8:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast & Networking

8:30 a.m.
Chairperson's Opening of Day Two and Presentation:
Harnessing The Power Of Co-Creation: How Leading Organizations Are Using Crowdsourcing And Emerging Media To Engage Employees Enterprise-Wide

One of the most powerful catalysts to engagement is the process of involving employees in the generation of ideas that address an organization’s most pressing challenges. By opening up these important conversations, individuals feel a part of—rather than on the sidelines of—the true game of business.

During this session, you will hear methods for how to drive co-creation efforts within your company to engage employees at all levels. Case studies will be used to lead you through a series of pointed inquiries, facilitating breakthrough thinking and leading to significant improvements in both employee engagement and leadership support.

Some of the many things that you will learn during this informative session are how to:

• Position communications as a catalyst for co-creation
• Build a holistic engagement strategy, supported by multi-disciplinary communications
• Use emerging crowd-sourcing technologies to drive engagement efforts

Preston Lewis, Co-Founder & Director
BONFIRE COMMUNICATIONS
@bonfirepreston

9:10 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

9:15 a.m.

Engage Or Entangle? How To Link Communications Objectives That Result In Employee Entanglement

The financial unrest in the past four years has led to later retirement. There are now four generations active in the workplace. And when all is said and done, the current workforce is the least engaged in history.

How does an organization successfully communicate with: four generations, a workforce that has Millennials as the most populous generation and women as the most populous gender? Will an economic recovery lead to high turnover in firms with disengaged workers? Why do managers like engaged workers and leaders like entangled staff?
The answers are critical for workforce/organization alignment and can be solved with effective communication tools.

Targeted for communications professionals, human resource professionals and leaders, this session will help you to:

• Clarify the damage of unengaged staff
• Define the productive and profitable difference between engaged and entangled staff
• Reveal methods of entanglement used by several award-winning employee centric organizations
• Illustrate communication instruments that speak from staff to staff

9:45 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

9:50 a.m.

Morning Refreshment & Networking Break

10:05 a.m.

Digest Session: Discuss And Brainstorm

Whether it’s a weekly update, emergency broadcast, or contest – every organization is looking to communicate in a more efficient way with their employees. Discuss and brainstorm with fellow attendees and speakers techniques you’ve had success with, or concerns you’re having, in communicating key information to your employees.

10:35 a.m.

How Social Media Can Drive Cultural Transformation And Help Manage Organizational Change

Facebook, Twitter, virtual meetings, video conferencing, and many other collaboration and social media platforms are an integral part of people's day-to-day activities. As these platforms continue to find their way into enterprise communications and management strategies, many companies continue to struggle with the implementation of such initiatives.

There is a challenge in designing and creating a targeted marketing strategy; it’s not about being present and engaged on every available outlet or gauging success on the number of followers, but finding the appropriate outlets tailored to niche or broad interests. Social media has allowed Winston & Strawn to:

• Embrace the “Winston” story and tell it to everyone;
• Encourage brand reinforcement;
• Share updates across time zones;
• Understand those outside of their home/HQ office; and
• Drive messaging across borders, offices and environments

In this session, you will explore how social and collaboration tools can provide a powerful platform to help your company successfully drive cultural transformation and manage large-scale change, specifically focusing on:

• Building a collaborative culture
• Establishing a more effective two-way conversation with your team
• Creating engaging learning experiences
• Improving employee involvement and contribution
• Keeping employees motivated and on task

Katy von Treskow, Senior Marketing Manager, Digital Media
WINSTON & STRAWN LLP

11:05 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

11:10 a.m.

How To Engage Leadership And Employees And Cut Costs Through The Use of The Latest Technology

As the world is becoming more technology based, companies are starting to embrace the ways they can communicate with their employees via new platforms. Using the iPad is one example of how to harness the technology era in the workplace. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (RDA) is a global multi-platform media and direct marketing company that educates, entertains and connects audiences around the world. The company and its employees are dedicated to providing customers with the inspiration, ideas and tools that simplify and enrich their lives on whichever platform they prefer. With 27 leading brands, including the master brands Reader’s Digest, Taste of Home and The Family Handyman, the company reaches more than 145 million consumers. Within the past year, Reader’s Digest magazine has expanded content to all digital forms, becoming the #1-selling magazine on the Amazon Kindle, and a top seller on the Apple iPad and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

In this session, you will learn how RDA energized their global leadership team by using the iPad to communicate the company’s strategic goals and digital transformation objectives at the annual management conference.

After this energized session, you will gain a better understanding about:

• How to use the iPad to deliver meeting materials that are interactive, fun and emblematic of Web 2.0 tools
• Ideas to engage leadership in new ways of thinking about the business
• Ways to reduce meeting costs and provide a superior communication experience

Susan Fraysse Russ, Vice President of Global Communications
Reader's Digest Association
@readersdigest

11:40 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

11:45 a.m.

Digest Session: Engaging 21st Century Employees

Discuss what tools you are using in your organization successfully to inform and include your employees in the day-to-day tasks of your organization. Share common obstacles you have overcome in getting your employees involved.

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

1:50 p.m.

Group Exercise: Brainstorm Solutions And New Ideas You Can Use

You asked for it, you got it! Interact and discuss solutions to your internal communications challenges with your fellow attendees and our experienced speakers. You will leave with new tools and hands-on experience and ideas for more successfully applying best practices to your own internal communications initiatives.

2:20 p.m.

Raising Employee Engagement During Challenging Times

Everyone knows the engagement levels of employees can be tied directly to their company’s profit or loss margins. The higher the engagement, in most cases, the higher the profit. Research from Towers Watson and many others support this trend.

Astute leaders understand it is important to keep engagement high in their workforce. But how, in the face of aggressive business goals, downsizing and restructuring, can a communications and human capital department – given the goal to raise employee engagement by year’s end - make this happen?

In this engaging session, you will hear how OptumRx, a $20B health care organization, was able to:

• Choose communication topics that mattered to employees
• Found their CEO’s strengths and the best communications process for him
• Made sure that communications were viewed by front line employees
• Gathered their feedback, shared metrics and measured their success

You will leave this session armed with new tips and techniques for your own engagement strategies.

Jerry O’Brien, Director, Internal Communications
OPTUMRX

2:50 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

2:55 p.m.

Afternoon Refreshment & Networking Break

3:05 p.m.

How To Use Games And Social Media To Educate Employees And Drive Engagement

Established in 1920, Virginia Mason began as an 80-bed hospital with six physician offices. The founders' vision was to provide a single place where patients could receive comprehensive medical care, a "one-stop shopping" place for virtually any medical problem or need.

Over the years, staff at Virginia Mason Medical Center thought their goal communications were typical and dull. Through the use of staff focus groups, the medical center realized they wanted a “fun” and simple way to learn about the annual goals and keep track of how the center was doing towards achieving those goals. The Communications Team decided to create a series of games and a goals dashboard as the key components of their campaign to educate staff.

Learn how Virginia Mason Medical Center launched an innovative communications campaign to drive engagement and performance:

• Using games as a way to educate their staff about the center’s annual goals
• Developing a simple, visual dashboard that lets employees track corporate progress against goals
• Leveraging managers to boost engagement levels during the campaign
• Measuring the effectiveness of the campaign in reaching employees

In a recent survey, 99% of participating staff told the Communications Team that they learned more about the organization’s goals as a result of the campaign!

Joe Rothrock, Senior Communications Manager
Virginia Mason Medical Center

3:35 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

3:40 p.m.

Digest Session: Key Takeaways And What To Do When You Get Back To The Office

Discuss with fellow attendees and speakers what you will do when you get back to the office.

4:10 p.m.
Chairperson's Recap

We’ll recap the highlights of the past two days and send you home equipped with new tips and tools you can start incorporating into your communalization plan immediately.

Preston Lewis, Co-Founder & Director
BONFIRE COMMUNICATIONS
@bonfirepreston