Nothing conjures up feelings of dread and stress quite like Open Enrollment. HR professionals face overwhelming workloads and chasing down employees with last-minute benefits selections. Consequently, employees may feel confused about policies, bombarded by emails and not actively engaged. To tackle these challenges, employee engagement is key — and PoliteMail stands ready to provide expert guidance, drawing from insights gained from analyzing over 4 billion internal emails sent to 15 million employees worldwide.

• Quick tips for streamlining your open enrollment process.
• Creating a dynamic communication strategy that boosts engagement.
• How AI can assist HR professionals.
• Email best practices and key findings of our 2024 Email Benchmark report.

While the effectiveness and ROI of corporate wellness programs remains up for debate, research shows that employee volunteer and giving back programs consistently drive engagement, productivity and ROI. In this opening keynote, Johari Matthews, VP and executive director of the Tennessee Titans Foundation and ONE Community, will share how she engages the NFL team’s employees, players and leadership in philanthropic community impact efforts that share time, energy and resources with the city of Nashville to boost brand affinity among internal and external stakeholders.

Building a sound employee experience strategy requires comms, HR and marketing to work closely together. How can you narrow the gaps in reporting, communication and resource sharing to strengthen these partnerships? In this panel, a trio of Communications, HR and Marketing leaders will share strategies to strengthen cross-departmental ties — and how to develop and deliver on shared goals through collaboration.

You’ll learn:

• Goal setting and alignment: how to think through the lens of other business functions by setting strategic goals and deliverables to consider how they intersect — and diverge — with those of colleagues in HR, marketing and more.
• Polishing process: Workflow and interpersonal communication approaches that minimize the obstacles to effective collaboration.
• Un-siloed team tech: Tried-and-true tips for sharing employee engagement insights across the enterprise.
• Speaking from one voice: Successful approaches for aligning cross-functional goals with your employer brand that acknowledge and communicate your purpose commitments consistently across channels.
• Perfect timing: Content calendar considerations for managing the cadence of campaign and message delivery that allow room for each function’s big push to breathe.
• Bonus - charm offensive: How to make the case to a co-worker or leader who doesn’t understand the value of a holistic, cross-functional employee experience initiative.

Creating a sense of belonging, inclusion and engagement among employees with different working arrangements – whether they are remote, hybrid, dispersed or deskless – often goes smoother in theory than in practice. This interactive session will explore digital strategies for fostering community between coworkers that unites all employees around a shared, people-first culture.

We’ll discuss:

• Starting Point: Evaluating the state of your organization and assessing the key factors impacting employee sentiment to decide what program/initiatives are needed to engage employees and meet them where they are. We’ll apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to employee engagement.
• Belonging on a budget: How to reach employees faster and more directly, working within budget constraints.
• Exceptional experiences: Innovative virtual initiatives that bring visibility to workers in less recognized roles. Creating a digital space that transcends geographical barriers to connect dots and create cohesion for employees.
• Interactive – plotting the employee experience: Using analysis tools, map out the factors impacting employee sentiment and plot the employee engagement gaps. Attendees will also ideate engagement activities/tools that meet employees where they are.

Delicate and personal messages build trust when they are delivered with sensitivity and tact. It’s crucial to train managers in the right way to message their reports during onboarding and benefits elections. In this panel, you’ll discover how comms can help ensure onboarding goes smoothly by preparing managers with the right prompts, talking points and intranet resources, giving them everything they need to build new relationships on a strong foundation.

We’ll explore:

• Resource hubs: How to design a manager-exclusive portal on your intranet with talking points and strategies to ensure a smooth onboarding experience.
• Keeping it consistent: Tips for standardizing onboarding communications to ensure managers provide incoming employees with the necessary training and support to maximize productivity.
• Staying accountable: Strategies for ensuring managers prioritize benefits education and communicate the importance of making timely elections.
• Minding the journey: Approaches to facilitating the right introductions to new coworkers, platforms and projects to avoid meeting fatigue and premature burnout.
• Boosting benefits: Ways to entrust managers with boosting employee engagement by refining the talking points around the hard and soft benefits that make up your Total Rewards.

While Gallup found that 65% of workers consider upskilling a very important factor when looking for a new job, many organizations still struggle to launch learning and development programs that are sustainable and successful. As connectors across business lines, communicators can help. In this session, you'll hear how Jackson operationalized upskilling through launching business fluency and mentorship initiatives by standardizing rollout strategies across the org chart.

You’ll learn:

• Working with limited to no budget: How to make upskilling core to your employer brand through nontraditional avenues while highlighting the long-term benefits to growth, productivity and retention.
• Illuminating pathways: Strategies for finding the right lessons, modules and mentors to upskill according to different employee and business priorities.
• Making time: Approaches that enable managers to use the time they already have more strategically and prioritize your efforts.
• Shared experiences: Teaching tips that make group learning and shared development experiences worthwhile.

The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer found that most people (74%) trust peers and scientists to drive innovation over businesses, CEOs and government leaders. This creates a tremendous opportunity for managers who can build a player-coach relationship with their direct reports to empower their teams to become high-performers. We’ll close out the first day with a look at how communicators can ensure they’re meeting performance expectations and nurturing an innovative, inclusive team at the same time.

We’ll explore:

• High hallmarks: The core elements of high-performance coaching, including cross-functional collaboration and leadership buy-in, and how they reshape management techniques for better employee wellbeing.
• Defining dynamics: Active listening strategies for building a communication foundation with direct reports based on respect and clear workflow collaboration expectations.
• Bringing Balance: How to balance productivity expectations with wellness coaching to create an experiential value add.
• Pushing back: Productive tactics for challenging the assumptions of a manager’s leader with a positive mindset

Developing a successful Town Hall requires a delicate balance between executive messaging and employee engagement. In this session, you’ll learn how one communication leader teased out a compelling narrative to transform dry town halls into dynamic, dialogue-driven experiences that shared stories from teams across the organization – and brought engagement to record highs.

You’ll become an expert at:

• Using creativity and data: Explore how data-informed creativity can shape compelling Town Hall segments that go beyond slide-heavy updates and talking heads.
• Choreographing the event: The exact tools you need to set your town hall up for success whether your meeting is virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
• Managing the narrative: Tips for balancing company updates and corporate news alongside perspectives from people across the business.
• Quality Q&A: Learn how to orchestrate a smooth Q&A and prep executives for questions so employees are heard and informed.

Employer branding is an integral part of your organization’s recruitment and retention.  Cultivating buy-in and loyalty means understanding your value proposition, giving your employees the tools to build something authentic, and measuring and communicating the impact of your efforts.

In this session, we’ll talk about all this and more, including how internal communicators and HR professionals can use your tools to make your employer brand successful. You’ll hear about:

• What an employer brand is, and how it can benefit your company and team.
• Auditing your employer brand and identifying areas for improvement.
• Crafting and employer branding strategy fueled by authenticity, creativity and business outcomes.
• Measuring the success of your employer brand initiatives and communicating those wins to leadership.

When negative storylines threaten to impact employee morale, strong internal and external communications strategies help minimize the likelihood of negative sentiment and attrition. In this session, we’ll look at how one organization took a collaborative approach across functions and stakeholders to coordinate its response, take control of the narrative and speak from a position of solidarity with employees.

You’ll learn:

• The power of preparation: A well-defined plan, thorough preparation, and clear expectations can empower organizations to navigate an externally driven crisis.
• Relevant voices: How to identify and empower the appropriate stakeholders to turn them into advocates and address the crisis at hand.
• Proactive partnerships: Leverage relationships to gain valuable information, set clear expectations, and mitigate potential issues before they become surprises.
• Calm the waters, not the cConversation: Discover effective strategies to minimize negative employee sentiment by fostering a culture of transparency, trust, and solidarity. Learn how to demonstrate that your organization's mission, vision, and values are more than just words on a wall.

We’ll wrap up the conference with the top takeaways and wisdom gleaned from the week, with a focus on how you can fortify your employee experience during a time of rapid change.