Jump-start your conference experience by attending these interactive and practical workshops. These information-packed sessions are a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees while taking a hands-on, common-sense approach to mastering strategic internal communications that will enhance your understanding of the informative, case study presentations throughout the entire conference.

*** Choose ALL FOUR for Maximum Value and Learning! ***

How To Give Value Or Give Notice: Creating The Value-Added Communication Function

“Being able to go to your CEO and say ‘our communication improved revenues by 23 percent or we saved $1 million and I can prove it’ buys you a lot because you’re adding.”
--Terry Simpson, Director of Internal Communication, FedEx Express

Every communication function -- every department and function in the modern organization -- is searching for ways to add more value.  To many it’s a matter of survival.
In this lively and interactive workshop, you will learn what top communication pros are doing to shift their communication departments away from traditional cost centers to performance-driving value centers that create big-time improvements in quality, service, costs, speed, safety and more. All with big returns!

Specifically, you will learn about:

• The new mindset and approach that’s required to move from a cost center to a value creator
• A step-by-step process to safely transform your function to one that’s highly-valued for its quantifiable contributions to the organization
• How to measure your current ROI and identify ways you can at least triple it
• Ways to conduct a comprehensive, business-focused assessment of your communication function and processes throughout your organization
• How to get low value work off your plate and more high value work onto your plate
• A proven process for enlisting your leadership team’s support for this new business-like approach to managing communication—starting with your CEO
• Ways to tighten your working relationship with other staff functions like HR and Finance
• How to create demand from line management because you’re putting money in their pockets
• Ten specific steps you can take to start the reinvention today
• How others have used the above tools to dramatically advance their careers and enlarge their paychecks

WORKSHOP LEADER: Jim leads the Jim Shaffer Group, a team of seasoned advisors to leaders of organizations who want to improve performance through better strategy execution. Jim is an internationally recognized consultant, speaker and author on improving business performance, including helping guide lean six sigma transformations.His book, The Leadership Solution (McGraw-Hill), immediately became a classic treatise on leadership, change management and creating high performance organizations. Jim received the International Association of Business Communicators’ prestigious IABC Fellow award, the highest honor IABC bestows on an individual and acknowledges outstanding leadership and professional accomplishment.

Testimonials From Past Jim Shaffer Sessions:

"Succinct. Great to hear a presentation that was so tied to bottom line."

"Whether communicators know it or not, our profession is in the middle of a significant transformation. This approach has provided a clear path to how I can help the company deliver sustainable, measurable financial results – and change what leaders expect from a communication organization. To call this work game-changing for me personally and professionally would be an understatement."

"Good content. Proven results. Helpful ideas. Great examples!"

10:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. - Morning Refreshment & Networking Break

How To Engage And Inspire Employees Into Action Through Strategic Internal Communications

There are some basics to communication psychology that every leader needs to know. Individuals have at their core a set of values and beliefs from which they build rules and expectations and then an environment. As a communicator, you as the employer/manager face one of two scenarios:

• Either your employees are already united by their underlying values and beliefs (you simply need to find out what those are)

OR

• You as the communicator need to research and create a unifying set of values and beliefs that will unite your team

If you are a leader working off a false understanding of your staff, you may be missing your true super fans and the key to growth.
You will leave this session equipped with lessons learned on how your organization can:

• Identify and cultivate these authentic employees
• Inspire employees into action
• Communicate effectively with purpose, strategy, vocabulary, and technology

WORKSHOP LEADER: Juliana Trichilo Cina, MA, is the President of Speak Up Communications and is the Coach, Trainer and Marketing professional behind The Success Formula and JTCina.com. She believes that broken conversations riddle business operations, marketing and our personal lives. Using the psychology of communication, persuasion and influence, she is working to inspire successful and authentic conversations. Communicating effectively involves purpose, strategy, vocabulary, technology and much more. Juliana brings together the elements needed for success in business and personal rapport building through communications.

1:15 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. - Lunch On Your Own -- But Not Alone!
Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion based on an internal communications hot 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.

How To Drive Change Through Strategic Internal Communications While Building Your Organization’s Reputation And Engaging Employees

If the global recession has reminded business leaders of anything, it’s the realization of how valuable and vulnerable their reputations really are. A key driver to protecting and building reputations, particularly during tumultuous times, is earning the trust and loyalty of employees and gaining competitive advantage.

This interactive workshop will reveal proven best practices from a Canadian study conducted with over 100 CEOs and communications leaders from some of the country's largest and most successful organizations.

You will leave this session equipped with lessons learned on how your organization can apply these best practices, including how to:

• Earn the trust and loyalty of employees through strategic communications
• Build your organization's reputation from the inside out
  
• Lead a change management communications strategy
  
• Break down silos to improve collaboration and innovation
  
• Leverage social media internally to transform employees into reputation ambassadors
  
• Understand and deliver on CEO expectations

WORKSHOP LEADER: Heath Applebaum, ABC, MCM, Heath Applebaum is the Owner and Principal Consultant for Echo Communications Inc. A global award-winning communications professional with more than 17 years of experience, Heath collaborates with C-suite executives and communications teams across North America to build employee engagement and reputation management strategies and programs.

Heath is also a Public Relations Professor at Humber College and holds a Master’s Degree in Communication Management from McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business.

2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
POST-CONFERENCE MORNING WORKSHOP D

How To Integrate Social Media Into Your Internal Communications Strategy: A Step-By-Step Process To Achieve Your Organization's Objectives

The social media phenomenon has gathered a significant amount of momentum over the last few years. Just about everyone wants to rollout social media, but not everyone understands how to do so most effectively and how it can significantly enhance the internal communications within an organization.

Does the brave new world of social media and Web 2.0 excite as well as concern you and your organization?

Given the runaway popularity of Twitter, Mashups, Facebook, blogs, and many other web-based forms of communications and networking, perhaps you have been wondering about the possibilities and the risks for your organization?

Join this interactive workshop and learn proven ways of identifying the right technologies, or social media platforms, like Yammer, Google docs, Jive, Igloo, and Newsgator to achieve your organization’s strategic objectives.

In addition, you will:

• Learn how 1400+ organizations from all around the world are using Intranet 2.0 tools. A Social Intranet Study (sponsored by IABC Research Foundation) will be shared and will give you an exclusive look into how and to what extent organizations of all sizes are using social media on their intranet. The global perspective of the survey, will allow you to develop a new understanding and appreciation for intranet 2.0 tools that is difficult to attain elsewhere
• Review case study examples of blogs, wikis and other social media tools from IBM, Cisco, Sony, Siemens, and others
• Gain knowledge from lessons learned and get key recommendations for undertaking an Intranet 2.0 and internal branding initiative
• Discover the exciting promises as well as the challenges of using Web 2.0 tools
  

WORKSHOP LEADER: Carmine Porco, Social Media Practice Lead at Accenture, Canada, has over 18 years of experience in the areas of Internet consulting, IT management, and software development.