In this Human Capital Insight episode of the On Aon podcast, Sharon Egilinsky and Jeff Alpaugh explore a critical question facing organizations investing in digital infrastructure: can their leadership, workforce and operating models scale as quickly as their ambitions?
As investment in AI, cloud computing and digital infrastructure accelerates, success will depend on more than just capital deployment and construction timelines. Egilinsky and Alpaugh discuss why workforce strategy, leadership capability, operational resilience and risk management have become essential drivers of execution and growth. They examine how organizations can align Human Capital and Risk Capital decisions to strengthen performance, adapt to evolving risk profiles and position themselves to stay ahead as they scale.
Key Takeaways:
Experts in this episode:
Key Moments:
(2:35) Why leadership capacity and organizational readiness may become the defining factors in successful digital infrastructure growth.
(9:45) How workforce challenges can affect execution, customer outcomes and the ability to stay ahead in a rapidly expanding market.
(21:50) Why operational resilience depends on connecting people, governance and risk into a cohesive growth strategy.
Soundbites:
Sharon Egilinsky:
“The organizations that are in the hyperscaling business that suddenly want to power themselves are not going to need the same leaders, the same skills. And what got them to where their business is today is not necessarily what's going to get them to where they want to take their business tomorrow.”
Jeff Alpaugh:
“Growth does not remove risk. In some cases, growth is what creates the next generation of risk.”
Jeff Alpaugh
Growth does not remove risk. In some cases, growth is what creates the next generation of risk.
Intro:
Hello and welcome to this Human Capital Insight episode of On Aon.
This week, Sharon Egilinsky, Partner, Rewards, and Jeff Alpaugh, President, North America, explore the rapid growth of digital infrastructure—and why success depends on more than capital and technology. They discuss scaling risk, organisational capacity, talent, operational resilience and the critical connection between Human Capital and Risk Capital.
Sharon Egilinsky
Good morning, Jeff. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. I've been looking forward to it for a couple of weeks now. And we certainly have a hot topic to discuss because there's an extraordinary amount of investment going into digital infrastructure right now.
And I think we can say it's moved from like a niche technology topic into a mainstream business and economic proposition. And just looking at the hundreds of articles and news coverage every week, it's pretty unbelievable that we're now covering the intersection of AI, data, technology, power and the overarching investment class of digital infrastructure.
So most of the conversations are focusing on capital and power and land and cooling and technology. But you and I and our teams have been and Aon have been talking about something broader to share with our listeners. What does it actually take for a company to execute at the scale and the speed that this market is demanding.
So, Jeff, can't wait to hear from you, from where you sit. What are clients most worried that could get in the way in your conversations?
Jeff Alpaugh
Hey Sharon, yeah, excited to be here. And you're right on all of those issues. And one thing that I will say more than anything is that clients are reacting to the sheer speed and scale of what's happening. The opportunity is enormous, but companies are being asked to develop and operate infrastructure at a pace that puts pressure on every part of the business. Power availability, construction capacity, supply chains and operating resilience are all very significant concerns.
What makes this moment different, however, is how interconnected these risks have become. For example, a delay in one area can quickly become a schedule issue, a cost issue, a customer issue or even a financing issue.
And the challenge is not simply delivering one difficult project — and these are very significant in size and scale — it is whether a company can repeat that performance across multiple projects, locations, and markets without losing control of the risk.
The question is not only whether you can build the asset. It's whether that business can execute repeatedly and reliably at scale.
Sharon Egilinsky
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, Jeff. And I think that's what I why I was so excited about this conversation, because everything you just articulated is exactly where Aon and our worlds come together, Risk and Human Capital.
Because there is another constraint sitting alongside all the things you've discussed and what the media is discussing and even what clients are discussing, and that's organizational capacity.
And when you think about it, it's the point that gets missed the most in this excitement around the market because cost, the money, the investment, everybody's getting into it because it is now and the future.
And there's so much capital moving into it, and the demand signals are so strong. People are focused on, as you said, securing the site, figuring out the power, lining up the construction. How are they going to meet the commitments of the clients that they've committed to? And of course, power has also emerged as one of the most incredible defining issues in the market.
But interestingly enough, once these pieces come together, another question comes up so quickly, and I think its timing that we need to really help our clients with. And it's can the organization on a whole number of fronts deliver at that pace? Because going from two sites to 10, going from zero to one, going from 10 to 30, it's not just doing more of the same thing. It's actually changing the way the company operates. It changes the company. It changes the leadership requirements. It changes the technical depth and the types of skills and technical expertise that an organization needs.
And that's where I think that buyers and investors need to be really face the cold hard truth: which is do we have the people inside our organization or available to us that have scaled something like this before? Can we replicate what's worked without losing safety, timing, money, and scheduling on our commitments?
And that is really difficult because just because you can fund an investment doesn't mean that you automatically have the capacity to create it. And Jeff, this is where I'd love to hear your perspective, because from my side, I see the organizational strain. But from your side, on the risk side of the business, it shows up as risk.
What changes in the risk profile are you seeing as these organizations are scaling so tremendously?
Jeff Alpaugh
Yeah, Sharon, I think you said a number of things there that I agree with and I want to hone in on.
Key issues are Human Capital and this war on talent. And as far as risk and scaling, what we're seeing is that risk and the complexity of it is not only US but global. And the risk changes with scale. What worked when a company operated five sites may not be enough when it operates 25 sites. You have more projects moving at the same time, more contractors and suppliers, more locations, more interdependencies.
The individual risk may be familiar, but the way they interact and interconnect is very different. Controls and decision-making processes can be stretched beyond the size for which they are designed and risks that were manageable on their own can begin to compound across the platform.
So the objective is not to slow down growth, it's to understand how the risk is changing early enough to strengthen the business around it. The infrastructure around the business has to scale along with the assets themselves.
Sharon Egilinsky
Jeff, you nailed it because that is something that we face on the Human Capital part of the business in digital infrastructure, but in a lot of pivotal changes, digital revolution, evolution, all the things that we see that the people that drive the organization have to be seen as part of the infrastructure itself.
And believe it or not, as I'm sure you can imagine, it's something that is considered almost a sidebar. While it's important, it's not really considered part of the infrastructure.
And this is where the conversation becomes real. Because the organizations that, as you said, can operate a few facilities are not automatically the organizations that operate 25. The organizations that are in the hyperscaling business that suddenly want to power themselves are not going to need the same leaders, the same skills. And what got them to where their business is today is not necessarily what's going to get them to where they want to take their business tomorrow.
And sometimes few people hold everything together. And that model doesn't work as you get larger. Even in large organizations, there's teams of people that solve problems because they know where the vulnerabilities are. But as the platform grows, as the business scales, no matter whether you're scaling from medium to large to even larger, the model gets stretched.
And as you said, you've got so many things going on at the same time, so many pieces to manage. And now you add the interesting element of compute power. That question becomes so practical. Who's doing all the work and who's done it before?
And that's why talent matters so much.
And I wanna throw this back at you in a second, but the one thing I would love our listeners and our clients to understand is it's not just about headcount.
You said it, the war on talent. It's not just a number anymore. It's what happens to the growth plan if we don't have the people and the leaders and the skills that we need. Where is that risk? So I wanna ask you, Jeff, that what do you think, like from a risk perspective, if an organization doesn't think ahead about the skills and the capabilities that it needs, it's not a staffing issue anymore, is it?
Jeff Alpaugh
No, I'll tell you bring up so many good points. And I'll tell you just one survey item that I want to build on. This is the Uptime Institute 2026 survey found that 53% of operators were having difficulty finding qualified candidates. And that's up from 46% in 2025. And we expect that to go up again in ’27.
But the most interesting question is not simply can we hire enough people? It's what happens to the growth plan if we cannot. And this builds on that point that we've been talking about is that war on talent. It's not just the number of people, but the people that have that experience that can take that organization to the next level. And that's where it begins to sound much less like a staffing issue and more like a business issue.
If the missing capability changes when a facility opens, what it costs to deliver, how safely it operates, or whether a customer receives what is promised, then it's affecting performance of the enterprise. And it's affecting their ability to compete in a hyper-competitive environment.
From a risk perspective, the important question is not whether that role can be filled and in some cases very difficult to fill, it is what business outcome depends on that role being filled and what the company will do if the capability is not available when it is needed.
Sharon Egilinsky
So true, Jeff. And what I do want to say also is we on the Human Capital side, we have an asset. We have our risk team to really understand and start to think about these things on the front end and help our clients. A lot of lessons learned in our partnership and having this overarching human and risk capital to offer clients in the market is looking at these things from a risk perspective, from an opportunity cost perspective. And all of these human capital and people risks show up a little bit more visibly long after you start to feel them.
When critical capability is missing, the people issue becomes an execution issue. And if I think if there's a couple of takeaways from today, it's this issue of execution, right? You can have everything modeled as much as you can, but you can't assume that the execution is a foregone conclusion. You need to deliberately plan it.
There are so many opportunities that are gonna be coming up that may require a different leadership team. And not to say that leadership that got the organization where it is today is not fantastic, but it's a different skill set. It's a complementary skill set.
And we talk to boards and C-suites all the time about being very self-aware of where they can actually grow and add some complementary skills and leadership development tools.
And I think that the bottom line is that sometimes the opportunities can outrun the organization built to capture it. So that's like leaving opportunity on the table and putting risk on the table because you don't have what you need and you haven't thought about it ahead of time.
So I'd love to get your thoughts on digital infrastructure has grown so much on the capital and the financing and the insurance and the risk side of the business. How do you see the risk profile of companies across the broader ecosystem?
Jeff Alpaugh
So absolutely, Sharon.
And I would say that the rapid demand that we're talking about is a tremendous commercial opportunity, but growth itself creates new dependencies. As we talk about with our teams every day and with our clients, a company may suddenly be making commitments at a volume or speed that has never had to be supported before. And so that changes the questions we need to ask: can the supply chain keep pace, because there's tremendous supply chain issues.
Are operating processes, controls, and governance scaling with the business? And that's important. So increased speed in every one of those aspects is critically important.
Is the company becoming more dependent on a small group of customers, suppliers, or sectors or geographies?
Those are all really good questions. And can it deliver consistently as it enters new markets and adds more contractors?
So growth does not remove risk. In some cases, growth is what creates the next generation of risk. And this is where we are stepping up to help our customers in so many different ways. And that management needs to see that change while there is still time to respond. Question I have for you, Sharon, is when does something that begins as a people issue actually become a business risk issue? These are things we talk about within our teams and with our clients, but wanted to get your thoughts. Over to you, Sharon.
Sharon Egilinsky
Yeah, and I'm not gonna lie, I love that you asked that question because that is the essence of a lot of the work that we're doing and trying to help clients with. It is so much earlier than organizations are usually thinking about people. And it's not a role's open for six months, therefore there's a risk. It's really about the absence, as we said, of the capacity that's starting to change when and being able to meet what the company has committed to deliver.
And something that we really discuss with clients every day is if you think about people and people costs, it tends to be one of the largest expenses, or I'd like to say investment on a company's balance sheet.
It's not only an expense to be managed, it's an investment that needs to be curated, just like any other portfolio investment. And I'm not suggesting that people are a tangible asset, but what I'm suggesting is it's something that we really need to think about because without the people and the right people and the right jobs at the right time with the right skills and the right leaders, we can't deliver on our business performance.
And versions of this across the market right now, headlines about AI demand, power, capital, telecoms having outages, organizations not being able to get online fast enough, it's unbelievable that we don't realize every day that there are people behind this issue.
And what I'm saying, it's not a person's fault, but if a business can't get the right electrical commissioning, safety, compliance, whatever it might be, finance people together, the business will suffer from a resilience standpoint.
And what I think we need to think about more and more is that the absence of the right people and the right capabilities is sometimes a lagging indicator, but the organization feels so much strain and stress, even before those numbers start to show up. So, when a people constraint starts changing what the business can deliver, it's already become a business risk. So short answer after I gave you the longer answer is: it's so much sooner than anybody ever contemplates.
And Jeff, what do you think? How do you think about that people issue the way I've said an earlier issue to be considered? How do you think about it through the commercial risk lens?
Jeff Alpaugh
Yeah. Sharon. So the people sit behind many of the controls that these companies rely upon, they operate the assets, they manage contractors, they maintain standards across sites and make decisions under pressure to manage risk on behalf of the organization.
They are also the ones who respond when something goes wrong. A company can have an excellent technology differentiator and a well-designed system and still be vulnerable if the expertise, governance, or operating discipline around those systems is weak or they're disconnected.
So that's why I would not separate operational resilience from workforce capability. And that's the reason why we're interconnected within our Digital Infrastructure practice and looking at the client our clients holistically across Risk Capital as well as Human Capital.
Also, operational resilience is not purely an engineering question. There's a human component to it. And that component needs to be understood with the same rigor as the physical and financial risk. So the key thing here is the operational resilience is not purely an engineering question, Sharon. There's a human component to it.
Sharon Egilinsky
Exactly. Because when we go around and talk to our clients every day, we say Human Capital is Risk Capital. And let's take away the corporate jargon about what that really means. I don't mean that every single people issue needs to be treated like a major enterprise risk because there's balance there. I mean that there are certain people, capabilities, and organizational choices that sit underneath this growth plan and they need to be considered.
And if they're too concentrated in a few people, you mentioned somebody coming in to you either fix something or handle a vulnerability, that is a potential risk. And that's something that needs to be thought about well ahead of time.
And that's what we mean when we say human capital becomes risk capital when people dependencies affect performance, execution, and customer commitments. It affects enterprise value.
And I think, I know what we need to be thinking more about is again, where do the dollars go? So we're not saying spend more. We're saying that this is the moment to take that Human Capital phrase and make it a real-life situation. We're not talking about just headcount or hiring.
We're talking about the people system again that allows the business to execute, the leaders that are making decisions.
You know, if you see an organization in an earnings call, say they didn't meet their market demands, you almost never hear we didn't have the right people strategy or we didn't make the right decisions. And I'm not saying that's always the answer, but I think more and more as we think more practically, the question is gonna become not where do we need to cut costs, but where do we potentially need to reallocate the investment so that the business can deliver what it's promised, it's either public investors, it's private equity investors, whoever the investors are, it's family office investors. That's something we need to be thinking about.
And it might be live examples of do you pay a premium for scarce talent? And then ultimately think about the cycle. That premium and that scarce talent, as we can upskill and develop more people, that becomes more of a trend in compensation.
And sometimes it's also about, and as we know — because we work in a company that's so strong on data – it's also about getting the right data, getting the dashboards right, getting the information right so that leaders can see where the vulnerabilities are. It's not a push down question anymore. It's really something from a governance perspective that boards and C-suites need to be asking themselves. So what are you thinking about that?
Jeff Alpaugh
Sharon, I'll tell you you're absolutely right and covered a lot of ground there.
No organization can address every exposure equally, and they can't address every risk equally in every region of the world. And simply spending more does not guarantee a better outcome.
You have to identify the capabilities on which the strategy truly depends, understand where the greatest vulnerabilities and concentrations exist, and depend and decide whether intervention will create the most value. In one area, the answer may be compensation or retention. In another area, it may be development, succession, technology, or a different operating model. The discipline is the same: understand the exposure, the risk, prioritize it and invest in proportion to its importance to the business. And would love your thoughts, Sharon.
Sharon Egilinsky
End of the day, you also have to look as to where you have single points of failure, right? And that doesn't mean a single person, that means a system. That means as these organizations are scaling so rapidly, Jeff and Sharon may know where all the vulnerabilities are and they're working on the project and they're involved in the leadership decisions. But if we're not available one day, what happens? That knowledge is not there. How are we building a system to create a platform to keep the safety, the efficiency, and the speed that these things need to be done.
So,maybe you could just give us your thoughts on the risk perspective on points of failure.
Jeff Alpaugh
Yeah, so Sharon, so many different things to talk about. And I'll tell you in our next episode, we can go deeper on a number of these items, but we routinely think about concentration of risk in suppliers, counterparties, geography, technology, subsectors of the industry. And should we also think about critical expertise in a similar way?
Management and the board need visibility into these roles and the relationships and the interconnected decisions that are between these different critical parties within a very large company. And that institutional knowledge is really important in each one of those businesses. So the practical test is pretty straightforward. What happens if that capacity is not available exactly when we need it?
And once the dependency is visible, the company has choices. It can strengthen succession, transfer knowledge, develop more people, improve retention — and this is people retention strategies — use technology or redesign the work so that one individual is no longer the control. And the key thing I see is what happens if that critical capability is not available when you need it, Sharon.
Sharon Egilinsky
It's so true. And I think I've talked a few times and so have you about important messages. But if I were to give one takeaway to our audience, I would say, and you mentioned large organizations and critical capabilities.
It's also even with smaller ones. We're seeing small organizations that are getting into the space and we have to say, they say to us, tell us what we don't know. We don't know what we don't know. So that's where we can come in. But the takeaway I would say is — it's not sexy or fancy — it's where could our growth ambitions or our growth plans outrun our capacity? Where are those thoughts? And not just for today, but for the next 18 to 24 months and then beyond. But this is something we have to think about. Are we getting over our skis in some ways with the people that we have today and what we actually need for tomorrow?
And Jeff, I'll ask for you. I know it's so hard to pick the one thing, but what would you say is the one takeaway you'd want everybody to have?
Jeff Alpaugh
One takeaway is as we scale, are we really understanding how our risks are changing? Or are we assuming that what works at today's size and speed will work at tomorrow's? And it's changing so rapidly. As I mentioned earlier, the risk issues that we saw several months ago are changing in complexity as well as the interdependencies as we talked about.
And I would say the interconnectivity between the Risk Capital and risk issues are so intertwined with the Human Capital and talent-related issues that the successful companies will be the ones that are at the forefront of managing these risks and competing from a talent perspective with the dedicated risk strategy as well.
Sharon Egilinsky
Thanks, Jeff. This was such a great conversation. I look forward to many more.
Jeff Alpaugh
Yeah. So Sharon really enjoyed this session and look forward to our next one. Really enjoyed it.
Outro
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Until next time.