Tuesday, Oct. 16

9–10:45 a.m.

The role of manager communications in creating great places to work 

Reaching front-line employees and connecting them to an organization’s mission calls for the help of managers. Managers are best able to help communicators build culture and engagement when they are active and engaged communicators themselves. In this fast-paced, interactive session, you’ll learn how to launch, manage and maintain an effective manager communications program that can amplify your own employee communications efforts and cover the “last mile” to reach front-line employees.

You’ll learn: 

  • How to anticipate the needs of managers and encourage them to be active communicators
  • How to build a manager communications training program in-house
  • Tips to create and share content for managers to keep them actively communicating
  • A plan for maintaining a manager communications program after launch so that managers remain engaged and the organization benefits
Bryant Hilton
Bryant Hilton
Affiliate Consultant
Ragan Consulting Group
Read bio
11 a.m.–1 p.m.

The five-step audit: How to prove the value of internal communications 

Everyone says employee engagement is one of the keys to becoming a great place to work. The key to engagement? Great internal communications. How can you tell if your communications are working? What are you actually measuring, and to what end? How will you use the data to move your communications from good to great? Join Ragan Consulting Group’s Jim Ylisela as he makes the case for continuous communications measurement—starting with a detailed comms audit.

You’ll learn: 

  • What to measure and why (Hint: It should be tied to your business goals)
  • From comprehensive audits to pulse surveys: The right frequency to measure all your communications
  • What metrics matter most? Beyond clicks and open rates
  • The five best internal comms measurement tools
  • The five-step process for a comprehensive comms audit
  • What to do with what you measure: How to win approval to make significant upgrades to your communications
Jim Ylisela
Co-Founder and Senior Partner
RCG
Read bio
1–2 p.m.

Lunch

(provided on-site)

2–4 p.m.

The workshop you’ve been waiting for: How to build a communications strategy that doesn’t collect dust

A communications strategy can sit on a shelf gathering dust, or it can be a refreshing business tool that helps organizations grow rapidly, thrive through change, create culture and protect reputation. With the right strategy, the able communicator can explain the organization’s purpose through compelling stories and provide articulate direction and artful persuasion to effectively and quickly reach organizational goals—all while depicting the humanity within the organization. Through best practices, real-life stories and tabletop exercises focused on your pain points, you’ll design a communications strategy that works for you.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Discover the gaps in thinking, understanding, alignment, etc., and spot where communication can make the biggest difference
  • Raise the voice of your employees: Get their attention, capture their imagination, then help them align with the direction leadership is moving in
  • Put it all in perspective and come out with a practical strategy that will make top-level leaders nod their heads in agreement—and partner with you to make it work
Michelle Morris
Head of corporate communications
Morley Companies
Read bio

Wednesday, Oct. 17

7:30 a.m.-8:15 a.m.

Bonus Breakfast Session: Engage though mobile and beyond: Trends that are shaping the modern workforce

Emails, newsletters and intranet portals can miss the mark with employees of the modern digital workforce. To increase engagement and communicate effectively with today’s employees, corporate communicators must embrace the top trends and tactics that can cut through the noise of the increasingly chaotic online media landscape and deliver messages that resonate. Join Jerry Rosen, CMO of RMG Networks, to get an exclusive first look at a Ragan and RMG survey that reveals feedback from hundreds of internal communications executives worldwide. You’ll learn what tactics these executives are using to address their organizations’ most pressing issues, along with how you can prioritize them to improve employee communications engagement and adoption.

You’ll learn: 

  • The five most significant internal communication obstacles reported—along with tactics to overcome them
  • How you can make your primary internal communications channel mobile—and why you should
  • Secrets for powering employee adoption to your mobile-focused communications
  • Why personalized and targeted content is more effective to reach your communication goals
  • How to clinch executive approval and justify your department’s efforts
Jerry Rosen
SVP Global Chief Marketing & Creative Officer
RMG Networks
Read bio
8:30–9:20 a.m.

Opening Keynote: How Zappos communicates fun and weirdness to create a great workplace

Zappos believes that a work culture should be fun and weird. They’re on to something, having landed on FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For® seven years in a row. This session shares how Zappos weaves fun and eccentricity into its culture that gets employees firmly behind the Zappos mission To Live and Deliver WOW.”

You’ll discover:

  • The core values that drive Zappos and how those values are communicated to employees
  • Examples of how Zappos brings the fun and the weird to get employees to carry out its mission
  • How Zappos’ committed workforce translates into great customer brand recognition and loyalty

Zappos has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Ryo Zsun
Culture maestro
Zappos Inc.
Read bio
9:30–10:20 a.m.

How Facebook keeps its incredibly smart workforce mission focused with smart internal communications (bots included)

Facebook employees, or “Facebookers” as they call themselves, have a laserlike focus on their mission: Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That requires a lot of smart people bringing their innovative magic to work each day. It’s not easy to sustain for any organization. However, Facebook uses a smart blend of social media, face-to-face and other internal comms channels to keep Facebookers’ innovative skills at peak performance.

You'll see their approach up close and learn how to:

  • Reinforce the importance of the organization’s mission to employees through online communications
  • Encourage employees to bring their authentic selves and talents to work each day through different styles and forms of communication—in-person, livestreaming, polls, trending content and bots for automation of lightweight tasks
  • Skillfully provide the No. 1 thing employees want on the job: Transparent communications

Facebook was recently ranked as No. 1 on Glassdoor’s Best Place to Work 2018 list and recognized as part of Forbes’ America’s Best Employers 2018 list.

Nakul Patel
Head of market development, Workplace
Facebook
Read bio
10:30–11:20 a.m.

Communicating your organization’s purpose to employees using visual storytelling

Video can be a powerful vehicle for communicating your organization’s purpose to employees. Fortunately, you don’t have to create a Spielberg-like production to draw employees’ attention. All that’s necessary is a powerful story. This session will show you how it’s done.

You’ll learn:

  • How to ask the right questions to find stories that will resonate with employees
  • How to communicate the organization’s purpose with video that humanizes employees’ stories
  • How to weave emotion into your story—the important ingredient that make employee videos stand out
  • Production tips that will help you create an effective video story

Learning Activity: Observe a role-play in which Zynara Ng conducts a mock interview designed to persuade an employee to share his or her story in video

Google was recently ranked #3 on Forbes’ America’s Best Employers 2018 list.

Zynara Ng
Zynara Ng
Video Producer
Google
Read bio
11:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.

Get employees to carry out your organization’s mission: Advice from the pros

What does it really take for employees to commit to the company’s mission? How do you sustain that commitment through good times and bad? What hazards can prevent you from rallying the troops behind the organization’s business strategy --- and how do you spot them before they appear? Get answers to these and more from a panel of your peers in this fast-paced session, moderated by Ralph Gaillard, Ragan’s VP of Learning

Learning activity: Come prepared to ask questions and participate in real-time polls using Ragan’s new online audience-response system.

Ralph Gaillard
Vice president and chief learning officer
Ragan Communications
Read bio
12:20–1:20 p.m.

Networking lunch

(provided onsite)

1:20–2:10 p.m.

Using technology as an accelerator to drive stronger leadership connections

Microsoft 365 empowers leaders to communicate consistently about their organizations’ mission, values and strategic initiatives. Whether you want to spark moments of high engagement or create a forum for ongoing dialogue, technology can help you achieve cultural transformation. Naomi Moneypenny, senior product manager at Microsoft, will show you how new technology can foster a sense of community, model desired behaviors and create a new culture of work. With best practices drawn from her own experience at Microsoft and other organizations, Moneypenny offers practical advice on how to build an ongoing, two-way connection with employees. 

You’ll learn:

  • How leaders from top organizations around the world are using technology to better connect with employees
  • How to build a thriving community (and culture) using enterprise social media, video and intranets
  • Tips for helping your leaders empower employee voices to be heard across your organization
  • How to encourage transparency and break silos to better connect leaders and employees

Microsoft has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Naomi Moneypenny
Senior product manager
Microsoft
Read bio
2:20–3:10 p.m.

Beyond the homepage: How nontraditional online communication channels can connect more employees to your mission

The days of one-size-fits-all communications are long gone. Your employees, like people in society at large, expect to get their news and information in ways most suited to them as individuals. To extend your reach and connect employees to your organization and its mission, you have to take a more modern approach to writing and packaging your online internal comms messages. In this session, you’ll see how the internal communicators at SAS use lively content and creative delivery to generate an emotional and loyal connection between the employee and the organization.

You’ll learn:

  • How “SAS Lifehacks” serves as a cool online repository for employees to share useful but little-known facts and tips about the organization and its resources for employees
  • The story behind SAS’ employee social platform, “the Hub,” and how it’s connecting employees to one another for collaboration and shared interests
  • How the handy and concise “Take 5” email helps managers ensure their employees receive key business news and stay in tune with the organization’s goals and mission
  • How the “Weekly Wrap” email gives SAS employees all the news they need using a lighthearted—and sometimes snarky—tone that has resonated with employees

SAS has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Ginny Inman
Senior associate communications specialist
SAS
Read bio
Christine Brown
Senior communications specialist
SAS
Read bio
3:10 p.m.-3:20 p.m.

Lightning Talk: Get more out of internal email: Analytics lessons from 200 million emails

Advanced email measurement can provide insights far beyond open rates. For proof, look no further than PoliteMail’s recent analysis of anonymous data from millions of Outlook users. From this data, PoliteMail will provide insights on which email strategies work—and which don’t. In this 10-minute lightning talk, see how email measurement can transform your internal email strategy and improve your internal communications overall.

You’ll learn:

  • What really makes an email more likely to be opened
  • How much content people actually read—and how to optimize yours
  • How to modify distribution size and timing to boost email engagement
  • Easy techniques to skyrocket your email click-thru rates
  • More effective ways to measure email results at your own organization
  • How to apply these findings to improve your overall internal communication strategy
Melissa Katski-Berry
Director of Strategic Accounts
PoliteMail
Read bio
3:20–3:40

Networking break

3:40–4:30 p.m.

Get employees to love their jobs: Make them the CEOs

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital has uncovered the secret of how to deliver quality health care to patients: Make all its 8,000 employees a CEO or co-owner of the facility. In this session, you’ll see how the hospital’s groundbreaking “I’m the CEO” program has turned the leadership model on its head by making employees the boss, and find out how communications drove this crucial message home to employees.

You’ll learn:

  • How outside-the-box communication has triggered authentic conversations between employees and patients
  • How the medical center’s leadership was brought in to communicate the “I’m the CEO” message to all employees
  • How communicators tracked their progress in moving employee engagement scores up

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is Western Pennsylvania’s top ranked hospital according to U.S. News & World Report.

Josh Madore
Manager of internal communications
UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
Read bio
4:30–6:30 p.m.

Networking cocktail party

Wrap up your conference day by attending this reception with conference faculty and attendees at Zappos’ lovely outdoor courtyard.

Thursday, Oct. 18

8:30–9:20 a.m.

Overhauling communications by giving employees the content they want, when they want it and how they want it

No matter how large or small an organization, keeping employees informed is paramount. Just as important, though, is how you keep them informed. Are you giving employees the information they want to know in a format they desire, or do you just send 400 emails a week full of messages that top-level executives think employees want to know? Learn how Johns Hopkins Medicine listened to what its workforce wanted from communications and gave the people what they asked for—including a new “Kudos” program that recognizes achievements from medical and nonmedical staffs.

You will learn:

  • The value of creating good surveys to generate actionable results—and what to do with those results
  • How to get a pulse on what employees want more—and less—of within the organization
  • How giving employees a voice can create a more engaged workforce

Learning activity: Share your latest and greatest achievement by creating your own “Kudos” submission to share with conference attendees.

Johns Hopkins Medicine has been recognized as one of Forbes’ America's Best Employers for Diversity.

Kate Sachs
Internal communications specialist
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Read bio
Janet Anderson
Assistant director, institutional internal communications
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Read bio
9:30 – 10:20 a.m.

How video can win the hearts and minds of employees

One way to create an emotional bond between employee and employer is through the traditional “Bring Your Kids to Work” day. AT&T expanded on that concept by creating a “Kids Coding Camp,” where AT&T employees brought their children to learn how to write code for smartphone apps. AT&T didn’t stop innovating there, though. Communicators created a compelling highlight video of the experience and posted it on its intranet. See the video and how it powerfully connected employees to AT&T’s new mission of data-powered insights and developing the talent of the future.

You’ll learn:

  • How the video moved the needle on employee engagement and awareness of the cultural transformation underway making AT&T a great place to work
  • How video can grab employees’ attention about a new initiative
  • How the “Kids Coding Camp video is a great example of visual storytelling—and why it won Ragan’s Employee Communications Award for Best Marketing Video

AT&T has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Vince Pai
Director of marketing operations
AT&T Mobility & Entertainment
Read bio
10:30 –11:20 a.m.

The secret to workplace greatness? Disrupt philanthropy by putting employees in charge

How do you get employees to want to come to work each day? You flip the script on your philanthropic policy by giving them the power to choose which organizations to support, how to support them and how to raise the money. Hear the outside-the-box thinking at Bates White Economic Consulting, where employees participate in cooking competitions, “balloon wars” and other unusual fundraisers that tap into their creative sides and develop their leadership skills, raising more than $100,000 a year for the community.

You’ll discover how to:
• Connect, engage and energize employees through fun and innovative fundraising initiatives
• Maximize your community program to help attract candidates and increase retention
• Expand your philanthropy program without adding staff

Learning activity: Participate in small groups to design a fundraising initiative that will engage and connect employees.

Bates White Economic Consulting has been ranked No. 1 on The Washington Post’s Top Workplaces list.”

Miriam Wolman
Director of employee engagement and communications
Bates White Economic Consulting
Read bio
11:30 –12:20 p.m.

Get your workforce behind the mission: Rethink everything about employee engagement programs

When it comes to employee engagement programs, Qualcomm hasn’t just thought outside the box, it’s ignored the box altogether. You’ll see why in this session that demonstrates how rethinking and “clean slating” engagement programs can inspire employees to apply an organization’s purpose to their work each and every day.

You’ll learn:

  • Where to start—how to really align any engagement program to your organization’s mission
  • How Qualcomm’s unique engagement programs draw its international workforce to its mission in a fun and authentic way
  • How turning the employee affinity group concept on its head can engage workers like never before
  • How Qualcomm uses its physical space to offer inventive programs
  • How regular “Suds and Science” talks, science trivia contests, intramural tourneys engage millennials and play to Qualcomm’s innovation culture
Christi Gilhoi
Employee engagement leader
Qualcomm
Read bio
1–2 p.m.

Zappos Tour

Learn about Zappos’ incredibly fun culture in this unique tour of its corporate campus—complete with a ball pit, product photo studio and virtual reality customer service experience.

8:30–9:20 a.m. Pacific time

Opening Keynote: How Zappos communicates fun and weirdness to create a great workplace

Zappos believes that a work culture should be fun and weird. They’re on to something, having landed on FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For® seven years in a row. This session shares how Zappos weaves fun and eccentricity into its culture that gets employees firmly behind the Zappos mission To Live and Deliver WOW.”

You’ll discover:

  • The core values that drive Zappos and how those values are communicated to employees
  • Examples of how Zappos brings the fun and the weird to get employees to carry out its mission
  • How Zappos’ committed workforce translates into great customer brand recognition and loyalty

Zappos has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Ryo Zsun
Culture maestro
Zappos Inc.
Read bio
9:30–10:20 a.m. Pacific time

How Facebook keeps its incredibly smart workforce mission focused with smart internal communications (bots included)

Facebook employees, or “Facebookers” as they call themselves, have a laserlike focus on their mission: Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That requires a lot of smart people bringing their innovative magic to work each day. It’s not easy to sustain for any organization. However, Facebook uses a smart blend of social media, face-to-face and other internal comms channels to keep Facebookers’ innovative skills at peak performance.

You'll see their approach up close and learn how to:

  • Reinforce the importance of the organization’s mission to employees through online communications
  • Encourage employees to bring their authentic selves and talents to work each day through different styles and forms of communication—in-person, livestreaming, polls, trending content and bots for automation of lightweight tasks
  • Skillfully provide the No. 1 thing employees want on the job: Transparent communications

Facebook was recently ranked as No. 1 on Glassdoor’s Best Place to Work 2018 list and recognized as part of Forbes’ America’s Best Employers 2018 list.

Nakul Patel
Head of market development, Workplace
Facebook
Read bio
10:30–11:20 a.m. Pacific time

Communicating your organization’s purpose to employees using visual storytelling

Video can be a powerful vehicle for communicating your organization’s purpose to employees. Fortunately, you don’t have to create a Spielberg-like production to draw employees’ attention. All that’s necessary is a powerful story. This session will show you how it’s done.

You’ll learn:

  • How to ask the right questions to find stories that will resonate with employees
  • How to communicate the organization’s purpose with video that humanizes employees’ stories
  • How to weave emotion into your story—the important ingredient that make employee videos stand out
  • Production tips that will help you create an effective video story

Learning Activity: Observe a role-play in which Zynara Ng conducts a mock interview designed to persuade an employee to share his or her story in video

Google was recently ranked #3 on Forbes’ America’s Best Employers 2018 list.

Zynara Ng
Zynara Ng
Video Producer
Google
Read bio
11:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m. Pacific time

Get employees to carry out your organization’s mission: Advice from the pros

What does it really take for employees to commit to the company’s mission? How do you sustain that commitment through good times and bad? What hazards can prevent you from rallying the troops behind the organization’s business strategy --- and how do you spot them before they appear? Get answers to these and more from a panel of your peers in this fast-paced session, moderated by Ralph Gaillard, Ragan’s VP of Learning

Learning activity: Come prepared to ask questions and participate in real-time polls using Ragan’s new online audience-response system.

Ralph Gaillard
Vice president and chief learning officer
Ragan Communications
Read bio
1:20–2:10 p.m. Pacific time

Using technology as an accelerator to drive stronger leadership connections

Microsoft 365 empowers leaders to communicate consistently about their organizations’ mission, values and strategic initiatives. Whether you want to spark moments of high engagement or create a forum for ongoing dialogue, technology can help you achieve cultural transformation. Naomi Moneypenny, senior product manager at Microsoft, will show you how new technology can foster a sense of community, model desired behaviors and create a new culture of work. With best practices drawn from her own experience at Microsoft and other organizations, Moneypenny offers practical advice on how to build an ongoing, two-way connection with employees. 

You’ll learn:

  • How leaders from top organizations around the world are using technology to better connect with employees
  • How to build a thriving community (and culture) using enterprise social media, video and intranets
  • Tips for helping your leaders empower employee voices to be heard across your organization
  • How to encourage transparency and break silos to better connect leaders and employees

Microsoft has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Naomi Moneypenny
Senior product manager
Microsoft
Read bio
2:20–3:10 p.m. Pacific time

Beyond the homepage: How nontraditional online communication channels can connect more employees to your mission

The days of one-size-fits-all communications are long gone. Your employees, like people in society at large, expect to get their news and information in ways most suited to them as individuals. To extend your reach and connect employees to your organization and its mission, you have to take a more modern approach to writing and packaging your online internal comms messages. In this session, you’ll see how the internal communicators at SAS use lively content and creative delivery to generate an emotional and loyal connection between the employee and the organization.

You’ll learn:

  • How “SAS Lifehacks” serves as a cool online repository for employees to share useful but little-known facts and tips about the organization and its resources for employees
  • The story behind SAS’ employee social platform, “the Hub,” and how it’s connecting employees to one another for collaboration and shared interests
  • How the handy and concise “Take 5” email helps managers ensure their employees receive key business news and stay in tune with the organization’s goals and mission
  • How the “Weekly Wrap” email gives SAS employees all the news they need using a lighthearted—and sometimes snarky—tone that has resonated with employees

SAS has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Ginny Inman
Senior associate communications specialist
SAS
Read bio
Christine Brown
Senior communications specialist
SAS
Read bio
3:10 p.m.-3:20 p.m. Pacific time

Lightning Talk: Get more out of internal email: Analytics lessons from 200 million emails

Advanced email measurement can provide insights far beyond open rates. For proof, look no further than PoliteMail’s recent analysis of anonymous data from millions of Outlook users. From this data, PoliteMail will provide insights on which email strategies work—and which don’t. In this 10-minute lightning talk, see how email measurement can transform your internal email strategy and improve your internal communications overall.

You’ll learn:

  • What really makes an email more likely to be opened
  • How much content people actually read—and how to optimize yours
  • How to modify distribution size and timing to boost email engagement
  • Easy techniques to skyrocket your email click-thru rates
  • More effective ways to measure email results at your own organization
  • How to apply these findings to improve your overall internal communication strategy
Melissa Katski-Berry
Director of Strategic Accounts
PoliteMail
Read bio
3:40–4:30 p.m. Pacific time

Get employees to love their jobs: Make them the CEOs

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital has uncovered the secret of how to deliver quality health care to patients: Make all its 8,000 employees a CEO or co-owner of the facility. In this session, you’ll see how the hospital’s groundbreaking “I’m the CEO” program has turned the leadership model on its head by making employees the boss, and find out how communications drove this crucial message home to employees.

You’ll learn:

  • How outside-the-box communication has triggered authentic conversations between employees and patients
  • How the medical center’s leadership was brought in to communicate the “I’m the CEO” message to all employees
  • How communicators tracked their progress in moving employee engagement scores up

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is Western Pennsylvania’s top ranked hospital according to U.S. News & World Report.

Josh Madore
Manager of internal communications
UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
Read bio

Thursday, Oct. 18

8:30–9:20 a.m. Pacific time

Overhauling communications by giving employees the content they want, when they want it and how they want it

No matter how large or small an organization, keeping employees informed is paramount. Just as important, though, is how you keep them informed. Are you giving employees the information they want to know in a format they desire, or do you just send 400 emails a week full of messages that top-level executives think employees want to know? Learn how Johns Hopkins Medicine listened to what its workforce wanted from communications and gave the people what they asked for—including a new “Kudos” program that recognizes achievements from medical and nonmedical staffs.

You will learn:

  • The value of creating good surveys to generate actionable results—and what to do with those results
  • How to get a pulse on what employees want more—and less—of within the organization
  • How giving employees a voice can create a more engaged workforce

Learning activity: Share your latest and greatest achievement by creating your own “Kudos” submission to share with conference attendees.

Johns Hopkins Medicine has been recognized as one of Forbes’ America's Best Employers for Diversity.

Kate Sachs
Internal communications specialist
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Read bio
Janet Anderson
Assistant director, institutional internal communications
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Read bio
9:30 – 10:20 a.m. Pacific time

How video can win the hearts and minds of employees

One way to create an emotional bond between employee and employer is through the traditional “Bring Your Kids to Work” day. AT&T expanded on that concept by creating a “Kids Coding Camp,” where AT&T employees brought their children to learn how to write code for smartphone apps. AT&T didn’t stop innovating there, though. Communicators created a compelling highlight video of the experience and posted it on its intranet. See the video and how it powerfully connected employees to AT&T’s new mission of data-powered insights and developing the talent of the future.

You’ll learn:

  • How the video moved the needle on employee engagement and awareness of the cultural transformation underway making AT&T a great place to work
  • How video can grab employees’ attention about a new initiative
  • How the “Kids Coding Camp video is a great example of visual storytelling—and why it won Ragan’s Employee Communications Award for Best Marketing Video

AT&T has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For®.

Vince Pai
Director of marketing operations
AT&T Mobility & Entertainment
Read bio
10:30 –11:20 a.m. Pacific time

The secret to workplace greatness? Disrupt philanthropy by putting employees in charge

How do you get employees to want to come to work each day? You flip the script on your philanthropic policy by giving them the power to choose which organizations to support, how to support them and how to raise the money. Hear the outside-the-box thinking at Bates White Economic Consulting, where employees participate in cooking competitions, “balloon wars” and other unusual fundraisers that tap into their creative sides and develop their leadership skills, raising more than $100,000 a year for the community.

You’ll discover how to:
• Connect, engage and energize employees through fun and innovative fundraising initiatives
• Maximize your community program to help attract candidates and increase retention
• Expand your philanthropy program without adding staff

Learning activity: Participate in small groups to design a fundraising initiative that will engage and connect employees.

Bates White Economic Consulting has been ranked No. 1 on The Washington Post’s Top Workplaces list.”

Miriam Wolman
Director of employee engagement and communications
Bates White Economic Consulting
Read bio
11:30 –12:20 p.m. Pacific time

Get your workforce behind the mission: Rethink everything about employee engagement programs

When it comes to employee engagement programs, Qualcomm hasn’t just thought outside the box, it’s ignored the box altogether. You’ll see why in this session that demonstrates how rethinking and “clean slating” engagement programs can inspire employees to apply an organization’s purpose to their work each and every day.

You’ll learn:

  • Where to start—how to really align any engagement program to your organization’s mission
  • How Qualcomm’s unique engagement programs draw its international workforce to its mission in a fun and authentic way
  • How turning the employee affinity group concept on its head can engage workers like never before
  • How Qualcomm uses its physical space to offer inventive programs
  • How regular “Suds and Science” talks, science trivia contests, intramural tourneys engage millennials and play to Qualcomm’s innovation culture
Christi Gilhoi
Employee engagement leader
Qualcomm
Read bio