HR Summit and Expo 2015 - Free Learning Sessions

As information becomes increasingly abundant and accessible, HR professionals face a dilemma: limit access to protect sensitive information, or open access to enable the free flow of information. This session highlights this tension and reflects on the modern movement toward radical transparency in organisations. The session will address the successes and failures of organisations that have gone beyond transparency in compensation and performance, and into the unknown frontier of transparency in information flows more broadly. The objective of this session is to explore how organisations can anticipate and address changing expectations and demands for radical transparency in today's organisations.

Gallup research has found that companies with highly engaged employees outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share and they have 37% less absenteeism – however - only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. This session will reveal global and regional trends from Gallup’s employee engagement research, and best practices from leading Middle East and global organisations to help participants understand the factors that influence employee engagement, how to create a best practice organisation-wide engagement strategy, and the potential barriers to achieving an engaged workplace culture.

Your team is your greatest untapped resource for promoting of your brand. It can be very difficult to reach out to your internal market efficiently and to stay ahead of the competition whilst working in HR. That is why it can be very valuable to turn your employees into brand advocates, raising the value of your (social) HR strategy. All it requires is a little training and a solid support strategy so you can find the best way to recommend your brand, remember that it can potentially reach thousands daily through word of mouth. This session uses the playful learning concept to focus on the key steps to a happy and successful workforce full of HR and company brand advocates.

Organisations continually introduce and implement the latest information and communications technologies. They change policies, expand, downsize, and change business processes to improve business performance and stay competitive. Based on research, 70% of all “change” projects/initiatives fail and that applying a Change Management approach to your project will leave employee engaged and significantly increase the percentage of your project success up to 96%. 

The  big challenge facing any organisation when implementing any kind of “change” projects is the “people” challenge. Getting staff, customers, clients and the people impacted by the “change” ready, engaged and involved.

This presentation is a great foundation for HR professionals and managers to clearly understand how to engage all staff during change.

Storytelling is a powerful way to engage employees, make them part of the company story, and encourage them to connect with colleagues, and learn from each other.  It drives understanding, showcases innovation, and also promotes greater inclusivity.  More and more organisations are now using storytelling programmes to focus on key engagement areas – from building the values of the organisation to improving collaboration. 

As John Powell said: “communication works for those that work at it.” As HR professionals, you probably spend 85%+ of your time communicating – with new recruits, employees, and their managers. Likely, you will find that certain things are easier to communicate than others; talking about public holidays is easier than speaking about new parking restrictions or changes in policies and procedures. This ‘regulation and compliance’ aspect of internal communication is often neglected, but is the foundation of any effective employee engagement initiative. Learn how to use toolkits to bridge this communication gap and support effective orientation, engagement and change management.

Employees don’t join organizations with merely their qualifications and competencies. They join with a diverse set of personal values and professional belief systems. Conventionally, employee engagement was achieved through financial incentives and inspiring mission and vision statements communicated by senior leadership. Increasingly, companies are shifting toward a more tailored approach to engagement, acknowledging each employee’s value and belief system. At this session, we are going to entertain an HR case for how this can be streamlined at the enterprise level with a prerequisite to systematically assess employees’ values and professional belief system as a starting point.