2011 Engagement and Retention Conference

This three hour executive briefing provides lessons from research, thought leaders and innovative companies for improving the practices, systems and culture within organizations.  HCI introduces its new framework to guide these workplace improvements:  the two Ts and the twelve Cs.  Trust and transparency (the two Ts) are the bulwark of any innovative effort; and the twelve Cs can be grouped into the following categories:
 
The Big Purpose
The Job
The Network
The Coach
The Experiences
The Lattice and the Ladder
The Legacy
 
Learn from industry leading organizations such as Deloitte, PwC, GE, Zappos, HCL Technologies, P&G, Hindustan Unilever, Timberland, Netflix, IBM, Starbucks, McDonalds and Southwest Airlines.  During the three hour sessions, groups will work on several specific way in which engagement, collaboration and retention can be improved.

Do employees in your organization have a clear understanding of your business goals and what each person can do to help achieve them? If not, you have a real opportunity to increase employee engagement and retention and improve bottom-line results. Research shows that employee understanding of the business strategy and how their work contributes to the company is one of the top drivers of employee engagement. Creating this line of sight, however, can be particularly challenging in an environment where many organizations are undergoing significant change.  In this workshop, you will learn, through simulation and best practices, how to develop a data-driven, business focused and inspiring engagement strategy to:

• Address the needs of your diverse stakeholders, including differences across generations, cultures and work environments
• Define the role of the leaders in engagement and provide the tools and coaching to ensure their success
• Consider an employee value proposition or employer brand as a cornerstone of your engagement strategy
• Incorporate creativity to enhance employee engagement and inspiration

Any manager can appear fully productive and enthusiastic simply because they’re intellectually and financially committed. But if you’ve ever witnessed a human being emotionally committed to a cause—working like they’re being paid a million and they’re not being paid a dime—you know there’s a difference and you know it’s big. It’s this difference that companies want when they say they want their managers to be leaders because leaders are emotionally committed and inspire it in others.  Stan will explain the importance of emotional commitment to managers and their companies. He’ll demonstrate how real leadership starts and exactly what it looks like when it’s done right. And he’ll explain the one thing even more important than how to be a leader: why to be a leader.

Coming out of the downturn, one in three high-potential employees (HIPOs) are not putting their full effort into the job, and one in four plan on quitting within the year. In addition, Corporate Leadership Council research indicates that our high potential pools have shrunk by 50% over the past several years. Without rethinking our approach toward our HIPOs, we risk a continued surge in disengagement, declining performance, and rising turnover. As we look at rebuilding engagement and a compelling employment value proposition for high-potential employees, we need to understand how HIPOs experiences over the past several years in particular have impacted their commitment levels and their perceptions of future career growth at their organizations.
Take Aways:

• Discover the four particular imperatives organizations need to focus on to reboot their social contract with their high-potentials
• Learn how to better equip your managers with tools to uncover and address HIPO engagement and retention risks
• Find out the latest research that outlines the new attitude and expectations of your HIPOs

One of the biggest issues on the table in talent management is how to manage a “Next-Gen” workforce that is turning the typical workplace upside down.  They live in a social networked world, typically working wearing ear buds; redefined a cross-borders world during their teens; view traditional incentives and rewards as largely irrelevant; work to live, not live to work; and, demand collaborative, consensus-building approaches.
 
Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation about how Facebook has become THE place for work for a talented Next-Gen workforce and how the company has become a game changer – all through the vision of a Next-Gen 25-year-old CEO.
 
Take Aways

• How to take mass customization to a new level – stretching and energizing the “human capitol”
• How to recognize and reward individual and team talents
• How to make your business intuitive – engaging your people as product evangelists
• As a leader, how to share, and at times, give up control in order to grow the business and people

Utilizing exclusive research from the global WorkTrends™ database of more than 200,000 employees, we will provide critical insights as well as practical tips on how you can link employee engagement and leadership effectiveness to increased financial success, while gaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
 
We will highlight the key drivers of leadership effectiveness---what leaders must do to instill trust and confidence among employees. More broadly, Dr. Wiley will offer action points on how to develop and implement effective communication methods to build real leadership engagement at your organization.  Discover how this powerful trickle-down effect translates to a dedicated and loyal workforce that generates increased productivity, outstanding customer service and provides bottom line growth.
 
Takeaways:
 

• Discover the top 3 key drivers of Leadership effectiveness and how to implement them in your organization
• Learn the critical steps leaders must take to instill trust and confidence in the workforce
• Takeaway an action plan on how to implement a successful leadership talent program that provides the workforce with increased engagement, robust productivity levels and a stronger connection to the organization.

Our Human Capital Management efforts are most successful when they encourage people to contribute their own passion and energy to the organization. Passion is a powerful multiplier of human accomplishment, particularly when like-minded individuals converge around a worthy cause. Yet research shows that most employees are emotionally disengaged. When employees are unfulfilled, they underperform--and the organization suffers. What if our employees were not only re-engaged, but also passionately interested, and eager to contribute more? How can we inspire passion in the people we lead? And how do we convert that passion to productivity?
 
In this session, Chris Grams, the Management Innovation Exchange Community Guide, will lead Gary Hamel’s M-Prize 2011 winners in a panel discussion showcasing their award-winning creative ideas:

• Lisa Haneberg, VP of OD at MPI Consulting, will share her vision of a "talent management cloud," a custom-built, ever-evolving support system capable of creating conditions that help people grow with (and stay in) an organization.
• Joris Luijke, head of global HR at Australian software company Atlassian, will share his blueprint for a completely redesigned (and much more humane) take on performance reviews.
• Doug Solomon, CTO of celebrated design and innovation firm IDEO, will share his company’s two-year journey to develop a knowledge-sharing system called "The Tube" that stimulates and supports collaboration and generates pioneering work.

Today’s 24/7 pace with its back-to-back meetings, endless emails, and chance
encounters in the hallways result in most people feeling they are being kept from
doing their “real work.” But in a groundbreaking new keynote, CEO Douglas R.
Conant argues that these moments are overlooked opportunities for every one of us to
expand our influence and deliver measurably better results. Through previously-untold
stories from his career, he shows how a leader’s impact is built through hundreds, even
thousands, of interactive moments in time or “touchpoints.” The good news is that
anyone, at any level and in any industry, can attain greater “touchpoint mastery.”
 
In this critical address, you’ll learn:

• How each of us is tested every moment, every day
• That one of your greatest investments is constant attention to your mental model,
• emotional maturity, and bias for action
• How to transform otherwise ordinary interactions into powerful leadership
• moments—one “touchpoint” at a time

How Unilever Creates a Competitive, Healthy, Productive, and Sustainable Workforce by Creating an Agile Working Environment
 
A combination of technology, people and workplaces is a powerful way to change how we work today and adapt to the requirements of the future. Bringing these forces together under Agile Working creates a multifaceted value proposition that builds energy for change, flexibility, collaboration, carbon reduction and delivers broader business results.
 
For approximately two years, Unilever has been shifting to Agile Working, an approach to getting work done with maximum flexibility and minimal constraints. It puts employees in greater control over how, when, and where they work, and supports individual work-life balance.
 
Initial feedback indicates that Unilever employees are generally 20% happier based in Agile workplaces and believe they are achieving better productivity as individuals and teams. More broadly, Unilever expects the following benefits as Agile Working penetrates the business:
 
Reduced travel from employee’s commute being reduced and business travel avoidance
Significant carbon savings from reduced travel and better efficiency from our buildings
Cost savings from real estate optimization and operational efficiencies being realized
Increasing the capability of our employees and improving productivity
Building a stronger employer value proposition and retaining greater and more diverse talent in the organization.
 
Don’t miss these takeaways:

• Discuss key factors changing corporate culture today
• Learn how to create efficiencies through technology, best practices, and improved facilities
• Find out how this innovative approach to today’s workforce can improve employee satisfaction and have a positive impact on the environment and business performance
• Hear key outcomes, challenges, and successes that Unilever has experienced implementing agile working

 In this session, the presenter will discuss how a company's focus and commitment to Employee Engagement played a key role as it went through a major organizational integration.  Themes around leadership, learning and development, and communication will be shared along with practical ideas for "walking the talk."  Attendees will be reminded of the complexities associated with merger/acquisition/integration efforts, and how leadership directly impacts an employee's ability to move through change and transition by maintaining committed to core values and culture.  
 
Participants will:
 

• Gain insight to how a company's engagement drivers can help leaders get laser focused on the things that matter most to their employees
• Learn how one company built engagement in a way that mirrored how its consumers demonstrate Brand Love
• Take away practical tips for how to drive manager and individual accountability for employee engagement deep within the organization

Many companies are using a wide range of Web 2.0 tools with the goal of connecting employees and igniting innovative ideas that will help it stand out in the global marketplace.  But what companies are discovering is that it’s not enough to implement these technologies – the real measure of success is to create, nurture, and energize employees around purposeful collaboration.  Join this session and uncover strategies to effectively unlock the potential of social media in your organization. Apart from selecting the right technology or improving employee adoption, it all begins with an understanding of the critical business results you're after.
 

• Learn this effective approach to managing social networking sites for business success and how its leaders saved millions by building a strategy to foster information sharing among employees and different business locations and increase employee engagement.
• Discover key methods for leveraging this technology, including steps to ensure employees are able to use social networking sites effectively to increase performance and productivity.

Hay Group research suggests that employee engagement, while important, is not alone sufficient to sustain maximum levels of performance over time.  What’s the missing piece? To borrow a line from the movie Jerry Maguire, engaged employees and managers seem often to be saying to organizational leaders: “Help me help you.” In other words: “Put us in roles that utilize our skills and abilities and allow us to do what we do best.  Give us the tools, technology, information, support, and other resources we need to be effective. And, finally, get out of our way!  Don’t introduce procedural barriers that will interfere with our ability to get things done. And don’t dilute our focus and consume our energy with tasks that don’t add value.”
 
To get the most from talented people, organizations need not only to motivate them, but also to enable them to channel their extra efforts productively.  Enablement is a particularly important consideration for managers.   Especially in dynamic or rapidly changing environments, managers often face personal enablement challenges that limit their ability to perform optimally in their roles.  To position their teams for success, managers need to align employees with roles that fully leverage their potential and provide them with the workplace supports they need to carry out their responsibilities.  This session will review the importance of enablement as a performance driver and present strategies managers can use to enhance enablement levels with their teams.

One of the most significant challenges engagement programs face is just getting approved and funded.  Approaching the executive suite as a confident business partner with the acumen and financials to back up your proposed initiatives is not nice to have – it’s required to close the deal in today’s market environment.  Positioning engagement projects as budget line items has always been challenging given the “soft” nature of their returns, but with the proper language, tools and collaborative conversations, you can connect these initiatives directly to the bottom line.
 
Curt Gray has spent nearly three decades as a Human Capital business partner and has vast experience in obtaining leadership buy-in on engagement and retention projects.  He will demonstrate these successful business processes by sharing how BAE Systems, one of the world’s largest defense and security companies, capitalized on these effective methods to build a nationally-recognized warrior integration program.  This compelling story will provide a thought-provoking example of a profitable and patriotic employee engagement program that you are not likely to forget!
 
Don’t miss these exciting take-aways:

• Learn new approaches to establish links between business strategy and Engagement
• Discover the language of sales, profit and cash for incorporating into your conversations to build understanding and commitment
• Hear about approaches for demonstrating engagement programs’ value and their impact on the bottom line