Edmonton 2017

Let's face it, HR professionals suck at the humble brag. We're often so busy supporting and lifting up the businesses that we work with that we rarely take the time to articulate our own value and insight. In this session, you'll learn why its so imperative to your career and reputation to invest in your personal brand and you'll walk away with practical tips on amplifying your impact as an HR professional through the power of storytelling and social media.

Design thinking casts HR into a new role. It transforms the function from a "process developer" to an "experience architect". Learn through case studies and examples how treating employees like customers and integrating consumer behaviour into your day-to-day will transform your role.

In this session learn how to use what you learn on LinkedIn to source new and emerging talent and create in-house brand ambassadors who can share the stories of your business with their networks. With a focus on micro-blogging and identifying superstars, the challenge in 2017 and beyond is not just finding talent but keeping talent engaged and learning so they can foster positive work cultures and create responsive and better work environments for everyone.

Employee engagement is a proven core driver of business success. In this hands-on and interactive session you will learn the importance of values and behaviours in any employee engagement and recognition plan, and how exercises and events around engagement will increase bonding and connecting among your employees. The audience will go through a team exercise that Kudos created for its own employees and clients. This exercise will enable you to identify your own personal values, which you can then compare to those of your organization.

Technology has changed significantly, and has made it easier for leaders to access the data they need to effectively lead their squads. Gone are the days of once-a-year performance reviews. Enter ongoing employee leadership - having regular structured conversations on what’s truly important. Traditional hierarchies are becoming less effective and less common, which is forcing managers to become more agile. This session will teach how to get better access to required data, facilitate structured 1-on-1 sessions, and truly understand why these new practices will enable organizational success.

In Louis’ role at ATB Financial, he developed the “The Hiring Hub”, a solution for hiring managers. It’s a Google site that includes tools like job postings, interview guides, assessments, learning videos, educational content and recruitment tips and tricks. Regardless of skill level, ATBs hiring leaders can now access high quality recruiting tools from anywhere and at anytime. The results were astounding - Louis will take you through the process of how he achieved this.

Cloud and mobile technology, artificial intelligence (A.I.) and increased automation are transforming the way we work and conduct business. Virtual reality (V.R.) combined with A.I. is poised to be more transformative than any other technology transformation to date, and HR can no longer afford to be a laggard in this movement. Susan will show you how V.R. can be used to nurture higher levels of engagement, increase productivity and fundamentally change the ways in which we work.

More than 19 million Canadians log into Facebook every day to keep up with news, trending topics, and of course, family and friends. In this session learn how your can organization leverage the visual storytelling platforms of Facebook and Instagram to craft that just-right brand narrative and identify not just your biggest fans, but potential new hires, new partnerships, who are your most active employee ambassadors, and what they're interested in and motivated by every day.

Competition is for losers. Today, our competitive global market is unforgiving and ruthless – no one is spared. Consumer expectations and behaviors, shaped by new market entrants, have also changed more in the last 10 years than in the last 100 years combined. Disruptive innovation is forcing firms to reimagine their customer experiences, channel strategies and business models. How do we survive? Today, we need to be bold, brave and experimental. We can only keep up if we foster a relentless culture that promotes human-centered design and rapid experimentation. This is our only competitive advantage. In this session, you will: - Learn why 2017 is the greatest (and scariest) time to be in business. - Learn why taking a human-centred approach builds culture and de-risks projects by saving time/money. - Explore how companies like Apple, Tesla, Amazon and Google have embraced experimentation. - Learn from Shawn's experience on the battleground of building culture with clients and internally. - Obtain methods and tools for transforming your organization's culture.