Learning & Development Virtual Summit 2021

Previous Speakers

All Times in EDT

Virtual Welcome and Opening Remarks

Opening Keynote Presentation

The Future of Learning: Altering the Organizational Approach to Ensure Success of L&D Initiatives

The roles of L&D executives continue to expand, with many learning and talent leaders taking on new and critical responsibilities in helping to facilitate and support change initiatives in their organizations. These same leaders have been required to completely rethink how their functions and businesses operate, and now must find new avenues to reach organizational goals. As a result, this sudden and continued change has made it difficult to plan for long-term initiatives and growth.

In this engaging session we’ll discuss best practices in planning for the next chapter of learning, and ensuring the future success of L&D initiatives, such as:

• Evaluating which roles and positions throughout the organization can remain permanently remote, hybrid, or require a full-time return to the office
• Confirming that all aspects of training activities – from establishing processes and developing programs to accessing resources – are strategically aligned to where the business is going
• Deploying additional soft skills training so that leaders are equipped with higher levels of empathy and emotional intelligence – among other soft skills – to properly support and effectively communicate with the workforce
• Putting all of the systems, technologies and digital learning tools in place, in order to successfully execute all current and future initiatives
• Establishing and evaluating progress toward key performance indicators (KPIs) to enhance leadership’s understanding of the employees and their performance

Keynote Presentation

How Successful Leaders Influence Your Organization and Your Bottom Line

In a time when change is the only constant, and ambiguity and volatility are the norm, managers’ competencies and strategies are of increasing importance as they are the link between the organizations strategy and the people that deliver the results.  It is not enough that an individual’s direct actions are well executed–it is the collective actions of the team that drive success. Equipping managers with a complete toolkit, develops the right level of competence and consistency of application which will lead to better employee engagement, productivity, retention, organizational culture–and results.

This session will provide insight in how to approach and create a standard for recognizing managerial competence within your organization and highlight:

• The impact that managers can have on the organization’s bottom line
• Applicable competencies of both the human and business side of management
• How managers influence behavior to drive the employee experience
• The effects of the inability to manage and lead successfully in today’s environment

Keynote Presentation

Increasing the Focus on Upskilling to Close the Proficiency Gaps

With the significant skills gaps and rapid strides in technology that are shaping our world and forcing us to continuously evolve, organizations realize the need to invest in their workforce to stay current – as the dependence on technology and digital solutions has gone up significantly. This has further intensified the need for a digitally skilled workforce, and across most organizations, skilling programs for employees are a key focus area for L&D teams. Employees not only need to be capable of meeting the digital skill demands thrown up by the new reality, they also need to constantly upskill themselves to keep pace with a digitally evolving ecosystem.

In this session we’ll discuss some of the key considerations when increasing the focus on upskilling, such as:

• Convening candid dialogues with key stakeholders such as senior executives, HR leaders and employee representatives to better understand company prospects and mobility of the workforce
• Identifying the right skills to prioritize in order to effectively understand the supply and demand for certain areas and departments within the organization
• Basing priorities on the types of jobs that will be affected most by new technologies and the employees who are most at risk, and working to understand which individuals will be affected by job changes and diminished roles
• Developing personal coaching initiatives and individual skills development plans in order to effectively define the steps and training necessary to address the new job requirements
• Setting up opportunities for workers to communicate with one another via support groups,
• informal meetings, and online platforms to improve motivation and monitor results

Keynote Presentation

Adapting L&D Strategies: Embracing the Continued Transition to Alternative Learning Modalities

Disruption and the “Next Normal” have become common themes that have intensified the corporate world’s need for developing new ways of learning. Companies are continually forced to determine the best methods to rapidly adapt existing L&D resources.

Join us in this highly interactive session as we discuss what L&D leaders should focus on when adapting new L&D assets, such as:

• Ensuring that L&D resources are easily accessible and efficient
• Developing personalized learning to individually tailor the pace and focus of learning
• Making point-of-need solutions available to blend L&D in to the flow of work
• Utilizing gamification and social learning to increase interaction
• Concentrating on upskilling and reskilling to close skills gaps

Lunch & Learn

Meeting Learners Where They Are: Teaching and Training in Bite-Size Chunks

Today’s learners prefer remote-friendly training with courses that are accessible, engaging, and super effective. As such, it’s critical to implement text-messaging into your learning organization – with a 95% open rate, text message courses drive completion, engagement, and satisfaction rates that are far greater than other learning tools.

Join us in this highly interactive Lunch & Learn session as we examine cast studies that highlight the benefits and best practices for implementing text messaging courses, such as:

• Instantly reaching thousands of learners in just a few clicks, to eliminate video fatigue and reach even the busiest of learning recipients
• Building text courses with interactive questions, GIF’s and emojis that eliminates the learning curve and keeps learners fully engaged
• Providing meaningful outcomes that help shift behavior and improve knowledge retention

Keynote Presentation

Diversity in the Workforce: Becoming a Truly Inclusive & Equitable Learning Organization

Inclusion and equitable learning are critical components of a modern learning culture in the workplace, and improves performance outcomes. Without diverse and inclusive learning initiatives, the same practices are continually repeated in a cultural status quo. Even with new learning implementations, organizational culture needs to be constantly monitored and modified to reap the benefits of learning and workforce development.

In this session we’ll discuss best practices for developing and maintaining a truly diverse and inclusive L&D and Talent organization, such as:

• Driving and facilitating L&D based on the unique proficiencies and abilities of the diverse workforce – in order to meet employee needs across different jobs
• Revising workforce planning and development strategies to ensure alignment with future skill and talent requirements
• Utilizing innovative learning technologies to promote adaptive learning that is tailored to the unique needs and learning styles of the workforce
• Establishing learning content that is shared in flexible quantities so that employees can consume to their individual capacities

Panel Discussion

People Analytics: Leveraging Data to Optimize Employee Experience and Maximize Productivity

Organizations require data and information to examine and explain how they can utilize the current workforce in order to maintain business continuity. In addition, the ever-changing business environment creates an urgent need for better people decisions everywhere, and the volume of workforce data continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. However, merely having this data isn’t nearly enough to succeed. As such, it’s critical for L&D and Talent leaders to gathering real-time insights about training, performance, and engagement to better demonstrate what’s working, what’s not, and what to do next.

Join this interactive panel discussion to hear how leaders are:

• Analyzing data to understand the current state of the workforce, and inform discussions on talent and L&D initiatives that are needed to meet business objectives
• Highlighting successful data collection initiatives and strategies to make evidence-based decisions to cope with change
• Leveraging data and analytics to demonstrate real-time examples of how change and demand shifts are affecting training, performance, and engagement
• Linking recruiting to business outcomes and determining what candidate attributes are likely to produce quality hires in the workforce

Keynote Presentation

How Building a Coaching Culture Can Help Your Organization “Win” the New Leadership “Game”

Are leaders in your organization playing the “new game” of leadership by the “old rules,” leaving everyone involved feeling like something is missing? This interactive session will help you discover the “new rules” of leadership, and show you how instilling a coaching culture can help your organization “win” at creating engagement, keeping younger workers, and motivating people to have real conversations in real time, to make real change happen.

Keynote Presentation

Fueling Agility, Resilience and a Growth Mindset to Develop the Workforce of the Future

To drive business and grow as an organization, the focal point of learning & development initiatives must be geared towards ensuring that your workforce has the skills required for future business needs. To do this effectively, it’s important for L&D leaders to evolve how learning is delivered, and they must accurately predict what soft and hard skills will be required of their future workforce. As such, it’s critical to find new ways to blend old models and innovative tools to train and develop employees to become agile, resilient and develop a growth mindset. In essence – L&D leaders must ready their global workforce for change.

Join us as we discuss ways that L&D leaders can ready their global workforce for change, by:

• Developing best practices for creating an agile and resilient workforce
• Looking at real-world examples of development programs focused on growth mindset
• Leveraging technology to enhance the learning experience
• Driving a continuous learning culture with future business needs driving positive change

Keynote Presentation

Adapting Learning Initiatives to Improve Engagement of the Remote Workforce

Organizations are currently facing significant challenges when it comes to developing and maintaining a purposeful dialogue with the remote workforce – particularly as it relates to L&D initiatives. This is due to a variety of factors, including difficulties in: communicating information effectively across technologies and time zones, tracking employee performance, and creating a cohesive L&D culture. Even with some of the workforce steadily returning to the office, it’s important to establish and cultivate remote L&D initiatives that are robust and challenging enough to improve engagement and retention.

In this informative session we’ll discuss how to adapt remote L&D initiatives to develop and maintain effective engagement, such as:

• Creating modules to train leaders on how to keep everyone up to date, set expectations and performance goals, and establish communication rules and channels
• Implementing a cloud-based learning management system to enhance the learning experience through gamification, personalization, adaptive learning & feedback capabilities, and progress tracking
• Ensuring the continuity of learning initiatives in order to maintain professional and personal growth
• Incorporating real-world applications into learning experiences, to provide opportunities for learners to apply their learnings to actual work submissions
• Utilizing social learning and collaboration activities so employees can learn from each other through formal and informal feedback

Panel Discussion

Sustaining & Growing a Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Culture

Diversity, equity and inclusion became top priorities for most organizations this past year, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. DE&I are increasingly regarded as essential components for creating a thriving workplace and for driving innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. The positive effects and benefits of sustaining a diverse and inclusive organizational culture are many, and they last for years. They include, but are not limited to, higher employee retention, an enhanced organizational reputation, and a workforce that generates a wider range of ideas and solutions. However, this usually does not come easy. Diverse organizations and workforces—especially those with employees from multiple generations—can be more complicated and difficult to manage. In addition, inclusive work cultures do not organically occur; they take effort, encouragement, and investment to maintain the diverse and equitable culture.

Join us in this highly interactive panel as we discuss best practices for sustaining and growing a diverse and inclusive workplace culture, such as:

• Investing in DE&I initiatives for current and future leaders in order to cultivate attitudes and actions that support diversity and inclusion
• Utilizing a multipronged approach when implementing diversity programs aimed at identifying, developing, retaining, and advancing talent
• Fostering transparency by communicating to all members of the team to create an open two-way communication culture in which every opinion is valued
• Providing employees with the opportunity and space to present dissenting views, or to challenge entrenched thinking without threat to their status or their sense of belonging
• Integrating DE&I into all organizational processes, so that an inclusive and diverse environment is created where employees can be their true selves, uniquely integrated into the organization
• Encouraging team members with cultural, educational, or other differences to collaborate and work on projects in groups that generate cross-cultural competence

End of Summit