LONDON, 25 June 2007 – UK employers need to prepare for an ageing workforce as three-quarters (78%) of employees anticipate working beyond 65, warns Aon Consulting, a leading pension, benefits and HR consulting firm. Only an estimated one million are currently working past state pension age but this is expected to treble amongst people aged 65-70 by 2017. 

Aon Consulting’s research found that a quarter of respondents would carry on working past the official retirement age simply because they wanted to, whereas 53% believe it will be necessary to increase their pension. Regionally, Newcastle workers were most committed to topping up their pension (57%) while less than half (49%) of Scottish employees were least willing to carrying on working to achieve this.

Consequently, UK employers need to address the new risks posed by an ageing workforce, including:

Legal implications

With workers now protected against discrimination, it is potentially a minefield for employers and they must tread carefully. For example, consideration must be given when choosing criteria for redundancy selection and employers cannot, on the grounds of age, deny employment, refuse to provide training or retire someone early without objective justification.

Information Technology

Organisations must be prepared to devote more resources to IT training, especially up-skilling their older workers. For the older workers themselves, if they have been able to avoid embracing technology until now, they will have to do so if they want to continue to have intellectually stimulating jobs.

Motivation

Aon Consulting found that 53% of those 65 and over were only continuing to work in order to boost their pensions. With this mindset, employees could be resentful about their need to continue working, which is not conducive to good job performance. Employers will need to focus on maintaining motivation by ensuring that older workers are given interesting and fulfilling jobs and full access to the training they need.

There are many positive aspects to having an older workforce. Older workers are more reliable and take less time off for sickness with UK 2004 data showing average absence rates of 2.4% for workers aged 60 and above, compared with 3% for the 25-34 age group (Office of National Statistics).  They are also more likely to have a more responsible attitude to work than their younger colleagues and their extra work and life experiences make them ideal to perform mentoring roles.

Jon Beaumont, HR Consultant at Aon Consulting said: “An ageing workforce is inevitable with an estimated three million people likely to be working beyond their retirement age within 10 years time. This could be a huge benefit to organisations, so long as the key challenges are tackled sooner rather than later.  Businesses used to think that older workers could not drive companies forward but this old fashioned attitude needs to shift.

“Age should not be seen as a barrier. There is a vast pool of mentally agile people, with great work and life experience over the age of 60 and industries will be missing a trick if they do not capitalise on their productive potential.  Effective performance management will be the key discipline in making an ageing workforce into a competitive advantage.”

About Aon Consulting

Aon Consulting is a leading human capital consultancy, helping organisations of every size to attract and keep the employees they need. We advise on all aspects of employment, including health-related insurance and risk; employee compensation and pensions; human resource strategy planning; job design and change management; and staff assessment and legal issues. Aon Consulting is a division of Aon, one of the UK’s largest insurance brokers and providers of risk management services and a major force in reinsurance and the UK human capital consulting market.  Aon Consulting Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

About Aon

Aon Corporation is a leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, human capital and management consulting, and specialty insurance underwriting.  There are 43,000 employees working in Aon’s 500 offices in more than 120 countries.  Backed by broad resources, industry knowledge and technical expertise, Aon professionals help a wide range of clients develop effective risk management and workforce productivity solutions.

This press release contains certain statements related to future results, or states our intentions, beliefs and expectations or predictions for the future which are forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from either historical or anticipated results depending on a variety of factors. Potential factors that could impact results include: general economic conditions in different countries in which we do business around the world, changes in global equity and fixed income markets that could affect the return on invested assets, fluctuations in exchange and interest rates that could influence revenue and expense, rating agency actions that could affect our ability to borrow funds, funding of our various pension plans, changes in the competitive environment, our ability to implement restructuring initiatives and other initiatives intended to yield cost savings, our ability to execute the stock repurchase program, our ability to obtain regulatory or legislative changes to permit continuous sales of our supplemental Medicare health product, changes in commercial property and casualty markets and commercial premium rates that could impact revenues, changes in revenues and earnings due to the elimination of contingent commissions, other uncertainties surrounding a new compensation model, the impact of investigations brought by state attorneys general, state insurance regulators, federal prosecutors, and federal regulators, the impact of class actions and individual lawsuits including client class actions, securities class actions, derivative actions, ERISA class actions, the impact of the analysis of practices relating to stock options, the cost of resolution of other contingent liabilities and loss contingencies, and the difference in ultimate paid claims in our underwriting companies from actuarial estimates.  Further information concerning the Company and its business, including factors that potentially could materially affect the Company’s financial results, is contained in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Aon Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in respect of insurance mediation activities only

Aon Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in respect of insurance mediation activities only.