Meet the HR Disruptors!

We love sharing how our great Pro members of the Disruptive HR Club are disrupting HR in their organisations. Sharing challenges and learnings with each other is a powerful way to grow our HR and leadership capabilities. 

This month, we’re thrilled to spotlight Rob Peacock, Head of Talent and Development at The Very Group, and a valued Club member since 2021.

Rob shares his journey from banking to HR, his passion for continuous learning, and how he and his team are driving positive change in the workplace. Learn how they’re tackling the challenges of AI, hybrid work, and more to build a dynamic, future-ready workforce.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, your company and your role. 

I’m Rob, Head of Talent and Development at The Very Group.  I’m a dad to 3 wonderful young children, married to the amazing Sarah (a children’s author and illustrator) and I have a passion for personal growth, people, good food (and wine…), wellness and Aston Villa! The Very Group is a family of digital retail brands and consists of a team of 4,000 people who are passionate about helping families get more out of life. 

Our People mission is to make Very a place where brilliant people belong, grow and are inspired and empowered to make a difference.  My team and I are responsible for bringing this mission to life by developing a high-performing, dynamic and future-ready workforce.  We look at everything from leadership and manager development, early careers, group capability, the talent infrastructure, and performance process to anything else that helps people learn, grow, love what they do and have the skills to succeed.

What do you love about what you do? 

I work with brilliant people who I enjoy spending time with. Every single day I feel I am learning, being challenged and utilising my natural passions and talents. I started my career in banking, then external recruitment before moving into HR at Tesco’s HQ in Welwyn. As soon as  I moved into Talent and Development, I knew it was the right fit for me. I get inspired by watching people learn, grow and develop skills and often my work feels more like a hobby; albeit perhaps with more pressured deadlines!

What frustrates you most about working in Talent and Development?

Nothing frustrates me as such, but in the 10 years I have worked in T&D I have often found myself making the case for learning and development as an investment and not a time stealer. I’m lucky to have worked for brilliant, forward-thinking, people-centric businesses (Lloyds TSB, Tesco, Virgin Media, Samsung and Very) who are all wonderful and different in their own way. Like most businesses, the consistency between them is there will always be far more to do than time to do it. So everyday people are making choices and it’s about making sure that investing time in skills development, leadership and personal growth and that it’s seen as an important AND urgent daily choice.

Our skills-based economy has meant businesses really get this, but the rub comes at the individual level, where people can feel they simply don’t have time and priories for what’s in-front of them every day.  Both making the case and changing the behaviours around continual learning in role is a daily challenge we in T&D must step up to if we are going to make a difference.  

How are you and your team disrupting HR?

A former HR Director I worked for (Jane Storm, who is now the Group People Director at EasyJet) used to encourage her HRBPs to be agitators for the better.  Early in my HR career, this gave me the confidence to challenge people, processes and cultural norms in my quest for better and it stuck with me as I moved into T&D and started to lead teams. I truly believe this is the best starting point for disrupting HR. My team and I pride ourselves on being agitators for positive change, it helps us create solutions to real problems and make a tangible difference to what matters most to our customers and the business.

Recent work we have done as a part of changes to our operating model is an example of this.  We’ve been working lockstep with business leaders and technical experts to build structured and focused skills and leadership development which enables our operating model and drives the business strategy. One output of this work was a recent group-wide capability initiative on Digital and AI skills, to help our people and our business adapt to and take advantage of AI and automation. This kicked off with a whole-day festival held on-site dedicated to delving into the power of AI, learning from internal and industry experts, including our partners at Amazon, Microsoft and others, so they could understand the impact of AI firsthand.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable by growing operational knowledge of deeply technical subject matter to enable you to converse with and influence expert stakeholders is a great way for HR teams to drive value and impact for their business and this is where the magic happens in terms of disruption.

What challenges are you facing currently with changing Talent and Development practices?

I’m finding that changing T&D practises (for example, including ever more innovative tech solutions) are incredibly helpful in supporting businesses where they most need us. Namely, in understanding how to identify, navigate and grow the critical and ever-changing skills (what teams need, what they have and what they don’t have), adapting to the rise of AI and the disruptive impact on the way we work, embedding a more settled and sustained approach to supporting work/life harmony and getting the balance of hybrid right.  

A greater focus on driving and embedding cultural and social changes, such as providing purposeful work and cultivating an inclusive, vibrant and diverse organisational culture, all serve to raise the importance of all HR functions.  T&D practices are increasingly adapting to these extra demands and the problem is finding where to focus your attention when you have so many competing priorities; we’ve come a long way since I started in T&D in 2014! 

How does the Disruptive HR Club help you with challenges/frustrations/what you are trying to achieve? 

I love the 5 Minute Mondays (5 minute videos that Pro Club members get every Monday).  It helps to get me firing on all cylinders on a Monday morning and always provides thought-provoking challenges. I also enjoy the focus and sharing of “next-best practice” areas, especially about Talent processes like the 9-box grid. It’s so important to meet your business where they are at and nudge them in the right direction, rather than try out an array of innovative new approaches for the fun of it. But knowing what the best practice looks like is a great starting place from which to decide which approach to take. Whenever I face a big strategic challenge, the Disruptive HR site and podcasts are the first places I go to spark my thinking.