8:00 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.
Chairperson's Welcome & Opening Remarks

Gordon Rudow, CEO
BONFIRE COMMUNICATIONS

8:45 a.m.

How To Communicate With Employees To Increase Certainty In Uncertain Times

In this thought-provoking session, you will join in a discussion about the most common approaches to communicating during times of uncertainty…and why they may not achieve your communication and business goals. Whether due to internal or external factors, companies frequently operate through periods during which employees aren’t sure what’s happening, how it affects them and what their role is in their organization’s success.

Layoffs…stock price depreciation…revenue or profit decreases…executive changes --- these events can easily throw an employee off his or her game, potentially impacting the business, but it doesn’t have to be that way!
 
In this session, you’ll learn about:

• How even the most beautifully-executed communication tactics aren’t quite working to keep employees engaged and motivated
• The simple tweak to a strategic communication framework that forces a new way of looking at business communications
• How you and your executive leadership can take more control over the impact of your communications – regardless of the storms circling your company

Howard Karesh, Director, Internal Communications
EXELON CORPORATION

9:30 a.m.

Building Your Internal Brand To Motivate Employees, Develop A Positive Culture And Create A Winning Organization

Canada has been one of the fastest growth markets for American Express' international business. It's no coincidence that the company also ranks high in its internal employee engagement scores and has received external recognition from programs like the Canada Awards for Excellence and listings of the best employers in the country.

American Express Canada places strong emphasis on building employee engagement and runs a robust employee communication program that considers its own people as a key target audience. To reach this audience, they have created an internal brand that serves as a motivational rallying cry for their workforce.

• Building employee engagement, commitment and motivation using a focused internal communications program built around your core brand philosophy
• Applying the principals used in building your external brand to developing a clear proposition for internal audiences that supports the development of a positive culture and winning organization

David Barnes, Vice President, Advertising, Sponsorship and Communication
AMERICAN EXPRESS CANADA

10:15 a.m.

Break-Out Blitz:
Network And Discuss Communication Challenges With Your Fellow Conference Attendees

This session will open the conversation by connecting you with other conference participants and gain greater understanding into many similar issues, concerns, and challenges that your peers are also facing. Become acquainted with your fellow conference attendees in this fun and fast-paced forum!

11:15 a.m.

Using Effective Leadership Communication To Build
Employee Trust And Engagement

2009 witnessed the American business climate tumbling into an abyss unmatched in over 80 years. Consumer confidence dropped, business doubt rose and unemployment soared to recent record heights. Employee fear reduced productivity which resulted in stifled growth.

Successful companies engage in effective communication, from leadership to employees, as a marketplace differentiator.

• Understand the benefits of transparency
• Understand the basic human need to “know”
• Create communication instruments that speak from employee to employee
• Change employee doubt to positive action steps

Tom Walter, CEO & Founding Partner
TASTY CATERING

Employees around the globe at NetApp wanted more voice within the organization - with each other and with leadership. They wanted their questions answered and ideas shared. Using this feedback, NetApp built an online community, NetApp Live, uniting its global workforce and reinforcing its brand.

• Creating a cross-functional team to drive the initiative
• Conducting an extensive RFP process
• Developing social media guidelines
• Identifying the people and skills needed to manage the site
• Analyzing the metrics to assess the impact and demonstrate your value

In this session, you will discover why NetApp realized that social media is an investment in their organization's future, and how it can be as well for your own organization.

Francesca Karpel, Senior Manager, Internal Communications
NETAPP

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated by one of our expert speakers. Take this opportunity to connect with others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing internal communications concerns.

2:15 p.m.

Communicating With And Engaging Your Employees -- At All Levels -- To Execute Your Organization's Strategy

The University of Denver's Daniels College of Business has always taken a bigger, broader approach to business, and taught their students accordingly. As the eighth oldest business college in the U.S., they have a long tradition of excellence preparing students to advance their careers and make a meaningful difference in their companies, communities and beyond.

During their 100th anniversary year, the College began the most comprehensive strategic planning process in its history. Intended as a blueprint for the next five years, the intensive research and resulting plan, “Daniels Tomorrow,” defined a new mission and vision as well as seven key strategic goals essential to achieve that vision. The College charged the Daniels Office of Communications and Marketing with communicating the plan. Perhaps even more important, the Office needed to reach everyone (and at all levels) involved within Daniels to understand, support and internalize the new mission and vision. It required an extraordinary effort of rebranding the College, collaboration with upper management about the mission and vision, then imparting that vision to all stakeholders at Daniels to win their support.

• Using four innovative, brand-building and distinct touch points to distribute the plan to all stakeholders
• Engaging senior management on a personal level with various stakeholder groups
• Inspiring their vision and brand through unique “camps” and other tools and tactics for engaging employees on all levels
• Unlocking the HR process to include internal branding as an integral part of new employee orientation
• Creating an ongoing communications plan to keep all stakeholders engaged and informed

Jennifer Park, Director, Office of Communications & Marketing
DANIELS COLLEGE OF BUSINESS, UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

3:00 p.m.

Afternoon Refreshment & Networking Break

3:20 p.m.

How To Use Integrated Communications To Get Employees To Rally Around A Common Vision Of The Future

In this session, you will hear how a visionary leadership team took a mid-cap, product-oriented, stodgy and dysfunctional company and brought clarity, focus, a new message and promise to the market through broad, integrated internal communications to energize the employee base and ignite broader market growth.

As a 60-year old legacy publisher of children's teaching curriculum that had lost relevance and market share, there was a strong culture of mistrust and siloed independence. Customer engagement was a series of tasks to check off, creating low engagement and low customer loyalty. Products were fragmented without a common connection and value proposition. As a result, Awana needed a way to pull their product offering and organization together, to get employees to rally around a common vision of the future based on unique positioning and more relevant value proposition.

The goal was to provide a powerful, compelling and unique product and value platform unmatched by any competitors. The question became, "How do we get our employees to understand our value proposition, to speak consistently with our customers and position us with a unique promise that we knew would power customer engagement?"

• Bring the voice of the customer into your organization
• Create "snap-to" alignment within your organization
• Facilitate communication through operational, interdepartmental communications, meetings and presentations

In addition, you will see how cross-functional teams and emerging leaders were identified and solicited to shape the future of the organization by taking initiative in the successful relaunch of the brand.

Karen Schliep, Executive Director of People Services
AWANA CLUBS INTERNATIONAL

Chuck Thomas, President
CTCREATIVE

4:05 p.m.

How To Build An Intranet Site To Connect With A Highly-Dispersed Workforce And Streamline Your Internal Communications

The Drug Enforcement Administration currently has over 10,000 employees, working in 200 offices, in more than 60 countries around the world to identify, disrupt, and dismantle international drug trafficking organizations. In an effort to better connect with their employees across the globe and streamline their internal communications efforts, they wanted to launch a new intranet site for agency news, employee-driven features, and human resource-related information. This simple idea, and what would ordinarily be viewed as a common practice in the private sector, proved to be a monumental undertaking.

• Navigating around bureaucratic roadblocks
• Using your budget in creative ways
• Getting the most of your people by cultivating their strengths
• Using proven methods to overcome the natural resistance to change

Mary Irene Cooper, Chief of Congressional and Public Affairs
Kevin McWilliams, Audio-Visual Production Specialist
DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

4:50 p.m.
End Of Day One

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 Chicago's fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.