Disrupt Manchester Preview with Jon Sleightholme, NFP

In HRchat episode 760, we look ahead to Disrupt Manchester happening this evening. Joining Bill on the pod is Jon Sleightholme, Disrupt Manchester speaker and Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions at NFP, an Aon Company.

Listen as Jon shares how his evolution from a professional rugby player to a corporate leader is filled with lessons from the sports world. Discover how the relentless pursuit of marginal gains and constant improvement can revolutionize talent acquisition and HR strategies. Jon sheds light on the impact coaches and leaders have in both arenas by unlocking individuals' potential through understanding their unique motivations.

John also offers a glimpse into his Disrupt Manchester session on the "Wild West" of talent acquisition, inspired by his love for Western films.

About Disrupt Manchester, Nov 6th

Join us after day 1 of the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition for networking and fast-paced presentations focused on improving the #worldofwork.

The format: Local business experts will present for 5 minutes each. It's fast-paced, entertaining, and lots of fun! Check out the latest Disrupt lightning talks from around the world to get a feel for what to expect.

Get your tickets here. 

Chapters

• 0:03 Evolution and Leadership in Business
• 12:12 Charity Support and Talent Acquisition

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom and visit.

Speaker 2: 0:22

HRGazettecom. Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. This is your host today, Bill Bannam, and in this episode we're going to look ahead to the relaunch of Disrupt Manchester happening on November 6th, directly after day one of the CIPD Conference and expo. And joining me on the show today is none other than John Slightholm, Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions over at NFP, an Aon company. Hey, John, welcome to the show today.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Hi Bill, Great to be here.

Speaker 2: 0:57

So, John, why don't you start by taking a minute or two and introducing yourself to our audience?

Speaker 3: 1:04

Yeah, of course, bill, no worries. Well, welcome to all the listeners. I'm John Slightholm and, for those of you who might remember, many moons ago I used to chase rugby all around a pitch for a living. So, yes, I was a former professional rugby player. I've been retired 20 years this year, which feels like a whole lifetime, and for my sins, for the last 20 years I've worked in and around the people world in a variety of different roles, but more latterly as a HR director of a large business based in Leicester which had a global footprint. And I've moved back into what is my real passion, which is talent and the acquiring of talent for organizations is my real passion, which is talent and the acquiring of talent for organizations. And I joined NFP People and Talent Solutions, or CONA as it was then, almost two years ago now, and I head up everything at NFP People and Talent which is to do with providing very flexible and cost-effective solutions for people in the talent acquisition world and our clients.

Speaker 3: 2:03

So that's a little bit about me. I've been say senior HR roles, senior talent roles, and I guess in a former life, before my rugby, I was a teacher. So I guess there's a theme of people that runs the whole way through my career.

Speaker 2: 2:18

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show. So I remember watching you play for England a few moons ago and you were excellent. You were one of my favorite players and can I just say listeners that I'm very lucky to chat with lots of very well-known folks on this show. John is one of the kindest and most humble, given his background, one of the most humble people that I've had the opportunity to bring onto the show. I just want to say that, john, you're a nice chap. Keep it up, ok. So what is one lesson or approach that you've taken from elite sports into the corporate?

Speaker 3: 3:06

world. I think the biggest lesson I've taken, bill, is about the constant need to evolve and change and to look to improve both yourself as an individual, but also the teams and the people that are around you. I think in elite sport if you stand still, you're already losing. Everything's about evolution, everything's about getting better. Everything you'll have heard in British cycling about the marginal gains that they did all those years to get the improvements they did and win all the Olympic medals. And then take that model onto Team Sky and win Tour the Olympic medals and then take that model onto Team Sky and win Tour de France's. And that's the kind of mindset I've got, I think, from.

Speaker 3: 3:51

The biggest lesson I've had from elite sport is that you've got to be constantly moving, constantly evolving, constantly looking to get better. And I've always been a great believer of if you do stand still and you rest on those laurels, then the competition is going to very quickly grab you and overtake you. So we do a lot of NFP, constantly looking ahead to what's coming. So what? Not exactly what's happening just right now, but what's around the corner, what changes are coming in the HR and people world that are going to affect us and our clients in the next two, three, four, five years, and we're going through a stage of a lot of change at the moment and it's going to continue. A lot of flux we've had over the last few years through lockdowns and COVID and cost of living crisis, et cetera. We've had a huge amount of these big things to deal with.

Speaker 2: 4:40

So, yeah, I think the biggest thing on reflection is this need to evolve and constantly improve and get better just another related question, if you don't mind how, how important is the, the coach, to the success of a team? Where? Where does that, where's that high level of performance comes from? Does it come from inside the sports person, or does that need to be brought out of them by having an amazing coach? And in the corporate world, how important is it to have a manager that one believes in?

Speaker 3: 5:13

I think it's hugely important in the corporate world, the business world, to have a leader, um, to have a boss to someone that can really bring the very best out of you, that can really understand what makes you tick. I think taking it back into the professional elite sports environment. Once you get to that level, you know the motivation is there already for most individuals. We go through difficult times, like through injury, for example, when you need an arm around the shoulder to pick you up, but you kind of take the motivation and the drive and the commitment is already there. What a coach will do at the very top level is challenge you, coming back to the point we made before about constant improvement, looking at the little gains that you can make to improve yourself as an individual, and then if you're doing that across the whole team and I play rugby, which in my opinion is the ultimate team sport and if you're making those marginal gains across every area of performance, then that's going to add up to a much greater sum by the end of things. So that's what a coach I think in elite sport is very, very good at doing is to spot in those areas of improvement and encouraging that with the team. Obviously they're giving you the overall game plan in terms of strategy, but really good coaches they get the players to to do that. The players actually design that. They talk about it. It's it's player led as opposed to coach led.

Speaker 3: 6:41

And a very good coach knows that, has has the idea in the head what the canvas, what the picture, looks like, but rather than painting it themselves, they get the players to paint that picture.

Speaker 3: 6:51

So you get true buy-in to the plan of what you're trying to achieve, what the objectives are. And I think that's transferable directly into the business. In the corporate world or or any sector, any organization where you're leading a team of people, it's almost easy to sit there and tell people what to do. But actually, if you got their buy-in to the plan, their buy-in to the objectives that they're trying to achieve, research shows that you've got a much better chance of that team achieving those objectives when they truly buy into it and they believe they can do it chance of that team achieving those objectives when they truly buy into it and they believe they can do it. So as that leader, as that coach of that team in the business world, you're giving them the the opportunity to do that and to grow. But it's critical that they've got the. You know they're buying and they really believe they can achieve it.

Speaker 2: 7:40

The focus of this particular interview is the Disrupt Manchester relaunch, and NFP is supporting the relaunch of Disrupt in Manchester on November 6th. It's also an opportunity to celebrate the rebrand from Connor. So my question for you what does joining NFP and Aon Company add to your team in terms of what it can offer to its customers?

Speaker 3: 8:05

That's a really good question. Bill Connor has been around for 30 years, has been a very kind of a small business, punching very much above its weight in terms of the delivery of the solutions that we provide for our clients across the whole HR wheelhouse. So anything that sits within HR's remit we can support our clients with we call it hire to retire and anything that sits within that window we've got solutions and expertise to help support with. I think there's a couple of things I'd say about being part of the NFPA Aon family. So there's a couple of things. One it gives us opportunity for more scale and growth as an organization. So we are already looking to acquire other businesses that are in and around our sector. So that's an obvious thing. So we've given support to help grow the organization. It's opening up other doors for us through the nfp and a on client base as well, so we can go and talk to their clients as they can talk to our clients about the, the various solutions that the group now offers. So everything from you know insurance consultancy through to employee benefits, through health and safety consultancy, so we've got a whole suite of things that looks at risk and people essentially within the remit of the businesses, so it gives all of us a little bit more growth and scope from that perspective. And I guess, conversely, what's the challenge of that is that we have to retain what's great about the original Connor business, which is what a fantastic group of people to work with, and I'm very lucky to do that. But we've got to retain that element of flexibility that we have and agility that we have to support clients. You know, very quickly, we're very good.

Speaker 3: 9:57

We always talk about the, the C's, the reasons why people engage with us. What one is because of capacity because they've got challenges with their own team and they haven't got time because business as usual is taking over. Secondly, it's about the capability of teams, and maybe they don't have that knowledge and expertise, um, to do that. Thirdly, it can be about it being critical. So the other c really that's important is they need it urgently. So, coming back to that agility and flexibility point, we need to be able to retain that. So the good news is we can, um, we are, we're part of a much bigger organization now with much bigger scope and more products and more solutions and services that we can talk to our clients about. Yeah, so the challenge for us is maintaining that agility and flexibility that we offer our clients, which is really one of our USPs and strengths.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Any case studies, any use cases that you're particularly proud of, clients that you've worked with over the years.

Speaker 3: 10:55

Yeah, very much so, and we very rarely work in isolation. So we do a lot of work in the charity sector, bill, as you know, and that's not so much through design and it's certainly not by accident, but it's not so much that we entirely focus on that sector. But it fits really well with the values of the team at NFfp people and talent and the type of people that we are. Um, and I think one of the reasons that we we do a lot of work in the charity sector is that we know there's a need. So we know there's a need for support across various things that sit within the hr remit. Um, often they've got, you know, not a huge budget to work with. They need some flexibility around that and what we can do is provide a cost-effective solution for the clients in that space. So we've done that with a number of the clients we work with and it's multifaceted. So it might just not be, you know, my team coming in to provide a talent acquisition, recruitment solution for them in the short term. It can be Steve, my colleagues team, supporting them through a big HR change, or Paul Armstrong, my colleague in people development, supporting them through some coaching or some leadership development that's going on. So we very rarely work in isolation. It's a, it's a combined solution generally that we offer.

Speaker 3: 12:12

Yeah, and there's a number of charity clients that would spring to mind that we supported with that kind of multi-functional um support. Um, where we've helped them, um, I guess probably one of the biggest ones we've done in the last year is help one of our clients uh, the charity blind veterans move one of their sites um from brighton further down the coast to a new center at rustington. Um, we help them through the consultation process with their staff about that move. Lots of staff decided not to make the move, which was absolutely fine and understandable If you know that neck of the woods really well. It's not great from a transportation and driving point of view.

Speaker 3: 12:51

But the challenge that the charity had was they had a new centre opening up and they were going to be about 70 heads short in that new centre to open on time. And to not open on time would have caused huge challenges for them in terms of their delivery and could have been very expensive for them. So we brought a team in, so we had Steve's team working with supporting around the consultation of the closure of the site in Brighton we had our team that provide outplacement support working with members of the blind veterans team that chose to take redundancy, so helping them through what is going to be their next step and looking for their next opportunity post redundancy from the charity, having chosen not to to make that move. And then my team stepping in to build the new team or fill the gaps in the team that they need in the new center further down the uh, the south coast in rustington.

Speaker 3: 13:45

So, um, yeah, a very proud one for us really, because it multifaceted, working across the business, uh, different people and from different departments involved. And, um, you know, we we managed to get that centre opened on time. It featured on the One Show earlier in the year and it was a very proud moment for us to see that. And we went down to the centre in the summer, met a lot of the staff that my team had put in place. So, yeah, that would stand out as being a fantastic project that number of people in the business were involved, in which is a great lead-on to my next question.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Actually, you mentioned the one show there. So one of our uh speakers at disrupt manchester on november 6th her husband, uh, was a director and producer on the one show. Uh, her name is penny huslam. She was a correspondent journalist with panorama. She was on the bbc breakfast show for many years and did various other things for the bbc, so she'll be there speaking. Um, paul armstrong is doing an awesome talk, but he's not going to dress as a sheep, although I was trying to encourage him to do that. That'll make more sense when, uh, when you see the talk, uh listeners. Um, and john here is going to take the role of a sheriff and again, I was trying to get him to dress up. I don't know where we fell on that. John, can you take a couple of minutes now and give our listeners a bit of an overview of your Disrupt Manchester session?

Speaker 3: 15:11

Yeah, of course Bill, I can, and I'm still contemplating whether the sheriff hat and badge is going to make an appearance next week. I'm doing a little tongue in cheek with a serious message piece around the perils of the Wild West of the talent acquisition and recruitment world that are out there, the bounty hunters that are out there who can often hold clients to hostage and businesses to hostage. In terms of that, they're totally reliant on that external support from a recruitment point of view and that doesn't always deliver them the best results and doesn't always deliver them long-term change for what they need within their talent acquisition processes and procedures.

Speaker 3: 15:57

So we're going to talk about life in Reputation Ridge, which is a fictional Wild West town that I've conjured up in my imagination, and we're going to talk a little bit. So our whole theme is about the Wild West, the Wild West of the recruitment world, and what you can do differently. How is a smaller business or a business with limited resources? What can you do to take a bit more control over that and not rely on the bounty hunters? I'm going to introduce you to a few of the bounty hunters, a few little characters from the Wild West.

Speaker 3: 16:25

And yeah, what else am I going to talk about? I am indulging a passion of mine as well, bill. I'm a massive fan of Western movies. I think it's my father. He, still in his 80s, will quite happily sit and watch a cowboy movie, as he calls them. I'll sit and watch a cowboy with a cup of tea and a biscuit and he'll be fine. So it comes all the way. And even my grandfather, who sadly died a number of years ago, he would love a Western, particularly a John Wayne Western. So you, who sadly died a number of years ago, that he would love a western, particularly John Wayne western. So you'll see a few references to John Wayne in there. And you'll also see a few references in there too, my favorite of all time western movie the good, the bad and the ugly love it.

Speaker 2: 17:07

My grandfather was also a huge fan of westerns. I was lucky enough, just, uh, just a couple of weeks ago. Three weeks ago, I was at the HRr tech conference in vegas and my buddy flew down from vancouver and we had a few days driving around the arizona desert. We went to sedona uh, I don't know if you're familiar with sedona, john, but that's where they filmed a lot of the westerns back in the day. Beautiful red rocks all around you, quite, quite beautiful. Anyway, uh, we are almost out of time for this particular conversation. Before we do wrap up, how can folks connect with you and how can they learn more about NFP?

Speaker 3: 17:39

So you can connect with me through LinkedIn. So I'm on LinkedIn. John Slythome on LinkedIn, Director of Talent Acquisition Solutions at NFP, People and Talent. Please connect. That's probably the easiest way to get in touch with me, learn more about what we're doing at NFP and share some more client stories. We're very big on sharing case studies and client stories. I guess that's kind of what we see ourselves as solution people. We're problem solvers and that's what we enjoy doing and I think that's in our DNA as an organization. So yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:12

LinkedIn, the best way to connect with me. Hopefully I'll see some of you at CIPD next week. Be there both days and please, if you can come along in the evening to Disrupt Manchester and find out all about the Wild West and Reputation Ridge Should be fun.

Speaker 2: 18:29

Yeah, please do. I'll also be walking the boards ahead of the Disrupt Manchester relaunch party at CIPD, so say hello, if you see me too. The relaunch party starts at 5pm. It goes all the way on till nine, so if you've got another party that night, don't worry about it, you can still join us. You're welcome, come along, sign up for it. To find the event, just go to Webbrite and search for Disrupt Manchester. It'll be there, or it's also all over our respective LinkedIn profiles and on the HL Gazette, linkedin and elsewhere, so you shouldn't have a problem signing up for it. Did I mention listeners? It's free. Your first drink is included, we've got loads of nibbles and, as I was telling John before we hit record today, we've even got a magician. So what more do you need, john? That just leaves me to say for today thank you very much for being my guest.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Thanks, bill, my pleasure and listeners as always. Until next time, happy working. Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.