September 11-12, 2024ㅤ•ㅤChicago, IL
Board Meeting Agenda
Wednesday, September 11
11:30 AM
Registration opens
12:00 PM
Lunch Discussion
Get here on time and grab a seat at the table. This sit-down lunch is your first opportunity to meet all of the great employee experience leaders you’ll get to know at the Board Meeting.
12:40 PM
Break
12:50 PM
Welcome & Introduction
1:00 PM
Show & Tell: Building a cross-functional steering committee to guide EX programming
Beth Kardong, Boston Scientific
How do you build bridges across HR, IT, Facilities, and Shared Services to guide Employee Experience efforts? Join Beth Kardong, Senior Manager of Employee Experience at Boston Scientific, as she shares how they’ve created a unique partnership between corporate functions to share accountability and prioritize Employee Experience efforts. She’ll share how IT, Facilities, and HR leaders jointly developed an Employee Experience strategy at Boston Scientific, including how they’ve created a shared vision and used it to identify key opportunities, break down departmental silos, and unlock new opportunities to grow empathy and employee-centric design skills within the organization. Learn what went well, what didn’t, and what’s next for a small team championing EX improvement across a 45,000-employee global ecosystem.
1:30 PM
Break
1:45 PM
Show & Tell: Using focus groups to close the generational feedback gap
Jenae O’Neil, Zurich North America
How can you ensure that each generation is equally represented in engagement survey data? Hear how Jenae O’Neil, Senior Employee Experience Consultant at Zurich North America, increased engagement survey participation from their Generation Z employees and improved the overall employee experience for Millennial employees through focus groups. She’ll detail their process for conducting the focus groups, their learnings from each generation, and how they leveraged those findings to improve their engagement survey tactics, increase participation, and make meaningful changes to improve the employee experience.
2:15 PM
Break
2:30 PM
Show & Tell: From siloed to centralized: Unifying global employee recognition strategies
Kelly Willey, Fidelity Investments
What does it take to bring together over 200 different recognition programs under one global strategy? Hear from Kelly Willey, Vice President of Associate Experience at Fidelity Investments, as she details how they worked across the enterprise to consolidate their fragmented programs within their new recognition platform. You’ll get a look behind the curtain at how they managed the complexity of a global implementation and generated excitement for all stakeholders, including change management and launch strategies, how they approached new standards and guidelines, created a cohesive culture of recognition for all associates, and the many challenges they faced along the way.
3:00 PM
Snack Break
3:30 PM
Show & Tell: Empowering your internal champion network to shape employee experience
Rob Julson, Voya Financial
How can you utilize your most engaged employees to exponentially increase the impact of your employee experience work? Hear from Rob Julson, Director of Employee Experience at Voya Financial, as he details how he stood up an internal EX champion network. During this presentation, you’ll get a behind–the–scenes look at how Voya identified and recruited champions to influence key areas of employee experience, how they structure communication and engagement, and lessons learned along the way.
4:00 PM
Break
4:15 PM
Show & Tell: Tackling frontline employee engagement with continuous listening strategies
Alexis Dirkmaat, Marriott Vacations Worldwide
Join Alexis Dirkmaat, Director of Change Management, Culture, & Associate Experience at Marriott Vacations Worldwide, as she shares how they take on the challenge of engaging their frontline and deskless associates. She’ll detail how they’ve built out their continuous listening strategy for this population — including recent accomplishments with their listening and learning tours, pulse survey opportunities, and focus groups — as well as the enhanced internal associate communication strategies they’re creating as a result. Find out the tools they’re using, the lessons they’ve learned, and their roadmap for what’s next.
4:45 PM
Adjourn
5:00 PM
Private Dinner
Following our afternoon of conversations and Show & Tell Talks, we’ll all go out for a fantastic dinner together. It’s a perfect opportunity to connect with your fellow attendees before a big day of brainstorming, discussion, and collaboration.
Thursday, September 12
8:00 AM
Breakfast Discussions
The conversations over coffee and eggs at this event are often more lively than any other conference’s happy hour. You’ll want to be here bright and early (and on time).
8:50 AM
Break
9:00 AM
Welcome Back
9:05 AM
Member-Led Discussion: Optimizing employee onboarding for consistent EX
Julia Santone, M&T Bank
Cross-functional collaboration can lead to an inconsistent experience for new hires during their onboarding process. What strategies can we implement to optimize this process and set our new hires up for success in their first year of employment? Join Julia Santone, Senior Employee Experience Manager at M&T Bank, for an off-the-record conversation where we’ll dig into the workstreams we’re putting into place to streamline the onboarding process. We’ll also discuss how we’re training hiring managers to better support new hires, the strategies we’re using to embed new hires into our culture, and what we’re doing to measure the success of our efforts.
9:35 AM
Break
9:45 AM
Member-Led Discussion: Developing a feedback-rich culture that drives action
Pierce Breneman, Rocket Companies
How can you embed feedback into your company culture to drive meaningful change and enhance employee engagement? Join Pierce Breneman, Organizational Engagement Consultant at Rocket Companies, for an interactive session that digs into practical strategies for integrating continuous listening throughout the employee lifecycle. We’ll discuss the different tactics we’re implementing, how we’re creating action from the feedback we receive, as well as the challenges we’re facing and ways to overcome them.
10:15 AM
Snack Break
10:35 AM
Member-Led Discussion: Return-to-office mandates: Maintaining employee engagement
Kay Clark, Raymond James
Return to office mandates are often met with negative employee sentiment — so how can you approach return to office in a way that both maintains and potentially increases employee engagement? Join Kay Clark, Vice President of Culture and Employee Experience at Raymond James, as she leads a discussion on how our employees are responding to RTO, what we can learn from survey data, and the actions and tactics we’re using to mitigate and improve employee engagement.
11:05 AM
Break
11:20 AM
Member-Led Discussion: Measuring employee experience beyond engagement
Julie Pendell, Discover Financial Services
How can you ensure you’re asking the right questions and looking at the best data to understand what actions you need to take to make improvements and increase engagement? Join Julie Pendell, Talent Management Consultant at Discover Financial Services, as she leads this roundtable discussion on how companies are expanding their employee experience measurement beyond engagement, how they’re using those metrics to guide and prioritize initiatives, and how they’re gauging the success of those initiatives.
11:50 PM
Lunch Discussions
12:50 PM
Break
1:00 PM
Unconference Round 1
EXAMPLE TOPICS
- Leveraging culture champion networks to support enterprise-wide employee experience
- Building employee connectivity in a hybrid world
- Supporting employees through times of organizational change
- Centralizing your technology for a cohesive digital employee experience
1:30 PM
Unconference Round 2
EXAMPLE TOPICS
- Generative AI: Positioning its use to employees
- Employee retention: Engagement strategies to mitigate turnover
- Continuous listening: Scaling our listening programs beyond engagement surveys
- Creating a culture of well-being in the workplace
2:00 PM
Snack Break
2:20 PM
Unconference Round 3
EXAMPLE TOPICS
- Workplace design for optimal in-person experiences
- Vendor review: ServiceNow tips, tricks, and hacks
- Maximizing your rewards and recognition program
- Budget planning: Anticipating employee experience program needs
2:50 PM
Unconference Round 4
EXAMPLE TOPICS
- Company action planning: Strategies for acting on employee feedback
- Equitably engaging frontline employees
- Proving the ROI of employee experience strategies across the enterprise
- Return to office: Creating a valuable experience for employees
