Strengthening Workforce Resilience in a Changing Climate

Strengthening Workforce Resilience in a Changing Climate
January 29, 2026 8 mins

Strengthening Workforce Resilience in a Changing Climate

Strengthening Workforce Resilience in a Changing Climate

Extreme weather poses growing risks to business operations and workforce resilience. Employers must go beyond reactive measures to protect employees and proactively plan for more frequent and widespread extreme events.

Key Takeaways
  1. Growing frequency and severity of natural disasters create a wide range of implications for workforce resilience and employee safety.
  2. HR leaders are collaborating with risk management and health and safety teams to integrate data that informs climate risk mitigation and workforce protection strategies.
  3. Location strategy, business continuity and employee wellbeing are critical focus areas to maintain workforce resilience amid extreme weather events.

Organizations have long assessed the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters on their physical property and business operations. With the widespread and unpredictable nature of weather events, HR leaders are increasingly partnering with risk teams to assess climate risk, measure potential workforce impact and build resilience plans to protect employees and business continuity in a changing climate.

Consider the lessons learned from the major wildfires in Los Angeles in 2025. According to an Aon survey conducted after the event, one third of HR leaders at companies with large employee populations in Los Angeles County said they did not have a formal disaster response policy in place, although some said they are in the process of developing one. An overwhelming number (82%) said they were reviewing or improving their disaster preparedness and workforce resilience plans, likely prompted by the wildfires.

However, as employees become more dispersed by location, work style (onsite or remote) and status (contractor, employee or gig worker), effective weather event planning is both more challenging and crucial. Employers can get started by sharing data, insights and plans across risk and human capital teams.

Connecting Climate Risk and Human Capital Data to Strengthen Workforce Resilience

By overlaying climate risk models with workforce analytics, organizations can proactively address risks and strengthen workforce resilience. This approach also helps protect employee health and ensures business continuity amid growing volatility. Predictive analytics can help HR leaders anticipate extreme weather impacts. Vulnerability to natural disasters can be paired with both employee location data and health data on certain conditions workers may have, like asthma or diabetes, that could make them vulnerable to extreme weather.

Talent location analytics have become increasingly important to HR leaders and organizations. Beyond technical and sourcing requirements, companies looking for new locations or where to expand existing operations, also need to consider skills, education and demographics along with the likelihood of disruptive extreme weather events like wildfires, extreme heat or floods. Complicating that analysis is the fact that as the climate changes, extreme weather events are occurring in places unaccustomed to such events.

Examples from just a six-week period in 2025 alone include a cyclone-like storm that hit Ireland, a “fire tornado” spotted in Los Angeles during the wildfires and flooding in the desert city of Dubai that has now occurred twice within a year.

$41B

The Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles were the costliest wildfires on record globally.

Source: Aon 2026 Climate and Catastrophe Insight

Quote icon

High-performing companies are increasingly linking HR and risk department activities surrounding potential workforce locations, taking into account the probability of disruptive weather events as part of the calculus. There has never been more data available to companies, but the challenge lies in linking all of these datasets to inform expansion opportunities and continuity risks.

Laura Wanlass
Governance and ESG Practice Leader, Talent Solutions, North America

Partnering Across HR, Risk and Health & Safety to Build Workforce Resilience

HR teams are just beginning to work with their counterparts in risk management to assess the extreme weather risk to employees. For many organizations, climate risk has never been a direct priority, but instead embedded in other priorities such as ESG and employee wellbeing. Others are uncertain where the topic falls in their priority list, as different approaches have emerged with regard to businesses’ climate-related initiatives.

A Q&A with Aon's Madeleine Catzaras and Laura Wanlass

Risk modeling provides HR leaders with a useful framework for understanding how climate and weather can affect employees. “The same way you can model how a storm would adversely affect business operations, you can model how a heatwave can affect workers in a given area,” says Madeleine Catzaras, Aon’s ESG Human Capital Solutions Leader in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “It is important that HR leverages what the risk department is already doing and looks for synergies to ensure they are planning together to keep employees safe.”

Another potential partner to combine with HR and risk management is an employer’s health and safety team. Hurricanes and wildfires may grab headlines, but the fact is that the deadliest weather hazard is extreme heat, which claims 25,000 lives per year1 — a number that many experts believe is significantly undercounted. Extreme heat also increases risks for employees with conditions such as heart disease or asthma. One in five workers across Europe reported exposure to extreme heat at work in 2025.2 Developing a comprehensive health and safety plan should therefore include measures for heat-related concerns. In fact, such measures may eventually become a requirement. New regulations around protecting workers from extreme heat are already in place in Japan and are being considered in the U.S. and several other countries.

90%

Nearly 90% of employees think it’s important for employers to take action to address climate change.

Source: Aon’s 2025 Employee Sentiment Study

Mitigating Climate and Extreme Weather Workforce Risks

The solutions to mitigate the risks associated with extreme weather closely mirror other solutions in both risk management and human resources. Parametric insurance has long been used to speed up claims from natural disasters. By leveraging these funds, employers can not only maintain business continuity, but also provide support to employees facing climate-related emergencies.

Additionally, some organizations are choosing to provide an added benefit in the form of access to supplemental wildfire insurance in areas prone to fires. It’s worth noting that as risks increase and expand to more areas, employers may need to consider differentials in pay so their workers can afford homeowner’s insurance in certain areas. These costs have risen dramatically in the last decade in the U.S., experiencing average increases of nearly 25% over the last few years, with much higher increases in catastrophe-prone areas.3 The UK saw a 19% jump in 2023 alone,4 Australia had a 14% increase that same year5 and Canada has had a nearly 76% increase over the past decade.6

#3

2025 was the third hottest year on record.

Source: Aon 2026 Climate and Catastrophe Insight

How Data and Workforce Modeling can Protect Workers Against Extreme Heat

Aon was recently asked how companies could use data and workforce modeling to find ways to protect workers vulnerable to extreme heat. Using predicting analytics, we built models that correlate extreme heat with adverse outcomes, like safety incidents, medical claims and absenteeism. Automatic thresholds were identified that could trigger mitigation measures, such as: schedule changes, mandated breaks, hydration protocols, remote work for some nonessential workers and upgraded protective gear. These measures help control conditions, could lead to fewer heat-related incidents, less ad hoc decision making by line managers, clearer and fairer rules, and better retention in high-risk roles.

4 Benefits of Strengthening Workforce Resilience in a Changing Climate

  1. Enhanced Operational Resilience
    With clear emergency disaster plans in place, business operations can swiftly resume after an event with less disruption to supply chains. When the workforce is protected, downstream disruptions for customers and partners are less likely.
  2. Employee Engagement and Retention
    Employee trust and loyalty can be strengthened when employees see their employer investing in their safety — whether through emergency funds, extra time off, EAP support or access to expanded insurance options. This can enhance company culture, morale and retention both during and after a crisis.
  3. Workforce Safety and Financial Protection
    Proper training, evacuation protocols and other protective measures reduce safety incidents and workers compensation claims. This, in turn, lowers legal exposure, insurance costs and regulatory penalties.
  4. Improved Stakeholder Reputation
    Corporate stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities and investors, want to know companies are proactively managing climate risks and disasters. This has been standard for risks to business operations but has expanded to include the impact on workforce.

Aon’s advisors help organizations prepare for a climate-resilient future by bringing together our risk capital and human capital capabilities, including our Corporate Governance and ESG Consulting, Climate Risk Advisory services and data and analytics capabilities. Contact us to learn more about how we can help.

Aon’s Thought Leaders
  • Madeleine Catzaras
    ESG People Solutions, Health Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa
  • Andy Rallis
    Executive Leader of Analytics, Human Capital, Asia Pacific
  • Laura Wanlass
    Governance and ESG Practice Leader, Talent Solutions, North America

1 2026 Climate and Catastrophe Insight, Aon
2 Occupational safety and health in the era of climate and digital change, OSH Pulse 2025
3 Overburdened, Consumer Federation of America
4 Home insurance premiums rise but remain below historic peaks, ABI
5 Australians paying more for home insurance, Canstar
6 How much are catastrophes boosting home insurance premiums?, Canadian Underwriter

General Disclaimer

This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.

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