At Aon Hewitt’s first analyst and consultant conference, Aon CEO Greg Case set the tone of the day with his enthusiastic overview about the company’s twofold focus on risk and people. As of 2010, the risk segment makes up 60% of the business, while HR solutions is the remainder with an objective of a 50/50 split.
To achieve the 50/50 split, Bal Dail and Kristi Savacool, co-CEO’s of Aon Hewitt, shared their vision. That is, for Aon Hewitt to be the most trusted partner for clients seeking HR solutions across its consulting, benefits administration, and HR BPO sectors.
Overall, the sectors are quite healthy with consulting leading the way. Of particular interest to me is the HR BPO business since I recently completed the 2011 NelsonHall multi-process HRO (MPHRO) report. HR BPO accounts for 13% of Aon Hewitt’s revenues and positions it as the global leader in the MPHRO space with a little more than 12% of market share.
It has 27 MPHRO clients, most recently adding Bank of America who was previously serviced by Fidelity. The Bank of America contract is for five and a half years, for 290,000 employees, and covers the following services:
- HR administration
- Performance management
- Payroll
- Time keeping
- H&W administration
- Learning
- Recruiting technology.
Most importantly, Aon Hewitt hasn’t lost any HRBPO clients to its competitors. It lost Mervyns and Circuit City in 2009 due to liquidations and it has another client that has downsized to where there is no business case for MPHRO services. Aon Hewitt, however, will still perform benefits administration services for this client. The most immediate challenge in this space is renewing Air Canada and Prudential.
In terms of its standalone offerings, Aon Hewitt is strongly focused on RPO, which is provided as a standalone service as well as part of its HR BPO offering. The company has 500 recruitment professionals, assesses 10m candidates annually, and fills 65,000 positions a year. Current RPO clients include Bank of Montreal, Marriott, and the TSA.
Absence management is another standalone offering that Aon Hewitt is planning to make significant investments in. It currently has 400 employees, 4 global service centers, and 55 clients. Absence management is also offered within the company’s HR BPO portfolio.
One thing was very clear throughout the day, Aon Hewitt is excited and enthusiastic about the current direction it has positioned itself in. But make no mistake, the company won’t sit idle with this strategy even if it is one of the largest HRO and consulting players in the world. It will continue to evolve so it stays on top.
Amy Gurchensky, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall
HRO Insights 
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