For organisations facing skills shortages and growing uncertainty about where future talent will come from, there is a growing need to look beyond traditional talent pools. Yet alongside this challenge sits an often-overlooked source of professional expertise: people who have been displaced from their home countries but bring substantial skills, qualifications and experience with them.
The challenge is that professional experience does not always translate easily into a new labour market. For skilled refugees, barriers such as limited professional networks, unfamiliar recruitment processes and gaps in UK work experience can make it difficult to access roles that match their existing capabilities.
For Aon, addressing those barriers has become part of a broader commitment to social mobility and its purpose to help protect and enrich the lives of people around the world. In October 2025, Aon welcomed its first cohort of refugees to its Displaced Workforce Impact Programme, delivered in partnership with the Refugee Employment Network (REN). Aon’s 2025 Impact Report describes the programme as an initiative designed around the confidence, network building, employability skills and UK recruitment knowledge that REN identified as particularly important for refugees entering the UK workforce.
Katherine Conway, Head of Inclusion at Aon, explains the thinking behind the programme. She shares the barriers skilled refugees can face when rebuilding their careers in the UK, how Aon translated those barriers into practical support, and what the experience can teach organisations looking to widen access to talent.
The programme grew out of an introduction to the Refugee Employment Network at an event hosted by one of Aon's clients, the Royal Household, which brought employers together to explore how they could do more to support refugee employment.
Aon was already exploring ways to broaden access to employment. Its Ukraine Early Careers Programme was supporting displaced Ukrainians in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia, while its Work Insight Programme was providing work experience to young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The success of these initiatives prompted Aon to consider how a similar approach could support refugees already living in the UK. Working with REN, Aon identified three key barriers to professional employment, despite candidates having professional experience: a lack of UK work experience, a lack of professional networks and a lack of confidence in interview situations.
Participants came from backgrounds including investment and finance, academia and research, sales, marketing, data analytics, legal and HR. As Katherine explains, “These are very skilled individuals. They're not people who are early in their careers. Many of them were working, but in roles like baristas and cleaners”. The aim was to help participants move into work that reflected their existing skills and experience, rather than simply finding any job.
The programme also recognised that barriers to employment can extend beyond recruitment itself. Some participants had family responsibilities, so Aon scheduled sessions to start early and finish around 3pm to accommodate those caring for children.
This focus on identifying where barriers exist is also central to FAIRER’s work. For example, FAIRER conducted a recruitment audit for Volkswagen Group UK, involving employee focus groups and employee network groups, leading to recommendations including greater accessibility throughout the recruitment process.
Aon built its three-day programme around the specific challenges identified with REN, combining insight into Aon's business and the insurance sector with practical support for navigating the UK job market.
One of the most powerful lessons came from something many UK employers might take for granted: how to explain gaps in a CV. Katherine recalls one participant explaining that, in Hong Kong, candidates are expected to provide formal evidence of their previous employment. Having been displaced, he no longer had access to some of that documentation. Aon's response was straightforward: “We don't really care. What we want to know is have you got the skills to do the job?” For participants who had been worried that missing documentation would prevent them from being considered, the response was transformative. Katherine says “they were blown away by our response because they were terrified of these gaps and this evidence that they didn't have.”
Networking was another central part of the programme. Participants were encouraged to build professional relationships throughout the three days, with Aon colleagues joining coffee breaks and lunches to talk informally about their roles and careers. With around 50 Aon colleagues volunteering, the programme was designed to make networking practical and accessible rather than simply another item on an employability checklist. Participants could talk about the roles they were looking for, practise articulating their skills and make connections with people across Aon.
FAIRER takes a similar approach to inclusive recruitment, helping organisations look beyond individual hiring decisions to understand where barriers may be embedded across the recruitment journey. Explore our six rules of inclusive hiring.
Before the programme, just 8% of participants said they had a high knowledge of the UK job market. Afterwards, that figure had risen to 82%. Knowledge of interview skills increased from 21% to 72%.
The programme has also created opportunities for participants to move back into professional employment. Aon has hired two participants, with both going through the organisation's normal recruitment process and subsequently doing well in their roles. For Katherine, this distinction is important. The programme was never intended to guarantee participants a job at Aon. Instead, it was designed to equip them to compete more confidently for opportunities across the wider labour market.
That wider ambition reflects what Katherine describes as a growing workforce challenge. "Companies are really worried about where they're going to secure future talent pipelines." For her, displaced professionals represent an important part of that potential pipeline: "People who can adapt if you give them a chance."
The impact has also extended beyond immediate employment outcomes. Aon is developing an alumni network to maintain connections between participants and help them stay connected to future opportunities. For example, one Aon colleague who moved from Hong Kong to the UK is now mentoring five participants from Hong Kong who took part in the programme.
At a refugee careers fair at St James's Palace, Katherine experienced the impact first-hand when former participants recognised her and her colleague Claire. “They were hugging us like we were long lost family,” she recalls. “They explained how much we’ve changed their confidence.”
Looking forward, Aon is developing a toolkit to help other organisations establish similar programmes in partnership with the Refugee Employment Network. The model is also being rolled out further in 2026, including plans to take it to Germany and France. That ambition is particularly important given the wider narrative around refugee employment. Katherine believes programmes like this can help challenge assumptions by showing the skills and experience that displaced people can bring to organisations.
“It’s so powerful to be able to showcase a different narrative,” says Katherine. “Our purpose is to protect and enrich the lives of people around the world. So for me internally, I was able to say, I want to do this programme because it absolutely plays to our purpose.”
For organisations considering their own approach to refugee employment, Aon's experience suggests that the starting point does not have to be a large-scale recruitment commitment. It can begin with understanding the barriers, working with specialist partners and creating practical opportunities for skilled people to demonstrate what they can do.
Aon’s experience demonstrates that widening access to talent means understanding where barriers exist and giving people a genuine opportunity to demonstrate their skills and potential.
FAIRER helps organisations build fairer recruitment processes and develop the inclusive leadership capability needed to ensure people can thrive and progress.
Our Inclusive Leadership programme helps leaders develop practical skills to create more inclusive environments, while our whitepaper, Why Inclusive Recruitment is Key to Business Success, provides 21 practical steps HR teams can take to build a fairer recruitment process.