Bersin IMPACT 2016 Speaker’s Guide to Creating a

Highly Engaged Workforce

I N T R O D U C T I O N

In preparation for this year’s Bersin IMPACT 2016 conference,

HR thought leaders share their insights on employee

engagement, why it’s a priority, performance management

and how their companies are making a change.

Josh Bersin Principal and Founder

Opening KeynoteApril 26th 8:30amGreat Hall 1

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Employee engagement, like culture,

has become a CEO level issue.”“

Companies now compete to win “best place to work” surveys and monitor social media carefully. There is an escalating war to design great workspaces, provide flexible benefits, and create great corporate cultures in an effort to drive higher engagement. Nearly nine in ten executives (85 percent) in this year’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 report rated engagement as an important (38 percent) or very important (48 percent) priority for their companies.

Three factors stand out as driving this focus on engagement. First, there is intense competition for talented Millennials, many of whom are less loyal to organizations than ever before. Second, companies face a continued need to attract workers with technological and other specialized skills, as every company digitizes its business. And third, an organization’s employment brand is now open and transparent, so job candidates can easily see if a company is a great place to work.

I N T R O D U C T I O NQ U E S T I O N

Employee engagement is a top priority for CEOs.

How do you begin to address this issue and what are

you doing to tackle it in your own organizations?

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Sam Haider Global Head of Talent Development

Leadership Development in Times of Change

April 26th 3:45pm Great Hall 1

Start with the end in mind. ”“

Make each employee feel they are doing the best work

of their lives. To this end, over-invest in the workplace

environment, L&D and building a strong culture with

deeply embedded values.

Cheryl Johnson SVP of Talent

Investing in Employee Experience: Treating Your Employees Like Customers

April 26th 11:45amGreat Hall 1

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Employee engagement has always been a focus for Echo. Having 30 offices across the U.S. and over 2,400 employees, our HR team faced the challenge of trying to keep workplace values consistent across the entire company. Echo grew from virtually nothing to a $2B company in 10 years and this growth (primarily through acquisitions) led to changes and a disparate workforce with multiple offices across the country.

To address our challenge of creating an engaged workforce, the company implemented HighGround and branded the program Echo Engage.

Through the HighGround platform, employees are encouraged to live, act and behave in a way that is consistent with Echo’s brand promise and purpose. By using the platform’s entire suite of features, Echo can analyze data across a large spectrum of employee engagement techniques, including real-time recognition and rewards and modern performance management, to identify high-performing employees and provide greater transparency across the enterprise.

Echo grew from virtually nothing to a $2B company in 10 years.”“

We leverage the performance management module, which has been a

game-changer for us. Before we started using it, maybe three

departments consistently did performance reviews. Now 100% of the organization is doing them. The focus is not on the technical side of the

performance review; it is on the feedback. HighGround has made

it so much easier to make that possible.

“

C H E R Y L J O H N S O N SVP OF TALENT, ECHO GLOBAL LOGISTICS

Ron Storn VP of People

Career Management: Beyond the Borders of the Organization

April 26th 3:45pmGreat Hall 5

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“

At Lyft, our core values — Be Yourself, Create Fearlessly, Make it Happen, and Uplift Others — are the driving force behind the creation of an inclusive, innovative environment. As with our driver and passenger community, our mantra toward our Lyft team members is that “we treat you better” in every aspect of your work life. Our leadership communicates with transparency and welcomes feedback.

We leverage culture-building initiatives (i.e. internal culture board) and employee resource groups to implement data-driven strategies that show real results for our rapidly growing teams across the country.

Our brand is built on the notion that community is essential. At every level at Lyft, we strive to help team members feel included, invested, and empowered to make an impact every day.

Our brand is built on the notion

that community is essential.”

Wendy Smith Head of Candidate & Employee Experiences

Redesigning the Employee Experience: Different Approaches for Different Challenges

April 27th 1:45pmGreat Hall 2

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“ The engagement of our new hires has improved significantly

and new hire attrition has decreased dramatically.”

In an effort to better understand these new “consumer-workers” and how to build experiences that will inspire and engage them, the HR team at NCR partnered with customer experience (CX) experts, including our internal CX team and marketing department, to learn the best techniques and methodologies that could then be applied to creating exceptional experiences for our customers- our employees. As a result, we have developed a proprietary 5 Star Employee Experience framework that we are now

applying to all the various experiences employees have during their lifecycle at NCR. This model pulls from proven methods that have been helping marketers focus on customer engagement and loyalty for years.

As a result, the engagement of our new hires has improved significantly and new hire attrition has decreased dramatically. We saw a reduction of 22% of new hires leaving in the first year after deploying our new program, which saved NCR $7M annually in reduced new hire attrition costs.

I N T R O D U C T I O NQ U E S T I O N

Why do you think so many organizations are moving

away from traditional annual performance reviews?

In your opinion what is the best alternative?

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Sam Haider Global Head of Talent Development

Leadership Development in Times of Change

April 26th 3:45pm Great Hall 1

The realization that traditional annual reviews have

low retentive value compared to good coaching and

feedback is not an opinion anymore – it’s based on

sound research. Move your organization to a coaching

and feedback culture to make ongoing performance and

development discussions a de facto cultural strength.

Cheryl Johnson SVP of Talent

Investing in Employee Experience: Treating Your Employees Like Customers

April 26th 11:45amGreat Hall 1

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Organizations are moving away from traditional annual performance reviews as today’s workforce increasingly needs real-time feedback rather than once-a-year, backward looking appraisals. Millennials in particular crave this interaction and coaching from managers. With real-time feedback, employees can immediately adjust and improve going forward.

Understanding this evolution, Echo looks to provide all employees with a consistent flow of feedback that can be used to grow and develop new skills.

At Echo, we still conduct annual reviews; however, we also touch base with employees throughout the year to engage them in the moment, course correct and recognize them immediately. We find this mixed approached to feedback works well for our employees.

With real-time feedback, employees can

immediately adjust and improve going forward.”“

David Rock Director of the NeuroLeadership Institute

A global initiative bringing neuroscientists and leadership experts together to build a new science for leadership development.

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A few years ago, I noticed around half a dozen courageous companies beginning experiments to remove ratings from their performance management systems. Companies such as Juniper and Adobe stopped giving people a one-to-five rating or evaluating employees on a “performance curve,” also known as the “forced ranking” approach. They were still differentiating performance in various ways, and still using a pay-for-performance approach, just not through a simple rating system.

By early 2015, around 30 large companies, representing over 1.5 million employees, were following a similar path. No longer defining performance by a single number, these companies were emphasizing ongoing, quality conversations between managers and their teams.

No longer defining performance by a single number.”“

Visit booth #211 to learn more about

the partnership between HighGround

and Neuroleadership Institute.

Contact us

855.MyHGNow (694.4669) | HighGround.com | info@highground.com

HighGround is a single platform that equips your organization to engage your employees

continuously in real time.

Talk to a representative today if you want to learn how you can improve your company, drive engagement and increase performance.