EXCLUSIVE: Jon Norfolk (pictured), head coach at Team GB Para-Cycling, will present the closing keynote address on the first day of Employee Benefits Live 2017, highlighting how people development should be aligned with an organisation’s aims in order to achieve business success.
In his keynote session on 10 October 2017, titled 'What can sports teach us about workplace values?', Norfolk will discuss the people development journey that was undertaken at Team GB Para-Cycling in preparation for the 2016 Summer Paralympics, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Norfolk will share the key learnings the organisation took from this process, explain the importance of implementing a clear vision and strategy to underpin a people development journey, and highlight the role of employee communications within that.
Norfolk will also discuss how people development and HR processes can fit within a wider business strategy in order to align with the sport industry's specific demands.
He said: “The key thing for me is to make sure we’ve got the right people in the right positions, and then the right packages of support wrapped around them. […] We’ve tried to make everything aligned to what the aim of the organisation is. From a development point of view, whether it be personal development or more [the] HR processes of it, it has to align with the outcome because if it doesn’t add to what you deliver, it can quite often [seem] a waste of time or a distraction.
“I think a traditional HR or people management approach wouldn’t stick [at Team GB Para-Cycling] because it wouldn’t be relevant. We need to make sure that [our approach is] agile and it’s responsive and we’re able to be lean and efficient as well as robust at the same time.”
Employee Benefits Live 2017 will take place on Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 October at Olympia National, London.
