What is The Aon Human Sustainability Index? Since joining Aon 4 months ago the business has gone to market with a unique proposition to enable individuals to thrive in their lives and at work for the long term. The research has found that there is a relationship between wellbeing and a sustainable working life, and that relationship can affect company performance. Improving these factors can enhance company performance by at least 11 percent and up to 55 percent. 

Human sustainability refers to our ability to thrive in our life and work for the long term. Specifically, this means living in a way that enables us to preserve or improve the quality of life and work, while actively avoiding life conditions that promote burnout or unsustainable outcomes. 

I was particularly curious to try this out so that I have the best skillset to manage challenging times in my life and be as effective as possible day-to-day in order to maximise my life enjoyably.

From a business perspective if I am able to be resilient (bounce back) and thrive (bounce forward) in a sustainable manner then it will benefit Aon (my employer) as I will be contributing to company performance more often.  

The program consists of three stages:

1. Complete the HSI assessment 
2. Review your assessment and discuss with a Coach to develop a plan
3. Use a Whoop band to monitor your HRV for ongoing prompts to maintain your plan and be sustainable

Part 1 is about my HSI assessment

  • The assessment took 15 minutes to complete. I was quickly delivered my HSI report that breaks down my results into 8 sustainability pathways and an overall score.
  • My overall results reflected a moderate resilience score. This represents a total score across all aspects of my sustainability.

Coming back to the definition I have a 75% HSI therefore I have a moderate ability to thrive in life and work for the long term. Which specifically means living in a way that enables me to preserve or improve the quality of my life and work, while actively avoiding life conditions that promote burnout or unsustainable outcomes. 

  • Looking into the individual pathways it was clear that 'competency and action' required some work.
  •  The report also noted that I have a high diversity i.e. I use almost all the pathways to maintain my sustainability which I am told is a good thing that overly relying on one. This is very relevant right now whilst I recover from an injury that is preventing me from running which is something I do use to manage my wellbeing! 
  • The report encouraged me to reflect on each pathway which I found helped from a perspective of self awareness and thinking about how I can improve several areas, particularly competency and action.

My conclusion:

  • Considering sustainability like a battery has helped me to reflect on my daily way of living and what depletes, builds or sustains my position and how best to find a balance.
  • Being given a holistic analysis of my wellbeing across 8 relevant and detailed pathways really helped my personal awareness of myself. I already thought I was aware but this unlocked several areas I had not considered before, particularly competency & action. 
  • I spent 90 minutes reviewing each section and writing notes on my reflections which resulted in some really helpful tactics for a more sustainable approach like list building. They seem obvious now but it took this analysis to identify them.

Next steps:

  • In Part 2 I will reflect on the analysis of my HSI with a coach.

For more information about HSI feel free to reach me on david.kirk@aon.co.uk