Aon’s Dando says in-person mentoring is key for AI growth

That was the opinion of Aon’s chief broking officer Steve Dando, who said he is a big advocate of focusing on human connectivity as AI is increasingly used for technical elements of the industry.

Speaking at the Dive In session Culture & Connection: The Human Side of the Future of Work this morning (23 September) Dando said he does not believe this creative environment can be replicated with virtual meetings, but did clarify that as a father of young children he has seen the holistic benefits of working from home.

I wanted to turn down South Park when it was first proposed to me.

Cally Beaton on good communication with younger colleagues while working at MTV

“This isn’t about a luddite view about having people in the office all the time and losing all the great things that we learned during Covid that we can work remotely,” he said.

“It is about recognising, particularly for early careers colleagues, the nature and the fundamentals of our business as brokers or underwriters, or working in underwriting organisations or brokering organisations, that a lot of the learning is done almost by osmosis.”

Early learning

This includes the learning which comes from the almost “corny sounding” coffee machine or water cooler chats to young professionals who gain experience from attending or even contributing to crucial in-person meetings.

Dando further said firms have a responsibility to make sure early careers colleagues are in “every day of the week”, suggesting this should be in place for new workers’ as part of their first year of onboarding.

However, he said this would be undermined if managers are not in on Mondays and Fridays and said he would expect as part of a global brokerage for senior leaders to show “flexibility” with their attendance to accomodate this. 

For example, Dando said on Friday he was in-person during a quiet day where he met a relatively unknown junior colleague who first was able to speak to him in a personal conversation.

Then the employee was able to attend a meeting with CEOs, which Dando said he “maybe shouldn’t have been at”, gaining vital experience as well as providing a potential different voice to others in the room.

“We wouldn’t have stumbled across each other on Teams,” he said.

Dando said this links to his long-held belief that the London Market is a “magical” place because it is precisely built upon relationships and human trust alongside technological innovation.

He said the marketplace is really excited about the pace of change with AI, including AON, but caveated this by saying it about using the technology as a tool to supplement workers as part of a relationship-driven industry. 

Dando added: “If we are only a ‘Tuesday to Thursday inclusive’… that’s not what we [insurance] are all about.”

AI and early-careers mentoring

Fellow panellist, British comedian and podcaster Cally Beaton agreed with Dando's insight about listening to early careers people following her experience as a senior television executive.

When working with MTV, where the demographic was largely people aged 16-24, she had to actively listen to younger colleagues to keep her finger on the pulse.

“I wanted to turn down South Park when it was first proposed to me,” she revealed.

Regarding insurance, she said at the time this type of relationship was called “reverse mentoring”, but Beaton cautioned the audience to avoid using this term as this learning is fact reciprocal – working the same as traditional mentoring.

Charlotte Myers, Markel’s senior director for global technical development and early careers, further expanded on how the power of mentoring with AI.

She said mentoring was imperative to ensuring any new colleague has a positive cultural workplace experience, where they can bring their full selves to work.

Myers said mentoring was linked with AI to helping graduates and apprenticeships build AI agents while at the same time learning the “incredibly important” soft skills such as networking.

This included a graduate who was asked about what she had learnt so far in her 18-months of work.

“She really did like structured development that she’s had over an 18-month period, but also she was given quite a lot of responsibility early on,” Myers said.

“She was allowed to fail at things. We should be allowed to fail, and there was no shame in doing that.”

Myers therefore said that everyone in the workplace should not be scared of using AI, instead using the technology as a “co-pilot” while retaining their human judgement and relationship-building ability.