How to Use Performance Management to Engage and Empower Employees to Reach Their Full Potential
Can you engage employees and maximize performance at the same time? Isn't having fun at work counter-productive? Why do I need to recognize employees for simply doing their job? If you wrestle with these questions, you aren't alone. You're struggling with the disconnect between an outdated model of management and a new world of work. The time for top down, compliance-based management is over. To attract, retain and unleash great talent for your organization, a new approach is required.

In this powerful keynote, you will learn how successful organizations are unleashing the full potential of their employees by creating a more "human-friendly" work experience. Employee engagement expert, Jason Lauritsen, will reveal how you can more effectively manage performance by making work feel more like a healthy relationship than an unpleasant obligation. You'll leave the experience inspired, informed and equipped with a new approach for unlocking higher performance that employees will love.

Discovering the True Path to Employee Engagement
Work has been defined in many ways over the years: a contract, a transaction, a value exchange. This led to describing humans as capital and designing systems that treat people like assets to be managed and optimized. Is it any wonder that employees' feeling of engagement within these organizations continues to drop? It doesn't feel good to be treated like an investment to be maximized.

To reverse this trend requires that we understand what work is for employees, a relationship, and a critically important one. Research has shown us that employees crave the same things from work that they do from other important relationships in their lives: appreciation, connection, acceptance, communication, and support. In this session, we will explore how designing the employee experience through the lens of a healthy relationship will focus your employee engagement efforts for greater impact.

Find the Courage to Disrupt
As the pace of change accelerates, leaders must face the reality that what we've always done isn't working any longer. Innovation is a requirement of survival. And innovation demands disruption.

Knowing disruption is needed is one thing, doing it is another. It requires an ingredient that can be hard to find: Courage. To do the work that will truly make a difference demands that you face your fears of failure and rejection and move beyond them.

In this session, we will confront the most common fears that are holding you back and replace them with the mindset and skill to find your courage.

Maximizing the New Talent Equation
It seems that everyone these days is saying that business is now "social." The rise of social media and other technology has changed how we do business. These same technologies are changing the very nature of work and how the workplace must be designed. The truth is, business has always been social, and so has work. Technology has simply unleashed the power of social in new and powerful ways. This evolution has revealed that our traditional models for cultivating talent are insufficient. The new equation for talent isn't just about building human capital (the knowledge, skills and abilities). It must also include social capital (the value that exists within relationships) if you are to unlock your organization's true capability for innovation and performance. This thought provoking and actionable session will reveal to you the new talent equation and how the next evolution for Human Resources is to become the social architect of the organization.

Being the Best
Discovering the Secrets to Building a Best Place to Work
Becoming a "Best Place to Work" is at the top of many organization's priority lists. To attract and keep the best talent requires having an engaging culture where people want to work. But, building an awesome workplace is easier said than done. In fact, it's hard to even know where to start. This dynamic session will reveal research-based insights into the what, why and how of building and sustaining a "Best Place to Work" for your employees. And (spoiler alert) it's not about installing ping pong tables or sleep pods.

Hacking HR:
Big Change Starts with Thinking Small
Driving innovation in HR can feel overwhelming. Just the idea of innovation is intimidating—as if the big breakthrough is somehow always just beyond our reach. This is fueled by some common misunderstandings about how innovation works. The truth: innovation isn't about big changes. And it doesn't even require a big budget, a big title, or any permission. The changes that matter don't happen overnight, they are the result of a lot of small, meaningful changes over time. Computer programmers and hackers have known this for years and we've reaped the technological rewards.

Applying insights from the computer hacking culture, Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt will teach you a simple but incredibly powerful process for hacking your work in HR. This process will help you and your team to innovate and make progress in your work, one small change at a time. Regardless of your title or experience, you can make big things happen through a series of smart, small changes (hacks).

Driving Performance Through Employee Engagement
Content Outline
1: What is Employee Engagement?
Through individual exercises and group discussion, participants will explore what employee engagement looks and feels like in the workplace and how it impacts our work and lives. This exploration will move the idea of engagement from the realm of concept into a tangible connection with behaviors and results.

2: Defining Employee Engagement
To drive employee engagement requires a clear understanding of what it is and how it works. In this section, participants will come to understand engagement as a set of outcomes we work to earn from our employees. Then, the focus will turn to understanding the five dimension of employee engagement and the role that management and leadership plays in each.

3: Lessons from Best Places to Work
Based on insights drawn from analyzing employee data collected at thousands of organizations through Best Places to Work programs, myths and best practices about what employees look for in a best place to work will be shared and discussed.

4: Engagement Builders & Killers
At this point, the workshop turns to a very practical, "how to" focus. Participants will discover three powerful engagement builders and two toxic engagement killers. These concepts will be shared, explored and practiced through individual and small group exercises.

5: Action Planning
To close the workshop, each participant will spend time reflecting on the content of the workshop in order to make specific commitments. These commitments will reflect how the leader will take immediate action to increase engagement with those they lead. The plans will then be shared and discussed with peers for feedback and support.