Drawing on 15 years experience leading divisions in Telstra on both sides of the Tasman, including as CEO, TelstraClear, and 11 years of technology and economic development in the NSW Government, Ms. Howard will discuss the importance of ongoing investment, training and education to attract, engage and retain great talent.

This session will examine recent research from faculty members of the Australian School of Business (part of the University of New South Wales) to outline retention tools, the importance of developing “top-down” and “bottom-up” leadership and engagement skills, leading through change and taking a long-term approach to engagement, particularly as the Australian economy slows.

Learn how to engage your staff in the strategic direction of your organisation, leverage staff engagement to improve the value of your services to customers, and employ best practice leadership and management practices to optimise staff retention.

When QBE set out to establish the building blocks for a culture of engagement, the initial steps were to build strong coalitions between communication, human resources and business leaders. These partnerships have been fundamental to QBE’s progress, setting the stage for consistent messages and strategies.

This session will explore QBE’s practical approach to designing an engagement strategy: maintaining a clear understanding of business requirements and establishing strong alliances to drive the change.

Discover how to further your engagement efforts by leveraging synergies and partners in non-traditional parts of your businesses.

Jonathon Champ, Head of Communication, QBE Australia

The latest developments with intranets present opportunities for more dynamic and innovative organisations. But, while most organisations are bogged down worrying about employees saying the wrong thing, others trust their staff enough to transform their intranet into a place that’s completely open for collaboration and communication.

In this session, learn how pharmaceuticals company Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, opened its intranet as a wiki and found huge latent demand for employee communication and publishing.

Learn about the positive effects this has had on organisational culture, the change it’s had on employees and Jannsen-Cilag’s continuing two-year journey to encourage idea sharing and collaboration.

 
Nathan Wallace, Associate Director, Technology, Janssen-Cilag

St. George Bank describes the company’s formula for growth as: engaged people + great customer experience = superior fi nancial results. This session will explore the human resources strategy that supports and delivers on the bank’s unique growth formula.

Learn how the bank’s distinctive “Employment Value Proposition”, recruitment program, leadership and benefi ts initiatives, are propelled to build employee engagement – and have resulted in industry-leading scores for retention and employee satisfaction. Also discover how to respond imaginatively to the tight labor market while attracting and retaining diverse talent across your organisation.

 
Robert Marriott, General Manager, Human Resources (Corporate), St. George Bank

Two years ago, Leighton Contractors set an aggressive strategy to build a strong and profi table business across its core markets of construction, mining, industrial services, investment, building and telecommunications.

Today, employee engagement is a critical driver in supporting and motivating the workforce, which has grown from 2,500 to over 7,000 people since 2005.

In this session you’ll learn how Leighton Contractors, in partnership with Impact Employee Communications, aligned a geographically dispersed workforce with the business direction, strengthened the connection between the leadership team and employees, and built a can-do, people-focused culture.

 
Peter Olsen, Group General Manager, Leighton Contractors
David Sawicki, Managing Director, Impact Employee Communications

The employee base at VicRoads, a statutory corporation within the Victorian Government, is typical of most large organisations - they place a high value on communications with their CEO and senior leadership. But the approach developed by the Internal Communications team to increase accessibility of senior leaders to employees is progressive and insightful.

This session will examine how VicRoads values face-to-face communication, facilitates informal interactions and creates conversations between leadership and employees, followed by measuring its effectiveness and impact on business outcomes.

Rebecca Cattran, Manager, Internal Communications, VicRoads

Whether your organisation is still experimenting with blogs, wikis, and social networks, or your fi rst attempt at a CEO blog crashed and burned, there’s little doubt that social media in the workplace is here to stay.

In this session, learn just how far social media and “Enterprise 2.0” has progressed in the last 12 months, and hear brand new case studies that use the latest tools to help create an open work environment and an engaged workforce.

Including data and analysis from Melcrum’s 2008 survey on social media and corporate communication, this session will give you the ideas and belief you need to start making progress with new technology behind the fi rewall.

Alex Manchester, Author, How to Use Social Media to Engage Employees, Melcrum Australia