“Making Wales a leading nation for inclusion in the workplace, specifically around disability”
#AXSChat Interview with Julian John, Managing Director of Delsion.
Join us Tuesday August the 14th at 8pm London — 3 pm NYC for another Twitter chat about inclusion. Check #axschat on Twitter.
NEIL: Hello and welcome to AXSChat we’re delighted to be joined today by Julian John, Julian is CEO of Delsion, I hope I pronounced that correctly. You were introduced to us by the lovely Kate Nash of My Purple Space who we are collaborating with, and we were all playing a part in the PurpleLightUp campaign for the 3rd of December. But I know you’ve had a really interesting journey into the inclusion space and doing great work, but, better for us to hear it from you, so tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be working in the space and how Delsion came into being.
JULIAN: OK, well, first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity. So, I love watching the AXSchats. So, to start with a little bit about myself is that my career background is in retail, human resources and in development, being fortunate enough to have worked in that space since I left university. And been fortunate to have done great work around engagement and also inclusion, resource and recruitment but I suppose my biggest piece has been getting potential into businesses and getting the most out of individuals to which I’ve had limited success but that’s my driver in the workplace. 13 years ago, I was driving home from work when I collapsed, and it was discovered I had an acquired brain injury. The impact of that left me housebound for three and a half years rehabilitation for five years to learn to stand walk again. Even to the point that I lost everything and became homeless for a while. The impact of that was also my father had terminal cancer and wife suffered from cancer within that, so with regards to the world of disability, they’re very quick and very sharp. But I suppose through all of that I always clung on to my career and work background which was human resources and it was the point of trying to get myself back into work, in recruitment over 2,500 people myself I saw for the first time people face the barriers while trying to get in the workplace and that didn’t sit right with me from my HR experience. So, I thought now is my opportunity to do something about it. So, I started Delsion off as my own pathway back into work, so it is a people and development consultant tansy that focuses on three aspects, focuses on people’s solution, learning and development but also focuses on inclusion. However, there was no point in me just getting back into work and not learning from my experiences of what I’ve been through, so I set the social goal for the business to make Wales a leading nation for inclusion specifically around disability in the workplace. I suppose it is a little bit of an announcement the business has changed over the last three years since we run it, so we’re now in the process of converting it into a social business, so, it will still be learning and development stuff and inclusion stuff, but our drive is around our social goal and inclusion. So that’s what we’ve done, and that’s where we are now.
NEIL: Fantastic, and yeah it is an incredible journey back from a real adversity. I know also that you set ambitious goals around disability confidence so like you know becoming a first disability confident city, can you tell us a little bit about that, and I know Debra has questions as well.
JULIAN: I was very fortunate to be asked, this was before I was working so I was long-term unemployed for nine years and invited to the launch of event of disability in Cardiff, and I’m not going to, I basically stood there and asked for someone to give me a job, and there was a couple of employers in the room but not as many as I thought, so that stuck with me when opening Delsion, you can engage employers around disability in the workplace from my experience, so I set a bold claim as I tend to do, to make Cardiff a disability confident city in the UK in 2015 and that was just spending time knocking on doors and engaging on employers, bringing them to events with follow-up and legacy around making a difference and look at what makes up the employment within the city of Swansea and making sure there were employers in the room, so we had 70 employers there, and the follow-up afterwards as well.
DEBRA: So, Julian, I’m just stunned by your story. I’m just stunned by it. You have a disability that comes upon you very quickly, your father’s walking cancer path, your wife is, you lose your job, you can’t get employed, you’re homeless, often we think people can’t come back from this and yet not only did you come back from this but came back from this and proved through all of the experiences, you can help others to have much better lives. That’s just really, that’s like you know a story I would see on the movies. That almost feels like it is not even possible, so I think it is such a beautiful story, I can’t imagine what a wise entrepreneur you are because of the experiences and another point we often see all over the world that people with disabilities become entrepreneurs because they can’t get employed in the workforce, and so we’ve had some guests on talking about this issue, but, I just, I just feel a little bit in awe of your journey, I really do. Well let me just be in awe, and I know that you have adopted a daughter and this morning you were going through some things with her, you just seem like a man that is very human and resilient and determined to make the world a better place and I feel very grateful that you’re in the world. So, sorry to compliment you so much but what a journey!
JULIAN: those kinds of words humble me. A couple of things in that, I talk about my background just because people need to understand what we’ve gone through. I talked about specifically my father’s cancer and wife’s cancer, on the point of understanding what they went through in the workplace as well. And then I suppose some of the issues around disability engagement, certainly around cancer, is how to engage not having the information so, what do you do around that? And with regards to trying to prove anything, the only thing I want to prove to anyone is that I’m employable. As a person I’m employable. Look what I’ve done, what look what we’ve achieved, I’m happy to wave my flag around it if that’s part of the message that gets out. Enterprise I’m passionate about disabled enterprise, we’re currently doing a project in Wales, if you look at resilience, problem-solving, all those issues, I do Mentor outside of some of our work for parental rights, and contents behaviours or attributes you want, you can’t fit the bill better than some things around disabled aspects.
DEBRA: You know your story reminds me of something, Cisco, Cisco big multinational corporation and they had an experience in Bangladesh that just surprised them and it surprised other people and me as well. So, they work with the academies to help other people, everybody but also people with disabilities become Cisco certified by us, a lot of us understand that model.
Well they did that and they hired quite a few people that were blind in Bangladesh and they found that after, though a lot of studies because these are metrics and analytics and they found a few things that surprised them, they found the employees that were blind in Bangladesh were twice as productive and the non-disabled employees, that was interesting, and we’re not saying every single person with a disability is twice as productive but how interesting.
Something they found that surprised me and I thought I shouldn’t be surprised by it, they found that these employees were more empathetic than the employees that didn’t have disabilities and the customers noticed and the customers loved working with these specific employees that were blind, and the customers didn’t know they were blind but they found they were more empathetic to the problems they were having so having the kind of journeys that sometimes will crush us, the kind of journey that you took, and yet it made you so resilient. I think it makes you a wonderful spokesperson and allows you to help others that sometimes life can be really hard sometimes, so the resilience, the empathy, all of this makes us much better employees. So, I don’t want to hog the microphone, I know Antonio and Neil have comments, but let me turn it to you, Julian, I think something that employers don’t realise they’re getting when they work with companies like yours to ensure people with resilience will work their workforce.
JULIAN: Because of my HR and learning and development now if you look at things like resilience and empathy and change management, these are all leadership qualities. So, you can go into an organisation and try and draw that out of individuals, then let’s look at what the abilities are and potential of the individuals around are, so let’s look at the conscious is and further out, and for me, everything we do it’s just widening that talent pool and seeing the potential that’s out there, across the board, absolutely across the board.
DEBRA: Yeah powerful: Neil?
NEIL: It is a great point and you know, what we often see is people afraid to take on people with disabilities because they assume that there’s going to be increased absenteeism and a lot of the false assumptions and actually having the data to disapprove that is really powerful and to have not just data but also the anecdotal evidence of real people’s stories of how they can be successful.
I think it’s really important because there is an incorrect assumption that because someone has a disability there, they’re going to need more time off, they’re going to do this and that and be unreliable, when actually the reverse is often true.
JULIAN: It is an absolute fallacy, all across the board. The good thing is that the attitudes are changing, organisations are having an interest, and I made a huge driver of strategy around inclusion, but around, inclusion of strategy almost where it takes every single part of the organisation, so it becomes every part of the organisation. People at every single level of the organisation will understand the benefits of inclusion brings to an organisation. It does.
NEIL: Absolutely, and it shouldn’t be just the job of HR, this is everybody’s job to be looking at this stuff because it is everybody’s job to make their part of the organisation more effective, their part of the organisation more welcoming and everything else, and so, it is something that is woven into the fabric of both society and how businesses work, and if we don’t recognise that, then that fabric is weaker and therefore, we’re losing out on something, and Antonio, I know you had a question.
ANTONIO: I do. I frequently engage with and talk with people who are related and work with start-ups. Some of the start-ups are focused on recruiting people, developers, technologists, and even sometimes beside startups, I know sometimes agencies, they also have a lot of junior recruiters working for them. They are the ones doing the initial process of selecting people or engaging with them or even to search for new people that they then pass to their senior colleagues. So what type of work you think needs to be done to help younger employees working in human resources startups to change, all these perceptions about hiring people with disabilities? Because some are talking about a group here, where sometimes are completely out of the conversation that we’re having here today.
JULIAN: You can link that initial contact piece with regards to recruitment, resource and agency startups, also with line manager piece as well, so that’s a piece of educating the masses so how do you give people the comfort and freedom to be inclusive with regards to the measurements they feel they need to meet with regard to the restrictions they need to meet? So, everything that I do is about engaging and educating. And just keep talking and understanding and understand what the benefits are. As Neil was saying it is taking away the myths of it is going to be high labour turnover, there are legal risks and costs to the business, and that’s why I’m a fan of the PurpleLightUp because it recognises the contribution economically that disabled people make, but that has to be driven from a strategy level. And this is why I keep talking about the freedom for managers to be able to manage inclusivity and to recruit and for agencies to go out and feel that they have got the measures in place to allow them to be inclusive.
NEIL: I know that we’re going through an exercise at the moment to redesign all of our job descriptions within our organisation, we’ve got thousands of job descriptions because we’ve got over 100,000 employees, and we’re trying to change the language to you know, talk more about “we” than “you”, to be gender-neutral, to be age-neutral and be much more open to everyone. When we looked at the job descriptions, they were very technical, very restrictive and likely to push away really good talent that they put off from the get-go, by the language we’re using.
And then, of course, the other piece that worries me somewhat at the moment is right we’re saying technology is going, and we’re going to do all of these things, and we’re going to use AI and everything else. My concern is that through using some of these tools, if we don’t include a diverse set of people in the creation of these tools that what we’re going to end up doing is using these tools effectively filter out diversity in the recruitment process, so how do you think we can address some of that? Because you’re more from an HR background than I am. I’m interested to hear your points of view.
JULIAN: Well, someone walks into a room in any HR department and says I’ve got a fantastic way of revolutionising the way we recruit, we’re going to resource from the widest talent pool and open to everyone, not limit ourselves to qualifications, we’re going to look at experience and I guarantee we will get that potential within our workplace and when they’re in the workplace we are going to do the absolutely Utopia and manage people as individuals. Manage people as individuals and help them develop as individuals and get the potential out of the individuals by meeting all their individual needs and the HR director will say wow that’s fantastic. That’s just inclusion: But when we have the inclusion conversation, it suddenly becomes a different conversation to a resourcing conversation. And when we look at how artificial intelligence is coming into it, we got to see the positive benefits and aspects of that are, to drive what our needs are. And I truly believe so, I’m 26 now, plus 20, so, I’ve been around recruitment resourcing for an extended period and HR, and I genuinely think there is not a better opportunity than now with regards to the current recruitment market to entirely put our label inclusion on there.
We speak of great depth at millennials and look at age groups and what we need to encompass that, and then disabilities get deferred out of that. Which is just bizarre, we have to look outside of the silo approach; we have to look at everyone inclusive of every wish list we have. That’s my view of it, and it is entirely doable, I wouldn’t sit in and do what I do if I didn’t think it was achievable, it is not because of my personal experience, it is more from my career background than anything else.
NEIL: You’ve made perfect sense, I just managed to mute myself. I think it is important to welcome all of the talents. I’m somewhat playing devil’s advocate here in that what we often see is that in some of the efforts to be inclusive and set targets to be inclusive that we actually create silos for talent or silos for routes to entry, so, for example, oh we want to recruit more graduates or more you know, more people from X background or more people from Y, or we want to train up so many people up in this we tend to sort of constrain ourselves by doing that. And then how do we find that balance between setting ourselves targets and stopping ourselves from being inclusive and finding the right person for the job?
JULIAN: So what would drive for me playing devil’s advocate, what would drive a business to specifically in certain areas, unless it adds to that specific business, if you are thinking of resourcing model and employees you want to bring in the organisation or potential within there, you need to look at inclusion overall and see the best person through the doors to do that job. There’s no need to meet silos unless you’re looking at inclusion make up and you need to be wider, but if you’re open to all you’ll meet all these requirements, that’s my view. I’m happy to stand in any room with any person and look at any role their organisation and say where that matches and where that doesn’t match because you just want talent through the doors.
NEIL: Yeah, I think it’s, I think what has happened is sometimes we need to address our gender balance, and we got to do this. Oh well actually BAME is an issue and disabilities is an issue and in certain countries there are absolutely quotas and targets and everything else, so what you end up is you can only employ, I saw this happen to Twitter to someone that is part of the chat that, went for a job, applied to the job that they’re on paper-qualified to do, but because they had a disability they got referred to the disability department rather than put through normal recruitment channels. But because the disability department only had low-level jobs, because that was what the quota system supported, they were effectively excluded from the job they could do and too qualified to do the jobs that disability department was putting on offer. That’s not inclusion. You know.
JULIAN: That’s marginalisation, you end up marginalising, let’s go back to the strategy piece and look at as an organisation, you just want talent through the doors and I truly believe we’re going to get to a piece of successful organisations will prove that time and time again, and the other organisations will miss out. We’re not there yet, but we certainly see strives in that direction. Certainly, in the last three years, the way the conversations have move on, it is great the way the movements have picked up. It is a good place to be at the moment.
NEIL: Debra you had a question.
DEBRA: Well Julian, I was wondering how the, how are the businesses in Wales accepting this? Do you see that they’re buying into it? Or are they seeing the value or are they saying we can learn from other countries, we know this is happening? I’m curious how the businesses are responding to you in Wales.
JULIAN: So, I’m on an education and engagement mission at the moment. And we’re getting there. But I think the challenge certainly in Wales is that you’re competing against other silos and that’s absolutely wrong, so the point, is that we’ll take the inclusion approach and disabilities at the forefront of that and we just need to start understanding the widening of the talent pool. But yeah, and one of the other things that I’m trying to do is get Wales as a nation, and certainly as a Government as well to understand the benefits of being inclusive. We’ve got the perfect environment with regards to infrastructure and policy piece, whatever you want to call it, where we’re a small country, but that means we can get things done quite quickly and you can get to talk to the right people. Those conversations are starting to happen. So, when we start pushing from all from the same direction, then that is where that engagement comes from. That’s where the focus is. Whatever gets measured gets done, whatever the focus is, I don’t care what it is, that’s when it will happen. We’re moving in the right direction, I’m not ready to retire yet, and we’re only started on the path, but yeah, we’re getting there, and we got some fantastic things in the pipeline, to start really pushing that agenda.
DEBRA: And you don’t have to start from scratch, there’s a lot we know, and PurpleSpace is a perfect example of that, I find there are some innovative things happening in the UK that for instance, US-Latin America and Central America, the Africas, and Asia’s, can really build upon. And I, I’m really proud to be you know bringing some of these best practices here to the United States, and as Neil said you know, we’ve done tonnes and tonnes of studies for example in the US market that have proved which practices work, which don’t, and as you said Julian, when things are measured and focused on, those are things that happen. We know that. And so I think it is important when we bring people like you that are experts in a jar in these conversations and there’s so much that Wales with can learn from other parts of the UK but as you’re finding your path and the way to go forward, we can learn from that, because we’re often seeing when a country’s almost starting later, especially sometimes in the smaller countries, they can have an advantage of being more innovative, than some of the gigantic countries like my country, that sometimes we can’t get out of our own way. But I love being an American. I’m so proud of my country, but it is interesting to watch what is happening around the world and how we can learn from each other.
JULIAN: That’s about sharing best practice and all global movement the whole global movement overcomes local barriers, if 95% of the globe is doing it, then why be in the minority around that piece? But yeah, great things are going on, disabled enterprise we’re having a push on. There’s a push on the whole engagement piece around it. But, I think, that this the opportunity to share best practice, is absolutely key. Absolutely key and certainly in the States, I was on the States last year just to be able to share best practice this, is what we’re doing. I sit with people and say look at what is happening in another place, that’s the best benchmark. And let’s use that, and let’s surpass it, but another thing is lead from the front. If you aim to be ten years in front of other organisation, another business, another sector, by being ten years in the front you don’t have to follow. That’s where innovation comes from because you drive your own agenda, and that’s my focus, how we drive our own agenda and inclusion agenda surpasses a mainstream agenda, it becomes the main agenda. The same as Telecare services, logical aspects, that’s at the forefront, and that’s where we need to be with the people side of things as well.
DEBRA: Antonio.
ANTONIO: If you look back to the beginning of your career and also to the years when you were, how people with a disability used to apply for jobs in the past and how they’re able to use access to technology. So, if you look today, you think that the fact that they have more access to technology and more access to information also puts pressure on the side of recruiters and employers as and society in general, because they have a more sophisticated behaviour. Do you see that happening?
JULIAN: I think, certainly in regard to technology, I think the biggest push is for employers to understand the accessibility technology that’s out there. That is the, a big barrier that needs to be overcome at the moment just to take away the old perceptions of what tech can do around accessibility. And I think there’s also a position of there’s so much technology out there at the moment is for everyone to understand what the benefits of that are. Because it is changing all the time. But there’s a position of the enterprises that come up with the technology to be able to get that in the public domain and the knowledge to be built up as quickly as possible. Interesting I’ve swapped to Microsoft because of the accessibility features, and they’re fantastic, I know they’re doing a lot to promote it, but it is another opportunity to speak to employers do you understand some of the stuff you got in the business is very accessible, the same who understands apart from someone who uses it is, all the accessibility ability on the iPhone that is in people’s pockets day in and day out. That’s a bigger piece as well.
NEIL: I absolutely, I think there’s an awful lot of stuff out there but big educational piece to go through and that awareness raising and that championing of hey, we’re here and we are ear here to celebrate is something that is behind the whole PurpleSpace employee network of networks that we’re all engaged with. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the stuff that’s happening at December 3rd?
JULIAN: December 3rd. Let me think!
NEIL: You’ve been going purple already?
JULIAN: Yeah so it is PurpleLightUp, it is something that I’m absolutely passionate about, I’m passionate about on the basis that not celibate not only the economic contribution that people make but the contribution disabled people make to the workplace, so, I’ll be open and honest, Kate’s a dear friend of mine from PurpleSpace, and she put on Twitter her ideas, and I thought there’s an opportunity here in Wales, let’s see what we can do. Last year I was fortunate we had Cardiff City Hall in purple, millennium centre in Wales, the DVLA did some work, so we had some instant engagement around it. This year, bigger, bolder, better, but there are two sides of it, it is like in buildings in purple but also organisations, networks and individuals do, it is disabled powered movement. What the other activities they do on the day, so very excited for what is going on. Very excited how much is achieved in twelve months and what we got in store for this year but keep an eye on Wales because it will be purple from the international space.
NEIL: Absolutely. We’re turning our global website purple. It will be engaging, and AXSChat is absolutely getting engaged with PurpleSpace to help be the social media partners, and we’ll be championing it too, it is important to celebrate this, and it’s, you know it is a really good to see it going international because that’s where it needs to be, it is an opportunity for everyone to cooperate. So, I think, I have to say Debra is an ambassador for PurpleSpace in the US, so we are purple, there’s purple here, there’s purple on my phone. Yeah, we’re purple. And it is a great opportunity to shout from the rooftops about how important it is for us to celebrate our identity. And celebrate the contribution we make. So, thank you for being part of it. I know you’re going to have the purple paint out and lights out and we’ll be tough competition for us down here. We’ll see if we can get some other landmarks done too.
JULIAN: It is a global movement and good to see the momentum behind it.
NEIL: Yeah absolutely.
DEBRA: I agree, and the last year, when you did it the US, you know the message had not gotten out to the US because I know the US corporations, they’re very committed to this, and you mentioned Microsoft, I’m excited to be an ambassador to help people know it is a small thing to do, let’s get started, let’s use the purple colours so we can start the conversations. We’ve been having the conversation in the US for 28 years, our Americans with Disability Act is 28 years old, and this is a global issue, so thank you Julian and everybody for everything that we’re doing to make sure that people understand the importance and resilience of this population.
JULIAN: Absolutely. Here is one for you Debra, I was in the States last year, and I met with Disney Florida, to ask them to light the Castle purple. So, they couldn’t do it last year, so let’s have a joint effort this year to see what we can do.
DEBRA: I agree, because I’m good friends with Jay of Disney and also my business partner, Richard used to work for Disney, and they hire people with disabilities too because they want their employees, their cast members to look like their guests. So, it is a wonderful example. So yeah, Julian we’ll be talking a lot, let’s discuss the US purple and Canada and Mexico and Central America and Latin America, so, let’s go purple, I love purple.
NEIL: We’re at the end of our half hour, so just remains for me to thank you, thank you all to the people who are supporting us, especially Barclays and MyClearText for doing the live captioning today, thank you, Elaine. And all of the team. So, thank you very much.
We look forward to you joining us on Twitter.
>>: Thank you.
JULIAN: Thank you for the opportunity again.
DEBRA: Thank you, Julian.
DEBRA: Thanks, Elaine.
Video Version.
Caption work by http://www.mycleartext.com/
More on www.axschat.com
