another kind of resilience. Ishita Goel, director at Aon Human Capital Solutions, says this results in different approaches to workforce resilience. But the goal and the journey is similar.

Ishita Goel:
For all organizations, the ability to consistently drive growth while taking into consideration the nuances of the changing external dynamics, the workforce compositions, how and where to attract talent from, the different kind of challenges that organizations are facing today, it's important for them to continue to focus on building workforce resilience. It's not one action to be taken at a particular point in time, but a series of actions.

Sheena Singh:
How have these two industries weathered the events of the last few years? Banks have been around for a long time and in the last couple of decades, gone through some really turbulent times. They're continuing to think about efficiency, so they often focus on their employee value proposition and retaining talent. And more and more, they're thinking about this as a holistic strategy, which helps them stay strong and secure. Until the last few years, the tech industry had established themselves as the place to work, so they focused on expansion and culture. But recently, tech companies are finding this isn't working. The costs are unsustainable, and many companies must now reckon with layoffs as volatility sets in. This, as Ishita explains, has created a fascinating situation where the tech industry may look to banks as an example to follow.

Ishita Goel:
The technology industry until last year was the employees' choice as the place to work. However, they have started to understand the complexity of building workforce resilience. With the recent change and focus on costs that they have been faced with, it has born to light the need to focus on being able to weather change, navigate change and continue to be the place for their employees to work at. On the other hand, financial institutions may now look to use pay, stability and structure, which they have been building on, to attract talent from technology organizations where the market is less stable, flipping the traditional sector modus operandi basically.

Sheena Singh:
The recent explosive growth of AI with tools like ChatGPT may transform many industries, but the tech industry in particular, may experience a complete overhaul. Ishita says this will mean workforce resilience becomes more important than ever. She shares an example.

Ishita Goel:
The coders in technology firms that have been building AI will start to see shifts in their own jobs itself, they’ll be creating more enhanced value adding roles for themselves. So simple coding will now be done by AI. The skills and capabilities that will be needed in these coders' augmented new roles will be different than what they have been doing, and we'll start to see upskilling and reskilling of the workforce becoming extremely important with talent pools shrinking and this war for talent so that organizations can continue to build on workforce resilience.

Sheena Singh:
In the financial institutions industry, the tech industry and every other industry, the demand to build a resilient workforce is growing. This is not a project that can be done in silos. Working across workstreams, connecting the dots between teams is a challenge. But organizations that embrace making connections and adopting a whole business approach are able to attract and retain talent, respond to change and create a happier, healthier and more productive workforce. Today's volatile environment may mean companies that prioritize cost rather than growth may make themselves more resilient. For example, focusing on reskilling and upskilling can cost a fraction of what it might take to hire all new talent for today's challenges, and that can build a stronger sense of belonging amongst employees and overall resilience. Ultimately, Ishita says companies must understand one central thing about workforce resilience.

Ishita Goel:
Workforce resilience is not one thing or an end state. It's a journey to build resilience, agility and belonging to withstand change, navigate that change and build sufficient belonging for employees to repeat the process of change. It's a work in progress that they continuously need to change because as we know, our external environment is constantly changing.

Sheena Singh:
What can we take away about workforce resilience in different industries? A cost or growth focus may mean different priorities. Two industries, financial institutions and tech, may be swapping roles with their approaches to resilience. AI may transform industries, showing the importance of a resilient organization. Companies that focus on connecting the dots among different areas of the organization may find more impact with their workforce resilience plans. And finally, resilience is not the end of a journey, it's the journey itself.

Thanks for joining us at On Aon Insights, and thanks to Aon's Ishita Goel for her expert take on the topic. That does it for our season exploring workforce resilience. Stay tuned for our next season where we'll dive into ESG and climate. Remember to check our show notes for recommended reading and places to learn more. And don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. Until next time.
 

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The information contained herein and the statements expressed are of a general nature and are not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and timely information and use sources we consider reliable, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.

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