8:00 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast & Networking

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

Welcome and Speed Networking: Connect with your Colleagues

Meet other employee communicators in this fun and fast-paced forum designed to provide you with an opportunity to share your goals for this conference while getting to know your fellow conference attendees and their most pressing concerns.

Lee Hornick
Program Director
Advanced Learning Institute 

9:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Communicating your Organization's Goals and Strategy Effectively to Achieve Business Objectives

Your ability to achieve business objectives depends on how well you engage, align, and motivate your employees. Effective dialogue with employees directly impacts your bottom-line performance, driving such objectives as productivity, quality, safety, customer loyalty, employee retention, and outperforming the competition.

During this session, you will gain insights into setting realistic goals and creating a strategy that works within your own organization, including practical advice for:

• Developing a cross-functional communication strategy
• Influencing attitudes and behaviors through open and credible communication 
• Deploying the strategy that motivates employees

Karen Horn
Vice President, Corporate and Employee Commitment
BMC Software

9:45 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Building Credibility and Trust Through Employee Communication

Many companies suffer from a disconnect between what they say and what they do. 
They use the phrase, “Our people are our greatest asset!” but, at the same time, they establish employee policies that can be seen as takeaways, and restrictive to creativity and entrepreneurial thinking.  Such a disconnect results in low employee morale, poor customer service and high levels of turnover. 

Companies that truly value their employees demonstrate their high regard by treating their employees like adults, like valued business partners, and at the same level as they treat their customers. So, how can employee communicators bridge the credibility gap? 

Well, if your company is in the midst of a crisis of confidence, it won’t be easy – because building trust takes time and a strategy.  But it can be done. This session starts with success stories from our panelists on how to build credibility within your organization. Then it becomes interactive.  Be sure to bring your successes, frustrations and ideas because the purpose of this session is to share and discuss with both the panelists and the audience.

Ken Groh
President
Groh Communications

Jim Warda
Senior Communications Manager
Walgreens

Howard Karesh, APR, Director Internal Communications
EXELON

10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.

Networking & Refreshment Break

10:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Living the Brand Promise Internally: How to Consistently Deliver Your Brand Through Your Employees

Employees often constitute the heart and soul of a company. Particularly in services businesses, it's people who ultimately deliver your brand promise. During this session, you will learn how to:

• Give your brand a voice
• Roll out your brand promise to employees
• Set expectations
• Identify brand leaders
• Evaluate and monitor
• Reward and recognize employees

Brad Trask
Consultant
Gagen MacDonald

11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Developing & Implementing Your Employee Communication Program in the M&A Environment, and Driving Change

Communicators are critical to making change happen. Communicators have the opportunity to play a leadership role in the process. But this can only happen when communicators understand the components of the change process and synchronize their thinking and activities to that process.

During this session, you will gain new insights into:

• Accessing the needs of your corporate culture
• Positioning your corporate culture during a merger and acquisition
• Harnessing the creativity of your workforce

Charles Boesel
Director, PwC US M&A Advisory Practice
PwC

Anne Luetzow, Manager, Mergers & Acquisitions, Human Capital
PwC

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

Networking Lunch

1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Improving Workforce Engagement and Commitment with Internal News Delivery

Internal news is not most employees' first priority. However, when done right, internal news is a powerful tool in improving workforce engagement and commitment. Mayo Clinic recently reengineered internal news delivery and will share what it learned about using internal news to engage employees.

During this session you will learn:

• How to discover what employees find compelling
• How to determine what channels to use to reach employees
• How to use social media to engage employees
• How to create compelling content and make the important interesting
  

Jessie Fenske
Public Affairs Specialist
Mayo Clinic

2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Communicating Your Organization’s Reputation, Employment Brand and Values

Organizations face many competitive challenges in today’s dramatically different business environment. To build acceptance and understanding from employees, you need to motivate and nurture relationships.

During this session, you will discover how to influence behaviors and attitudes and shape your organization’s reputation using the latest innovations in employee communications that are working, including strategies for:

• Building trust and credibility
• Aligning communication to the corporate culture
• Gaining buy-in from employees

Lonnie Ross
Manager, Internal Communications
DTE Energy

2013 IABC Gold Quill Award for Employee Communication

2:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Afternoon Refreshment & Networking Break

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Group Round-Table Discussions on Overcoming Common Obstacles in Employee Communications: Connect, Collaborate and Learn from your Fellow Conference Attendees

Need to dive deeper into specific topics? Want more details? Here’s your chance! The group will identify common key challenges in employee communications and you’ll choose which discussion group you’d like to join to share best practices, idea and experiences.  Learn from other internal communicators from a variety of organizations and get feedback and ideas for improvement of your own plans.

3:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
Overcoming Today’s Challenges Through Effective Employee Communication

Learn, firsthand, from this Fortune 500 “Best Places to Work” award winner!
Cardinal Health works across the broad healthcare spectrum to help make healthcare more cost-effective. To do that requires inclusion. They strive to reflect the diversity of the industry, customers and the communities they serve. And they must create an environment where all employees can work together with confidence and trust; an environment where no matter what their background, employees will be supported to do their best work.

During this session, you will hear the secrets behind this award-winning organization’s success.  You’ll learn:

• How to communicate to employees to get results
• Critical elements of any employee communications program that drives employee commitment, trust and bottom-line results
• Strategies for aligning communications to a workforce of more than 30,000 people worldwide

Jill LaNouette
Vice President, Communications, Public Affairs
Cardinal Health

4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Extreme makeover: How the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago changed its (Pin) Stripes

Face it: now that social media is here, the rules of Corporate Communications are changing faster than Madonna sheds personas. As new generations enter the workforce, it’s evolve or die. But what if you work for a pinstriped institution steeped in old school ways? In this unique case study, you’ll learn how the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, an institution beholden to pillars and eagles, turned their communication model upside-down by embracing multi-media and Madison Avenue inspired advertising techniques to capture the hearts and minds of their employees.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• Wage sizzling branding campaigns to “sell” your company’s mission
  
• Write zippy content employees actually enjoy reading
  
• Inject new life into your town halls and other employee forums
  
• Infiltrate the employee underground with blogs and social group
  
• Measure outputs, outcomes and business results

Lynn Benjamin, Manager, Internal Communications
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Karan Chandler, Assistant VP, Internal Communication
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Networking Reception: Please Join Us!

Join your colleagues for a complimentary networking  reception with students from DePaul University IABC student chapter, IABC Chicago board members, speakers and fellow attendees.

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast & Networking

9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Engaging Employees in New and Different Ways

The impact of enterprise intranets and social media channels has changed the way we communicate to employees. During this interactive session, a panel of top employee communication executives will discuss how to:

• Communicate your vision and values
• Integrate your strategic communication planning into a long-term commitment
• Build a healthy corporate culture
• Develop organizational trust and productivity through communication
• Use your intranet and social media channels
• Align your employee communication strategy within a changing organization
• Reinforce the behavior and motivation to influence leadership

Moderator:
Lee Hornick
Program Director
Advanced Learning Institute

Panelists:
Kelly Richmond Pope
Associate Professor
DePAUL UNIVERSITY

Ron Culp
Instructor and Professional Director of MA Program
DePAUL UNIVERSITY

Susan Hodges
Communications Manager
Caterpillar Inc.

Margie K. Nellas
Organizational Development Supervisor
Caterpillar Inc.

10:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.

Networking & Refreshment Break

10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Socializing Your Employee Communication

With all of the new media tools at your disposal, organizations have more opportunities and face more challenges in engaging their employees than ever before. Engaged employees are valuable, as they care more about their company and are more likely to see their work as an investment rather than simply a “job.” During this session, you will gain new insights into social media strategies that work.

Rhonda Rathje
Director, Global Associate Communications
WalMart 

11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
What’s Next? Communicating Change to a Diverse Workforce

Making a solid case for the change is critical for the change to have a lasting effect. Cynical stakeholders who have seen change initiatives fail in the past are likely to avoid risks associated with change. They become roadblocks when new change initiatives are broached.  During this session, you will discover new ways to influence behaviors and attitudes of employees in a variety of situations.

Robert Donohoe
Director, Global Internal Communications
Honeywell

11:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Conference General Sessions Wrap Up: Key Takeaways And What To Do When You Get Back To The Office

We’ll recap the highlights of the past two days and ask you to share key insights and next steps with the group.

1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP C

Outputs and Outcomes:
Measuring What Really Matters in a Digital World

Never before have organizations been subjected to such rapid change and to so many market pressures. Along with positive business results, change can frequently have negative effects, including lowered morale and productivity. During this workshop, you will gain valuable insight into managing employee communication through measurement.

During this interactive wrap up workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to discuss your own measurement challenges and questions to help you on the path to success.

Linda Kingman
Managing Director
Insidedge

David Wright, Senior Vice President
Insidedge