Engaging the whole enterprise in a culture of learning is the holy grail of learning and development. As a goal, it is elusive, somewhat mysterious and variable. The challenges encompass creating an attractive learning value proposition for employees, communicating effectively, catering to differences in career level, job role, geography and age. How have the best learning and development organizations engaged their workforce in enterprisewide learning? How are they leveraging technology to increase employee engagement with learning? Join us for a panel discussion with 2015’s top five LearningElite organizations. During this pre-conference event, you’ll learn how the best organizations in learning and development have approached the challenges of engaging learners and leaders at all levels.
Researchers know flow sits at the heart of almost every athletic championship, underpins most major scientific breakthroughs, and accounts for significant progress in the arts. In fact, flow state percentage, the amount of time an employee spends in flow, has been called the most important metric for building great innovation teams. In this riveting keynote, Steven Kotler — author of "Rise of Superman" and co-founder and director of research at the Flow Genome Project — will provide a stunning tour of current research focusing on flow states, an optimal state of consciousness where we both feel our best and perform our best. So, what is this mysterious state? How does it work its magic? And, if this really is the secret to ultimate human performance, how can we get more of it in our personal and professional lives?
During this session, attendees will:
Change happens. Join us as Holly Landau, a leader in the learning and development field, explains how embracing and exploring the “emotions of change” at work is essential to managing it. Landau will share her own experiences working with companies like American Express and Bank of New York Mellon as their employees faced enormous change and uncertainty in their work lives. Best of all, you will learn how to help your employees get from fear to hope, catastrophe to curiosity and negativity to positive expectations the next time change comes to your workplace.
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EY isn’t just delivering exceptional client service on their tax filings; they’re delivering great learning experiences since undergoing a digital transformation with their learning strategy in its Tax Practice. Sanjay Parker, director of thought leadership for Xerox Learning Services, joined by Kelly Dolson, learning leader for EY’s Americas Tax Practice, will take attendees on their journey of developing and implementing a blended learning experience for their professionals. Specifically, they will address how the team made the business case for the transformation, the process they took in coupling various learning modalities that maximized employee learning and look at lessons learned along the way.
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The world of work is changing, it is more agile, global and multigenerational. It is now more important than ever that talent management solutions are used to help source, attract, train and retain the people that will determine if your business goals strive or fail.
In this session, participants will learn:
As Hewlett-Packard Co. has been defining the new style of IT, its training organization has been defining the new style of learning and development — one that puts learners and their job performance at the center of everything the company does. Beginning in 2012, the learning organization embarked on a major initiative to up skill the instructor and development communities to enhance and grow the teams’ participant-centered learning capabilities. This session will focus on practical tips for how other learning organizations, both large and small, can follow a learner-centric approach to drive business results.
Audience members can expect a highly interactive session where they will be challenged to think about their own organizations and the learning solutions they create and to develop a roadmap for how they can take a more learner-centric approach to development and delivery.
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Today’s organizations are faced with geographically dispersed workforces, and it’s up to learning and development leaders to lead and implement a multidimensional learning and development strategy that’s both efficient and result delivering. In this workshop, hear how AT&T developed a four-year partnership with IMT in developing an interactive video learning (IVL) solution that sparked a global workforce training strategy and enabled AT&T to deliver interactive training experiences without borders.
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Do you believe talent is something that can be managed or taught? New research suggests talent is overrated, and that the ability to master a skill or reach peak performance comes down to whether someone has the grit to show up again and again, even after failure.
Back by popular demand, New York Times best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and college football analyst, Yogi Roth, takes us on a powerful journey to find our own inner grit. By the end of this session, you'll be standing on your seat, cheering and yelling for more. Come ready to discover something surprising about yourself, and take away techniques to increase the intensity of training in your organization. Beware: This session is only recommended to people able to handle an extraordinary, possibly emotional, experience.
Busting the myths most of us believe about commitment, Heidi Reeder shows that it all comes down to four variables: treasures, the benefits we get from working toward a goal; troubles, the difficulties we have to deal with; contributions, the time, money and effort we invest; and choices, the number of good alternatives we have.
Together, these variables make up a formula that not only measures how committed we are, but also shows which factors we can change to get our commitment level in synch with what we want to do. Packed with practical examples and action plans for a variety of situations, Reeder, author of "Commit to Win," will demonstrate the importance of not wishing for things to be different and instead making practical changes that will naturally empower employees to reach their goals.
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In the face of constant change and uncertainty, a more nimble approach is needed for implementing a global learning strategy that’s globally consistent, delivers results and reduces spend. Just as business no longer follows a linear path to success, this session will explore how a global biopharmaceutical company deployed a flexible approach to learning and development to better meet the needs of its employees.
During this workshop, attendees will:
Employee engagement has been front and center in the world of human resources for some time now. What we haven’t been talking about is leader engagement and, more specifically, leader disengagement. What matters most to leaders and other high-potentials? What is the business impact of leader disengagement in the workplace?
This session will share the results and insights of new research conducted by the Organizational Intelligence Institute — a Skyline Group company — on the hidden drivers of leader disengagement. We will also share the business impact as well as some strategies and solutions for addressing leader disengagement in the workplace.
By attending this session, participants will be able to:
Matrixed structures have been the norm for some time, but management theories and leadership practices have not caught up. Those who lead and work in matrixed organizations consistently report that cross-functional conflict and decision-making gridlock are pervasive and costly. Learning professionals increasingly recognize that influence is a competence that needs to be built at all levels of matrixed organizations, but as long as the dominant influence paradigm is one where we each focus on persuading others that we are right — and convincing them to do what we want — the fundamental challenges posed by the matrix will remain.
In this presentation, we will draw upon current research about cognitive biases and our own study of matrixed organizations and influence styles to explore why and how to reconceive influence as a two-way activity, in which the openness to learning and being persuaded is just as important as persuading others.
By attending this session, participants will:
Where’s the next generation of leaders coming from in your organization? For most companies, this is THE #1 challenge. With boomers exiting the workforce at the rate of 10,000 per day, it’s critical and it’s urgent.
The only solution is innovative learning programs that turn the whole concept of leadership development on its head. We’ll present a case study of an innovative company that “gets it.” And provide tips on how to create your own solutions that will impact your organization for the next 20 years.
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Recent developments in neuroscience illuminate how to maximize learning and skills development. Explore the latest discoveries about the brain and how to harness human biology to create long-term behavior change. This session provides key principles for learning design that maximizes the brain’s capacity to learn, build memories and develop habits. See how these practices are applied in an award-winning learning and development program that includes management training, leadership development and training for individual contributors. Leave this interactive session with new strategies for intentionally building the professional capabilities of people across all functions of your organization.
In this session, you will:
The workplace of the future requires an agile workforce. To thrive in the fast-paced digital age, organizations need to create learners who will grow and innovate with the company’s needs. To flourish in the adapting marketplace, everyone within an organization must be empowered with the digital tools and technology necessary to access learning and knowledge — any time, any place. In this session, Cisco Vice President and General Manager Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn will discuss how delivering this rapid innovation requires real-time access to knowledge, collaboration and continuous learning. It requires new thinking, new goals, new skills and new job roles. Additionally, Beliveau-Dunn will share how Cisco transformed its own workforce in response to an ever-changing industry, moving from being a technology focused company to driving business-level outcomes for customers while addressing the needs of both employees and management.
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Heading in a new direction, YMCA of the USA launched their custom CAUSE-DRIVEN LEADERSHIP® Competency Model that became the foundation for the talent management process in the Y. Five years in, Y-USA has learned some important lessons when it comes to bringing a competency model to life for thousands of Y staff dispersed across the country. Keep it simple. Make it fun. Pay extra attention to the front lines. Hear how Y-USA is evolving their approach to ensure staff at all levels have easy access to the power of developing their leadership competencies.
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Allstate is transforming its leadership culture though the use of Change Champions, a select group of employees who have volunteered their time and are playing an essential role in fostering organic change. In this talk, Steve King, vice president of talent and leadership effectiveness at Allstate, will share the holistic change effort journey, including the use of social media, alignment of key talent processes, grassroots advocacy, recognition and “surround sound” communication.
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The latest research in neuroscience, computer science and education all point to failings in current teaching methods. By replacing traditional web-based training with computer- and mobile-based adaptive learning, dramatic reductions in time to competence and significant improvements in overall competence can be achieved, with no increase in cost. In this session, Nick Howe will discuss how Hitachi Data Systems deployed adaptive learning for its global employee, partner and customer base, and the benefits that have been achieved.
In this session, you will learn:
ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen got fired from his job working for a Hartford, Connecticut-based professional hockey team and famously turned his struggles around when he took a $9,000 credit card cash advance to create a television network that is currently valued at $66 billion. Adversity — the loss of his job resulted in one of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories in television history. What can we learn from adversity? How do we react when adversity strikes? What traits do great leaders possess, and how do they handle it?
Most of us will face adversity, failure and possibly even bankruptcy in our lifetime. Will you bow to the circumstance, or will you use the experience to find the leadership qualities within you to achieve rather than give up? Whether looking at your career as an individual or more broadly on the path of a company or nonprofit, Rasmussen shares tangible leadership advice as only he can — gripping, insightful and sure to affect the bottom line in every sense of the term.
During this keynote, attendees will:
A learning ecosystem extends beyond targeted learning materials and customized training delivery — it includes everything that influences a company’s learners and embraces both their immediate and ongoing needs.
A holistic approach to intensive enterprise learning must therefore begin with an analysis that yields a savvy strategy for meeting corporate goals with measurable, enduring results on organizational and client performance.
Aptara’s work with American Express grew from a single training development project into a 10-year partnership that implements learning and performance across multiple business lines. Using Aptara’s vision for a scalable, low-maintenance learning ecosystem for Amex as a starting point, this workshop offers practical information for building effective employee and client-facing educational programs.
The session will focus on nimble strategies for addressing everything from an organization’s instructional design to its technological evolution for learning architecture. American Express will demonstrate how their partnership with Aptara forged a successful learning strategy.
In this session, participants will learn:
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Recent studies show that companies with a highly engaged workforce outperform their peers by 147 percent in earnings per year. Currently, employee engagement is at an all-time low; 73 percent of companies report that their workforce is not highly engaged. If you can drive success by measuring and improving alignment, sentiment and knowledge in real time, you can increase profitability and productivity as well as reduce turnover and absenteeism. Helping employees know and understand the goals of your company, while delivering a compelling learning experience helps them grow and contribute faster to the health of your company.
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The increasing demands on leaders across the world has made both designing performance improvement initiatives and measuring the impact of those investments a daunting task. This workshop will provide critical information about figuring out if your leadership development efforts are focused enough to impact the business strategy, will equip you to build a measurement plan that aligns to the leadership investments, and will provide insight on the actionable decisions that can be made to optimize these investments by telling the right story.
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Most organizations operating in today’s job market face challenges associated with baby boomer retirement and employee turnover. Those challenges include the retention and maintenance of critical job knowledge and the effectiveness of subsequent hiring efforts with a labor pool formed by a growing number of millennials.
How do organizations navigate today’s labor market while ensuring that a knowledge vacuum isn’t created in the process?
Based on recent research completed with more than 225 learning organizations, this session will share the strategies and best practices learning leaders have adopted for managing the talent pipeline through all phases of the employee lifecycle: pre-employment development, onboarding, knowledge capture and knowledge transfer.
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One of our core values is winning by sharing knowledge. Our engagement goal: to connect our experts everywhere in the company — from lawyers to leasing agents to service technicians — and give them a platform to spotlight their expertise and learn from one another. And most crucial of all was getting users to use it. So it had to be easy — and even fun — to use.
In this session, participants will learn:
Join us to hear how learning and communication is transforming the way people work at Equity Residential.
Organizations understand the need for a diverse workforce and are investing to achieve it. And yet, progress is far short of where it should be, despite good intentions. New research in neuroscience suggests this discrepancy has to do with the very conceptual foundations of traditional bias training programs.
Dr. David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, will lead a deep dive into the central findings of this research and share a neuroscience-driven alternative that’s helping large organizations break workplace bias.
This presentation will help the audience:
In this session, participants will learn:
USAble Life’s lean IT shop is delivering big returns since integrating experiential learning into their L&D plan. In this power-hour talk, hear how USAble Life developed and fostered a corporate university partnership with University of Arkansas, Little Rock senior capstone program as a tool for providing students valuable real-world IT skills, while simultaneously building their talent pipeline. Encouraged by the results of their experimental learning with students, leaders have applied a similar approach with current employees and began contracting with celebrity technology consultants to gain access to new methodologies in IT.
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This session will explore 15 current megatrends that will have a dramatic and profound affect on the future of learning. This enlightening and thought-provoking discussion will focus on the effect of the digital tsunami, increasing automation, the decline of the process worker, the changing workplace, generational impacts and preferences, emerging countries, new technologies and much more. Learn how these trends will affect the future of learning and force us all to redefine how we best serve the changing learning needs, styles and preferences of our employees, partners and customers.
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Learn how Navistar created and implemented a leadership program to develop leadership qualities at all levels and how an educational partnership with DeVry University will support this initiative. Hear the goals and strategy behind the program, how the initiative was developed and is being integrated throughout the organization, and the ways in which higher education is a key resource for employee development.
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In the past, we’ve operated on the belief that balanced gender representation should be achieved in business, government and education. To achieve that goal, it requires viewing both genders as identical on the inside. However, we’ve found that equalizing the numbers doesn’t necessarily result in gender balance. Similarly, treating everyone the same would appear to help eradicate bias but doesn’t result in gender equality. Women have different, yet complementary, strengths to men. Scientists have clearly demonstrated our very striking structural and chemical differences in the brain. When you understand the differences in how women’s and men’s brains work, you have the key to productive cross-gender relationships.
Please join Barbara Annis, founding partner of Gender Intelligence Group, in exploring gender intelligence and how it can improve decision-making and innovation, minimize risk, produce superior financial results and ultimately allow us all to engage more effectively.
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More often than not, “doing more with less” means more work and less development for time-strapped employees and overburdened managers. To be effective, chief learning officers need to find creative ways to fit learning and development into workers’ already hectic days. In this panel, learning leaders explore the creative and innovative ways CLOs are meeting increased learning demand and getting employees to make time when time is limited.
In this session, attendees will hear:
The “Bring Your Own Devices” trend brought a flood of both anxieties and benefits. Today, 95 percent of the workforce now uses 1 or more personal devices at work. BYOD has proven benefits of increased productivity and improved morale, and BYOD employers are deemed more attractive to recruits. Now, "Bring Your Own Learning" is upon us and has brought anxieties as learning professionals prepare for the complexities and work to unlock the benefits. In this presentation, we will explain what the consumerization of learning means and how you can create a “learners first” culture in your organization while maintaining security and visibility.
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A core element in executing Polycom’s business strategy is ensuring that leaders understand all areas of the business and are equipped to operate like general managers. To prepare future leaders for this role, Polycom designed and implemented Quest, an eight-month executive learning program for high-potential directors and senior directors that utilized a competitive team-based simulation to help them understand the value of cross-functional collaboration. This session will focuses on how L&D at Polycom built this simulated environment that created an effective learn-by-doing environment and highlight lessons learned from the experience.
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During this session, attendees will: