An Interview with Corbette Doyle, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Aon

Amidst a growing labor shortage, Aon is striving to embrace a diverse workforce in order to gain top talent and a competitive edge.

“I firmly believe in the business case for diversity,” said Corbette Doyle, Global Chief Diversity Officer for Aon. “I truly believe that unless you can link your diversity strategy to something that is meaningful to the organization and is meaningful to the leaders at all levels within the organization, that it is probably doomed to fail.”

In today’s employment environment, companies have been forced to redesign the way they secure and retain top tier talent. Diversity becomes an important element going forward.

Doyle believes that the current market makes a strong case to establish a diverse workforce. As more workers are entering retirement age, companies will be forced to look at all demographics, from race to sexual orientation, to remain competitive.

It is estimated that 76 million baby boomers will retire in the next ten years, depleting the U.S. of one-third of its current work force. Many of these workers make up the most experienced and accomplished members of their industry. The knowledge lost in this process will be difficult to replace by the succeeding generation.

Doyle has been chosen to spearhead a program at Aon that will prepare the company for this impending environment.

“You have declining birth rates, immigration challenges, a decline in the rate of improvement that productivity can bring to the table, and you have the largest retirement age population that the world has ever seen,” she said. “It’s not hype.”

This is not strictly a U.S. problem, but rather a global issue as countries such as Germany, England, Italy, Japan, and China all expect to see the number of workers retiring continuing to rise.

However, just as this is a world-wide problem, part of the solution may be found on a global scale as well. As U.S. companies begin looking to non-traditional labor pools to replenish a shrinking workforce, this new talent may be able to help expand business overseas or into new cultures.

This requires not only a diverse workforce, but also a workforce that can handle its own diversity. “From the standpoint of our global diversity strategy, one of the two things that our advisory board identified was a need for cultural competence,” said Doyle. “They identified that as a diversity issue and as an increase in the global world.


“We are an increasingly global company. Our next major growth opportunities are not going to come from the countries that have gotten us where we are.”

Demographics in the U.S. labor pool will begin to naturally change in the near future. In the past, the workforce has been traditionally dominated by the Caucasian males. Companies are seeing, however, that the typical job candidate is beginning to change.

“Seventy percent of the incoming labor in 2008 will not be white males,” said Doyle.

However, as Doyle consistently points out, Aon is not gathering a diverse, cultured workforce just for the sake of corporate responsibility or because it is convenient. The initiative is actually a business decision as well.

“One of the things that has derailed a lot of companies is that they have simply focused on what’s called ‘representation’ and that is making sure you have more women and people of color,” she said. “My focus was talking about the talent issues and saying, this is not a right thing to do; this is not a compliance issue. This is simply looking at the numbers and saying if we don’t do something we are going to lose our competitive edge.”

Doyle said that the proof is in examples at Aon, where teams of multi-cultural employees typically outperform homogenous teams.

If different cultures are blended on one team, differences and barriers are dealt with in a much more constructive manner. Team members have the unique insight as to how their culture works and how best to approach it with the product or service being offered. “Diversity becomes a short hand way of identifying diversity of thought regarding how to approach problems and product development. Sales will be more successful this way.”

While this approach will allow companies to remain competitive in the future, it will not be the only solution. With a smaller workforce, retention will become as important as recruiting. Potential employees will have many options to choose from. Companies that provide benefits such as flex-time hours will be able to compete for top-tier talent.

“I think that the companies that are in the best position to facilitate workforce time-place flexibility coupled with career growth opportunities, coupled with strong knowledge transfer strategy, have a real edge.” said Doyle. “If you get the best, and even if you can’t keep them, if you make sure that you institutionalize the knowledge, we’ll create an opportunity for competitive advantage.”