8:00 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.

Chairperson’s Welcome & Speed Networking

This fun and fast-paced forum is designed to provide you with a unique and fun opportunity to share your goals for this conference while getting to know your fellow conference attendees and their most pressing concerns.

Chris Gay, Principal
BRIDGE CONSULTING
Conference Chairperson

9:00 a.m.

Top 10 Trends In Employee Communication And Engagement

In this eye-opening session, we’re counting down the top 10 trends in connecting employees with the brand to deliver business results. The increasing pace of change—technological, demographic, economic and cultural—requires new approaches to employee communication and engagement.  In addition, we’ll explore what’s new, what works, and how to navigate the “latest and greatest” approaches to seize the right opportunities for your organization.

Through best-practice examples and thought-provoking discussion, we’ll examine a range of trending topics, including:

• Creating purpose-driven communication to establish a clear line of sight between employees and the brand
• Employing new forms of messaging to deliver simplified, integrated and meaningful communication that cuts through the clutter
• Aligning your organization’s culture with the brand using a measured approach that builds sustained behavior change
• Harnessing the power of social media to foster business-focused, authentic internal communication and collaboration

Whether your efforts are in need of a minor update or a major makeover, this Top 10 Trends session will help you determine your next steps. 

9:45 a.m.

Changing Culture Through Your Intranet

Do you have an intranet that no one visits?  Is it used to post static news but never have a two-way conversation or receive feedback from team members?

In this session, you will be taken through the journey of Domino’s award-winning intranet site, LIVE.  You will learn how Domino’s engages store-level team members in two-way discussions and uses employee feedback to improve the business’ bottom line. In addition, you will hear how Domino’s keeps franchisees and store team members informed on what’s next for the company and how the culture changed through their intranet site.

Specifically, this session will highlight how to:

• Use your intranet to motivate team members to take action
• Tell stories digitally to change beliefs
• Keep employees aligned and focused on what’s important in the short- and long-term
• Encourage team members to discuss problems and identify solutions
• Use your intranet to change culture

You will leave this session armed with new strategies to incorporate into your own organization’s intranet!

Stacie Barrett, Manager, Internal Communications
DOMINO’S PIZZA

10:15 a.m.

Idea Exchange: Questions, Feedback, Collaboration

10:35 a.m.

Inspiring And Engaging Employees With Recognition To Improve And Strengthen Their Connection With Your Brand: A Proven Program For Success

What is it that employees crave from their employer? What can make an employee treat a customer as a friend and engage others with brand enthusiasm rather than brand apathy? What can motivate a marginal employee to be a superstar? How can you kick-start your company toward the benefits of an engaged team?  How can you deliver consistent company and brand messaging to all employees? The answer - by adapting current mediums and technology so that your company can connect with your employees so they connect better with your customers!

This session will answer all of those critical questions and more. Program concept, funding, implementation, user feedback, maintenance and much more will be covered and discussed, including:

• Understanding how to engage employees with knowledge of basic human nature (needs)
• Defining standards, goals and resources for managing the system
• Options to support and supplement content to meet your employee engagement goals
• Gaining leadership commitment
• Learning about common mistakes and opportunities missed
• Planning for the content monster and resources to help you prepare
• Discovering untapped external resources for content management with employees and customers

There are few tangible and measureable factors for recognizing and acknowledging employees. It boils down to quality of life for employees -- happy employees mean happy customers!

Marlon Giese, Retail Communication Manager
CABELA’S INCORPORATED

Energizing Leaders To Inspire A Values-Driven Culture

At Genesis HealthCare, LLC, they don’t produce widgets or gadgets. As one of the nation’s largest skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapy providers, they care for their patients and they care for their caregivers. “People” is what their business is all about.

The focus on people first, through a values-driven lens, has created an environment where employees not only feel good about the work they do and the folks they work alongside, but it also helps employees feel good about themselves. This is what sets apart their culture of values and excellence.

How do you energize leaders to inspire this values-driven culture?  By providing them with the programs and the tools that give them rich experiences in connecting with their frontline. A senior executive frequently rallies leaders across their organization by saying, “When you focus on your people first, all the numbers will follow.”

This session will share key takeaways of the programs, tools and experiences that have made this statement become real for Genesis and its leaders as they were included amongst The Achievers 50 Most Engaged Work Places in 2012, including learning about:

• The Genesis Employee Foundation: a 501(c)3 charitable organization established to assist Genesis employees through unforeseen hardships
• Genesis Core Values and The Promises: embracing these behaviors from hiring and orientation to performance evaluations and ongoing recognition
• The People Plan: a continual strategic improvement process for building engagement
• The Genesis Living Well Program: a wellness program that helps employees live a healthier, more satisfying life

Victoria Valton, MA, Senior Director of Employee Engagement
GENESIS HEALTHCARE

11:45 a.m.

Idea Exchange: Questions, Feedback, Collaboration

11:50 a.m.

How To Drive Employee Engagement, Foster Collaboration & Maximize ROI Through Your Video Content

The birth of YouTube changed the corporate video business overnight and as a result, using video in your organization will never be the same again.

All over the globe, individuals were downloading and sharing home videos, on all sorts of topics, some slick and sophisticated, but most downright amateurish, and quirky.

This, plus the popularity of reality TV and the availability of reasonably-priced HDTV video camera, created a revolution in the video industry.

In this rapidly-changing world, your audience no longer responds in the same way to top down “state of the union” style videos -- they are looking for truth. And productions that are believable, real, and down to earth, that involves them, will inspire people to believe and to take action.

This lively session will explore video best practices including a recent example from HOME client JetBlue:

• How to be more inspiring in your video communications
• How to get the best out of your ever-shrinking communication budgets
• Ten top tips for better productions

Sebastian White, Manager Executive Communications
JETBLUE AIRWAYS
&

Carol Whitworth, Founder and constant source
of inspiration & innovation
HOME

12:20 p.m.

Idea Exchange: Questions, Feedback, Collaboration

12:30 p.m.
Lunch On Your Own -- But Not Alone!

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion based on an engagement hot topic. Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing engagement concerns.

2:00 p.m.

Mining Your Organization’s Past & Present To Transmit Culture & Core Values & Foster Employee Recognition, While Increasing Engagement

Corporations are people, as the Supreme Court has ruled – and just as every person has a “past,” every organization has a creation story of its own.  This session will show how, if engagingly told, the tale of your organization’s genesis, as well as ongoing stories about your employees, can be told to inculcate your culture and core values and to build recognition, going forward.

Take, for example, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the nation’s largest nonprofit home and community-based health care system, with a workforce of 18,000+. Its clinicians make more than 2.3 million visits yearly. Yet VNSNY was founded in 1893 by two young volunteers.  A 26-year-old nurse and her former classmate rented a tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side – at that time, the world’s most crowded slum -- to meet the community’s healthcare needs. A compelling tale and the creation myths of many organizations are just as intriguing, if dramatically told. 

This session will demonstrate how to leverage your organization’s creation tale and ongoing stories about your staff to reinforce organizational culture and core values and build recognition, including how to:

• Draft feature articles for publication on your intranet, corporate website, and/or in organizational newsletters or as external media pitches.  Such stories inspire your workforce by touting core values, as demonstrated in the organization’s “creation story.”
• Make a brief documentary film about your “creation story” and how it speaks to the organization’s culture and values, to screen at orientation, stream on your intranet, corporate website, and post on YouTube
• Connect with museums or historical societies to collaborate on an exhibit that tells an inspiring story about the genesis of your organization. (At VNSNY, this has meant two exhibitions at NYC museums in 2012, featuring historical artifacts), or, simply create your own exhibit, at your corporate headquarters
• Collect and leverage stories about current staff members who exemplify core values through their actions
• Draw upon these stories to develop media placements (internal and external) and draft award nominations that bring internal and external recognition to your staff and organization

In addition to reinforcing culture, core values and boosting recognition, such efforts may also be linked to rising levels of employee engagement, as measured in employee satisfaction surveys.

Susan Rita Ruel, PhD, Communications Manager/HR
VISITING NURSE SERVICE OF NEW YORK

2:30 p.m.

How To Use Text Messaging To Engage A Large & Diverse Workforce While Measuring The Results

The MGM Grand Hotel and Casino employs more than 8,500 employees in six divisions. The creation of MGMNOW, a text messaging initiative based on how this large hotel interacts with its guests, was designed to reach and engage effectively with its diverse internal audience.

In this session, you will learn about the implementation of MGMNOW and how employee subscribers are the first to hear of events, free ticket offers and giveaways, and how word-of-mouth was used to increase subscribers within the first year.

You will also learn about the components of this ongoing, forward-thinking employee engagement program, including:

• Goal setting, timing and amount of text messages sent within a time frame
• Use of print promotions for the launch
• Message development — the decision to keep messages positive, short and timely
• The results

Jenny M. Titus, Director of Employee Programs and Communications
MGM GRAND HOTEL & CASINO

3:30 p.m.

Idea Exchange: Questions, Feedback, Collaboration

3:40 p.m.

Afternoon Refreshment & Networking Break

3:50 p.m.

Brainstorming Session: Taking Advantage Of Multi-Channel Communication Opportunities

You’ve heard from a number of speakers, now we’d like to hear from you. Network and discuss with fellow attendees and speakers an example of the most successful integration of new or traditional media you’re using to engage with your employees.

4:20 p.m.

Intranet 2.0:  How To Recognize & Utilize The Power Of The Social Web In Your Enterprise Portal To Build Employee & Brand Engagement

Social media can turn the traditional enterprise portal upside down. Rather than continuing to push content to employees and wondering why it is not being read, forward-thinking communication departments are beginning to adopt the "Upside-Down Enterprise Portal" approach.

This new approach, adopted by Cardone Industries, a Philadelphia-based provider of new and remanufactured aftermarket auto parts and products, recognizes the power of the social web where thousands of information curators are sharing information with their colleagues through Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The way of the emerging "citizen editor" can be applied to the corporate intranet as a means to share content relevant to the employee masses.

This session will lay out a model for the next generation social intranet environment and share approaches to make it truly social through advanced sharing and the broad range of capabilities.

You will learn how you too can implement an enterprise collaboration solution in this fun and thought-provoking session.

Jeff Willinger, Director of Social Computing, Collaboration & Intranets
RIGHTPOINT

4:40 p.m.

Idea Exchange: Questions, Feedback, Collaboration

4:45 p.m.

Networking Reception: Please Join Us!

We invite you to join us for a drink as you relax with your peers. All conference attendees and speakers are welcome to join us for this special opportunity to continue networking. Don't miss this chance to benchmark new ideas over complimentary drinks!

Sign up during the day for dinner with a group. Take advantage of Philadelphia’s fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.