Aon empowers results for colleagues, clients and communities. We are a global firm, serving clients in 120 countries and part of our role as a corporate citizen is to give back to the communities in which we live and work. In the UK, with over 6000 colleagues across 32 locations and global headquarters based in London, Aon has an important role to play in managing its impact on the environment, the communities in which we operate, and the wellbeing of our colleagues.
We have four main areas of focus for our community work: Aon UK Charitable Foundation; Matched Funding; Payroll Giving; Mentoring and Volunteering.
Click each hexagon to find out more about Aon’s community work.
Aon UK Charitable Foundation
The Aon UK Charitable Foundation gives focus to fundraising and charitable giving at Aon. Every two years, colleagues are asked to nominate and then vote for charities who they would like support over a two year period. At the end of 2019, colleagues voted which resulted in the following two charities being chosen as charity partners for 2020 and 2021:
- Cancer Research UK
- Dementia UK
We also asked our local offices if they would like to support a small charity in their own local area to enhance the work they do in their local communities. As a result, a further 17 small charities are being supported up and down the UK. These are:
| Birmingham |
The Sutton Cancer Support Centre |
www.suttoncancersupport.org/ |
| Bristol |
Above & Beyond |
www.aboveandbeyond.org.uk/ |
| Cardiff |
Velindre Cancer Centre |
www.velindrefundraising.com/ |
| Chelmsford |
Havens Hospices |
www.havenshospices.org.uk |
| Edinburgh |
MND Scotland |
www.mndscotland.org.uk/ |
| Epsom |
The Children's Trust |
www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/ |
| Farnborough |
Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice Care |
www.pth.org.uk/ |
| Glasgow |
Barnardo's Scotland |
www.barnardos.org.uk/scotland |
| Leeds |
Zarach |
http://zarach.org/ |
| London |
Spitalfields Crypt Trust |
www.sct.org.uk |
| Manchester |
Wood Street Mission |
www.woodstreetmission.org.uk/ |
| Newcastle |
My Name's Doddie Foundation |
www.myname5doddie.co.uk/ |
| Reading |
Duchess of Kent Hospice |
www.sueryder.org/how-we-can-help/duchess-of-kent-hospice |
| Redhill |
St Catherine's Hospice |
www.stch.org.uk/ |
| Sheffield |
Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity |
www.westonpark.org.uk/ |
| St Albans |
Willen Hospice |
www.willen-hospice.org.uk/ |
| St Albans |
SAHWR Domestic Violence Outreach |
https://sahwr.org.uk/ |
In 2019, through various different methods of fund raising, colleagues raised a huge £101,000 for the Aon UK Charitable Foundation charities.
Matched Funding
At Aon, our colleagues take on a lot of challenges and 2019 was a great year! Most do them for very personal reasons; supporting causes who have helped their families or friends through tough times which inspires them to do their best.
Aon supports colleagues with their fundraising by matching 25% of what colleagues raise up to a limit of £500 per individual per year or £1,000 for a team challenge.
£148,086 was raised by colleagues for 85 different charities. Through Aon's Matched Funding scheme we added a further £34,913.
Payroll Giving and Loose Change
Aon encourages colleagues to donate to charity from their monthly pay, and the Loose Change scheme enables colleagues to donate the spare pennies from their payslips to support the work of the Aon UK Charitable Foundation. This costs no more than 99p per month. This raised a staggering £24,128 with 67% of colleagues contributing.
Mentoring and Volunteering
At Aon, we strongly believe that to create a better future we need to help, support and nurture the younger generation. Our mentoring and volunteering programme is focused on preparing young people for the world of work and we work with primary and secondary school pupils, college and university students. Not only does it help provide the mentee with one-to-one coaching but it also gives colleagues the chance to develop different skills that they can bring back into the workplace and share experiences with colleagues. We encourage colleagues to mentor on a regular basis, where possible, but we also offer one-off opportunities.
AON United Day for Communities
Each year, Aon encourages everyone across the globe to take part in activities in their local community. In 2019, colleagues took an Aon United approach, joining forces across business units to empower results in our communities. In the UK, we broke every record from previous years with more colleagues taking part, more projects, and more hours of volunteering! 1,202 colleagues took part, working on 72 projects around the UK, donating 6,662 hours of service.
Community Champions
Aon has 22 offices around the UK and in almost all of our locations, we have dedicated community champions who spread the word about our community work. They encourage colleagues to get involved in various different events in their location and do a fantastic job in their own time organising bake sales, raffles, sweepstakes, collections, social events, charity volunteering work and many other things. At the end of 2018, we had 120 champions.
Volunteering around the UK
Across the UK, colleagues volunteered and supported many different causes and charities. From being members of local fund raising groups to donating food for food banks, they helped out in many different way.
Aon Community Art Awards
The Aon Community Art Awards programme supports young artists graduating from three UK art schools - Glasgow School of Art; Leeds College of Art; and Manchester School of Art - helping them to transition from student life to the commercial art world.
The programme provides workshops and mentoring for the artist for a period of one year, while their art is exhibited in Aon's client suite, for clients, colleagues and around 400 visitors a day to see. At the end of the 12-month period, the artwork is sold via an online and live auction, with all proceeds going back to the artist.
In addition, all selected artists receive a cash amount for agreeing to loan their art to Aon for the programme, and two cash prizes are awarded: a £5,000 prize to the artist selected by an external panel of judges as the most promising, and a £2,000 prize for Aon employees' favourite piece of work.
Find out more about the program here
Early careers colleagues and their social responsibility projects
Each year at Aon we recruit the future of the company through our Early Careers programmes for graduates and apprentices. During the summer months our graduates work on a diversity and inclusion project and our interns take part in a community project linked with a UK charity. The interns are split into teams with colleagues from other offices and introduced to a charity to work with for a three month period. Working closely with a representative of the charity, the interns work on ideas to best help the cause, be it fundraising or a legacy project for the future.
Living Wage Employer
Aon is one of more than 13,000 UK organisations which voluntarily pay the real Living Wage. This commitment applies to our directly employed colleagues and third-party contractors.