Welcome from the Chair

KEYNOTE SESSION: The communication traits of great companies to work for

When a company enjoys the accolade of being included in The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For list, the one thing you can expect to find is an impressive level of highly engaged employees. So, what are the internal communication practices that help build these highly engaged workforces? Are there some defining traits that other organisations can learn from?
 
During this keynote session, Wayne Clarke, managing partner of the Best Companies™ Partnership LLP will identify some of the key communication traits of highly engaged organisations, and explore the practices that propel an organisation towards award-winning levels of engagement. This inspiring session by a speaker who has been recognised as one of the 20 most influential thinkers in HR in 2009, will explore:

• Eight measures of employee engagement
• Four essential building blocks of engagement
• How the communication function can directly influence an organisation's employee engagement

Wayne Clarke
Managing Partner of the Best Companies™ Partnership LLP
The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For

How the comms function at KBC Group weathered the downturn and emerged stronger

When the financial storm approached the European banking group KBC Group NV, the corporate communication team was rather well-prepared. A solid foundation put in place over the past three years had the international communication team ready to communicate with employees at a moment's notice. In fact, the crisis has made the communication team stronger than before. This session will explore:

• The key factors to building a solid foundation for your communication team
• How to leverage your insights with external communications to create open, respectful and transparent communication with employees
• How to sustain employee satisfaction once the initial crisis has passed

Viviane Huybrecht
General Manager Group Communication
KBC Group NV

Maintaining momentum amidst a crisis at ING Wholesale Banking

Many communication teams have been deflated by having to regularly share tough and negative news with employees, especially redundancies. Along with this responsibility, however, can be the opportunity for a highly-visible platform for communication efforts, along with greater access and credibility for the function. This session will explore how the communication team at ING Wholesale Banking has been able to turn the financial crisis to their advantage by creating a sense of urgency for communication efforts and their plans to sustain this momentum. Learn how to:

• Leverage the current business environment for creating positive change in your organisation
• Maintain the momentum for engaging employees more directly with business strategy
• Deepen the communications advisory role with management

Leanne Carmody
Head of Internal Communication
ING Wholesale Banking

Embedding a culture of safety at Network Rail

Doing routine work, it's easy to get complacent. How do you make sure that safety is uppermost in people's minds?  How do you communicate with them in ways that stick and change behaviour?

This was the driving force behind Network Rail's Safety 365 campaign, aimed at a tough, cynical audience of front-line workers across the industry.

In this session, learn how Network Rail, working with The Edge and other agencies, produced a series of hard-hitting awareness films and a range of supporting material (from posters to interactive quizzes), and delivered these to employees around the country.

Running throughout the campaign is a directness that talks to the target audience in their own language. As a result, the films have really hit home with the workforce and the campaign has helped to change an ingrained culture and has been accepted as industrywide best practice.

Mark Shaoul
Head of Marketing
Network Rail

Pete Stevenson
Creative Director
The Edge Picture Company

Streamed Session: Choose A or B

Interactive Session
Practical tools and techniques for change communication planning

This interactive session will provide you with practical communication tools and techniques to apply through various types of change.  Learn how to consult and contract with your internal customer, how to facilitate the articulation and building of the revised business vision and change roadmap,  tools and channels to engage with different multi-cultural audiences as well as discovering some tried and tested communication tools that work across various types of change.

Laura Ferguson will share her change knowledge bank - tools and techniques she has learned and developed while working across several different industries, continents and aspects of change.  On leaving this session you will have the knowledge, tools and techniques to help you:

• Develop effective change sponsor engagement and trust
• Manage stakeholder resistance to change
• Help leaders articulate the change journey
• Build a plan for multi-cultural employee engagement

Laura Ferguson
Change Communication Manager
BG Group

Sustaining engagement in a tough economic climate

Many of us working in the internal communication arena have been overwhelmed this past year with the need to communicate redundancies, acquisitions or instability in the market. As such, the challenge of keeping our employees committed is tremendous.

This interactive session will provide you with a variety of tips and ideas to keep your employees focused. By drawing on various case studies, it will allow you the opportunity to reflect on what employee engagement is all about. It will consider different techniques that can be used to keep employees on the company's side, such as storytelling, appreciative inquiry and world cafés.

What you will get from this session:

• A chance to experience some of the techniques for yourself
• Case studies highlighting how other organisations have kept their employees on track
• Best-practice tips to take back to the office

Sally Hinder
Internal Communication Black Belt Trainer

Melcrum Trainer

Streamed Session: Choose A or B

Aligning leaders behind a consistent and compelling vision of the future at City & Guilds Group

As the organisation moves in a new direction, employees are often slow to embrace the new priorities, or even fully understand them. At City & Guilds, this situation required the internal communication function to take responsibility for aligning leaders with an agreed set of messages in a coordinated approach, as well as communicate the strategy in a compelling way to employees. Their innovative approach has built leadership communication capabilities, as well as thelping leaders gain more confidence in being better leaders.

Learn how:

• The adage "a picture speaks a thousand words" can transform employee understanding
• Using journey maps can visually capture an organisational strategy, while providing an enriching and involving experience for leaders and employees

Henri Forde
Head of Internal Communication
City & Guilds Group

How smart communication helped Shop Direct thrive during major change

Has change become "business as usual" in your organisation? Today's communicator needs to be increasingly focused on moving their organisations through change more quickly and effectively. Despite the current business environment, Shop Direct has been able to navigate the frequent changes while improving employee engagement.

This session will explore how communication has enabled the organisation to thrive during major change, including:

• How to prepare your organisation for change - redundancies, restructuring, mergers and more
• How communication can be positioned as a key facilitator in the process
• How to leverage the strengths of other functions for more favorable results

David Boardman
Group Corporate Communication Director
Shop Direct Group

Streamed Session: Choose A or B

How Westminster City Council won executive buy-in for more effective leadership communication

When Westminster City Council welcomed a new chief executive in 2008, the communication team recognised opportunities to enhance its impact and demonstrate its true value to the organisation. This session will examine the steps taken to win the chief executive's support and accomplish the kind of leadership communication the function had always desired - particularly during major organisational change. This session will discuss practical and winning approaches to:

• Earning the support of your chief executive through an evidence-based approach
• Positioning yourself as a trusted advisor to your leadership team
• Proving your worth during periods of major organisational change
• Demonstrating your value to the business

Paul Middleton
Head of Marketing
Westminster City Council

Intranet 2.0: increasing global dialogue and engagement at ERM

Progressive intranets can improve an organisation's global internal communication, develop a shared vision for business strategy and allow employees to work collaboratively. While Intranet 2.0 can allow more user-generated content, it may lead to too much talking, too little listening and preventing genuine dialogue.

Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a leading environmental consulting service firms, has recently built an award-winning Intranet 2.0 named "Minerva" [1].

Informed by Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology (SMM), this session will explore ERM's approach to:

• Providing a space for global dialogue and, as a result, breaking down corporate hierarchy and increasing employee engagement
• Leveraging its collective expertise to respond faster to customer needs, increase peer-to-peer learning and subsequently increase sales.

[1] Top 10 Best Intranet Award 2009, Neilsen Group

Dr. Bonnie Cheuk
Global Head of Knowledge and Information
Environmental Resources Management (ERM)

Closing remarks from the Chair

BREAKFAST BRIEFING: Creating world-class internal communication at the "World's local bank"

This presentation will cover the findings and insights from a recent global benchmarking study to identify best practice in internal communication. The study drew on an analysis of employee engagement data and a range of published sources. First-hand observations were drawn from across HSBC and a range of global companies across Europe, Asia Pacific, North America and Latin America. The outcomes have informed the internal communication strategy at HSBC. In this session you will hear insights on:

• The challenge of making face-to-face, two-way communication happen
• Managing new technology: information on demand
• Managing the volume of messages and channels
• Keeping up with external news
• Managing in a matrix organisation
• Creating a clear joined-up agenda

Jo Alexander
Head of Group Internal Communications
HSBC

Sholto Lindsay-Smith
Managing Director
UffindellWest

Cami Joerin
Internal Communications Director
UffindellWest

Welcome from the Chair

KEYNOTE SESSION: Corporate values: the building blocks of a prosperous organisation

An organisation's core values can be viewed as their corporate DNA; they weave the fabric of its history and can lead an organisation into the future. Production Services Network (PSN) provides engineering, operations and maintenance services to the owners of energy assets around the world.  It uses core values to promote a global culture, make daily business decisions and communicate with employees in 26 countries. A commitment to these values and an integrated communications approach supported the organisation through its award-winning £150 million management buy-out from Halliburton in 2006, creating an environment for one of the highest employee retention rates in its industry. This keynote session will explore:

• The relationship between communicator and senior leadership: collaboration or collusion?
• Uniting an organisation through core values, despite cultural, language and geographic differences
• How leadership communication supported by core values can guide an organisation through turbulent times

Georgina Turner
Head of Corporate Communications
Production Services Network

Bob Keiller
CEO
Production Services Network

Tough crowd: how to engage and unlock discretionary effort when it’s thin on the ground

Keeping employees focused, committed, and willing to put forth discretionary effort, while they are distracted by the news of the economy, sudden mergers or previously unanticipated change in their organisations has become an everyday challenge for practitioners. 

This session will look at successful engagement practices in the midst of major change, including:

• Preparing senior leaders to rebuild trust in themselves and with employees; acknowledge emotions; be accountable, and lead
• Understanding what the best leaders do to build engagement with their teams
• Inspiring top levels of performance from employees

Russell Grossman
Director of Communications
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Morning Coffee

Streamed Sessions: Choose A or B

How to become an effective communication coach for managers

Effective front-line manager communication and engagement is essential to create an environment that will enhance productivity and performance.  But many managers don't have the necessary communication skills to develop a climate and culture where employees feel valued and are willing to perform at their best.

In this interactive session, you'll learn how you can coach, assist and convince managers that good communication is key to maximising their essential role in driving employee engagement. Key areas to be covered include:

• Building the case for effective communication from managers
• Helping managers structure their messages so that they engage their intended audience
• Coaching managers to play to their natural strengths as communicators
• Enabling managers to assess their communication effectiveness

Darren Briggs
Director
Flametree Communication

Melcrum Trainer

Adapting measurement strategies to support new business objectives

The new business climate means there are new business objectives to deliver on. Are you prepared with new measurement strategies to adapt to this climate? Or to rebuild trust using the research measurement process itself? By participating in this interactive session you'll discover:

• "Time to re-align": an interactive exercise to assess your new business objectives
• Key points for altering your measurement strategy, including: the focus of your research, methodologies for getting honest answers and smart analytics to add value
• "My challenge": a group exercise to assess the biggest challenges to your measurement strategy
• Planning the next steps:  3 key take-aways for your improved measurement strategy

Dr Andy Brown
Partner: Analytics
Engage Group

Melcrum Trainer

Lessons from "The Undercover Boss": finding out what your employees really think

In this special session you'll hear first hand how Stephen Martin, CEO of Clugston Group, a major force in construction, with a turnover of £155 million, went undercover to discover the truth about his business.

Martin will share his story as documented in a recent episode of Channel 4's Undercover Boss series. Taking over from his successor of 18 years and with a major recession to deal with, he wanted to confront the consequences of his executive decisions head on. So, armed with a cover story he visited construction sites to work alongside his frontline employees.

He heard exactly what the workforce thought of the management team and learnt that "communication is one of the most important factors behind business success."

In this session:

• Learn how his employees told Martin the truth about the business and how he took their messages on board
• Discover how the executive board was transformed into first-rate communicators
• Have the chance to question Martin on his time working closely with frontline workers

Stephen Martin
CEO
Clugston Group
Channel 4's 'Undercover Boss'

Presentation TBC

Tricks of the trade: drawing on pop culture and clever marketing to win employees’ attention at Asda

Just like consumers, employees at Asda get their personal information from sound bites, downloads, text messages, and online communities. The communication team recognised that if they truly wanted to capture the attention of their employees, they needed to tailor their messages and channels to their audience. This session will explore the innovative ways Asda has earned their employees' attention by applying best practices from consumer marketing and popular culture. Learn how the team:

• Creates direct and emotional connections with their employees
• Taps into the YouTube-style culture employees are accustomed to
• Accomplishes the aims of the corporate agenda whilst using fewer resources

Sarah Cullen
Head of Events and Engagement, Colleague Communication
Asda

Coaching Volvo’s managers to deliver tough news and navigate through uncertainty

Volvo Group has more than 7,000 managers with front-line responsibility for executing the strategic direction of the company. The recent economic downturn has been challenging for all leaders. The communication team responded to this challenge with an approach that empowers managers to do their job with both dignity and empathy. This session will explore:

• The major differences between coaching and training
• How to embed coaching elements into the communication support for middle and line managers
• How the coaching technique effectively prepares managers to rebuild trust with employees, explain and provide context for decisions about downsizing, and how to listen to and acknowledge emotions.

Charlie Nordblom
Vice President, Strategic Internal Communication
Volvo Group