Learning Labs
The learning labs are designed to provide you with effective and flexible workplace practices by providing you with comprehensive tools and resources to help you maintain your competitive edge. At this conference, you will attend sessions that cover topics that are paramount to the success of any organization when addressing workplace flexibility.
Each time frame highlights Learning Labs that have been grouped into topics that support the important strategic journey of effective workplace practices.
On Wednesday, we will learn how to Make Change Happen to set the stage. Second, we concentrate on Strategies to Make Change Happen. We close out the day with Learning Labs covering Strategies for Tackling the Tough issues. On Thursday, we round out our journey with Change as Transformation. These sessions highlight the forward momentum required to build effective and flexible workplaces - with strategies, tactics, and innovative ideas.
Wednesday, November 9
10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Making Change Happen: Focus on Different Populations
Gender and Global Differences in Work-Life Effectiveness
Workplace Application: This session will help you refine your work-life initiatives by understanding gender similarities and differences, as well as leadership attitudes toward the business benefits of a coherent integration of work with personal/family life accountabilities.
To improve work-life effectiveness, two critical next steps are 1) to make it acceptable for men to actively utilize work-life offerings and 2) to gain the active and outspoken support of male organizational leaders for work-life balance. This session will present relevant findings from the Global Study on Men and Work-Life Integration by WFD Consulting and WorldatWork’s Alliance for Work-Life Progress. Strategies for engaging men will be featured, based on a solid foundation of empirical evidence. You will learn about gender and global differences in points of view toward work-life integration, as well as the nature and incidence of obstacles to work-life success. You will also gain new strategies for overcoming the most frequently encountered barriers to work-life effectiveness and will learn how to reduce potential ethical dilemmas and legal exposure by ensuring genuine equity of access to work-life support.
Presenters: Kathleen (Kathie) Lingle, M.S., WLCP, executive director, Alliance for Work-Life Progress, WorldatWork, Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Peter Linkow, president, WFD Consulting, Waltham, Mass.
Top 10 Manager Objections to Flex and How to Overcome Them
Workplace Application: In this session, you will learn what concerns managers most about flexible work styles and the strategies and tools you can use to decrease manager resistance to flex.
Recent studies have proven what we already know: resistance by middle managers is one of the biggest obstacles to flex adoption in organizations today. What can we do about it? Kyra Cavanaugh, president of Life Meets Work, will talk about her work with middle managers as she uncovers their top concerns about managing flexible work teams. She’ll share strategies you can use to overcome these issues and expand flex in your own organizations. She will also share a minimum of three tools for increasing the communication, cohesiveness, and performance of flex work teams.
Presenter: Kyra Cavanaugh, president, Life Meets Work, Park Ridge, Ill.
The Intersection of Health and Life: Disparities and Creative Solutions at Prudential
Workplace Application: You will learn how differences in background and life circumstances are influencing the corporate health agenda and driving the need for creative solutions in program and policy design and delivery.
This session will help you understand the existing and emerging health and life trends that are influencing workplace strategy. You will discover creative approaches for addressing these trends through program and communications design and delivery. The presenters will share with you what is already working and what is planned at one of the world’s leading financial services companies.
Presenters: Dr. K. Andrew Crighton, VP and chief medical officer, Prudential Financial, Newark, N.J.; and Maureen A. Corcoran, VP - Health, Life & Inclusion, Prudential Financial, Newark N.J.
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Strategies to Make Change Happen
Flexibility: What’s Social Media Got to Do With It?
Workplace Application: This session will show you how to maximize the use of social media across your organization to drive flexibility in both how work gets done and how people connect.
The changing workforce and changing work are two seismic trends causing a fissure in the rigid career ladder as a more flexible lattice one emerges. Work is no longer where you go or who you report to, it’s what you do and who you do it with. Social media is a key enabler of the lattice organization, since collaboration can happen anywhere, any time. This session will describe how to maximize the potential of social media across silos, geographies and levels to drive flexibility in both how work gets done and how people connect.
Presenters: Patricia Romeo, leader, Deloitte, LLP, Cincinnati, Ohio ; and Joseph Press, social media specialist leader, Deloitte, LLP, New York N.Y.
Workplace Flexibility in Action: A Discussion with the Sloan Award Winners
Workplace Application: Attend this session and learn from organizations who have successful implemented effective and flexible workplace strategies at their organizations.
Each year the Families and Work Institute recognizes employers for their innovative and effective workplace practices and that are successful in building strategies that meet business goals and benefit employees. This moderated session will feature several of the Sloan Award winners from various industries, sizes, and geographic locations around the country who will share practical tips and techniques for building, socializing, implementing, and sustaining an effective and flexible workplace strategy.
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Strategies for Tackling the Tough Issues
And They Said It Couldn't Be Done...
Workplace Application: This session will highlight the stories, strategies, and successes from industries not traditionally recognized for providing flexible work environments.
Industries such as manufacturing, call center operations, government, and military to name a few have not typically been viewed as progressive in embracing or implementing flexible schedules, polices, and/or practices. But there are some “unsung heroes” who are defying the odds and showing us that it can be done. Hear the journeys, lessons learned, and promising practices from a panel of these workplace flexibility advocates from diverse industries who have made flexibility a part of their organization's culture and proved that it can work.
Changing Chaos into Productivity
Workplace Application: This session will provide insight into how one arrives into a state of chaos and will discuss tools and techniques to increase productivity and reduce stress that can be immediately applied by any level of staff member in any type of organization.
The inundation of electronic and paper-based information has placed us in a state of information overload and left us feeling incredibly overwhelmed. The good news is that the cry of “no time to get our work done” and “I’m drowning in my work” CAN be stopped and turned into exclamations of “work has become fun and manageable again” and “I’m home for my kid’s soccer games!” Just imagine doing all of your work in far less time, with few mistakes, greater creativity (a critical point-of-differentiation for any successful business), a dramatic reduction in stress and a measurable increase in creativity and innovation from you and your employees! In his presentation, Len Merson educates you on how to use real-world, authentic tools to eliminate chaos and regain control over your work. You will walk away feeling less chaotic and overwhelmed; actually looking forward to getting back to work!!!
Presenter: Leonard G. Merson, founder & CEO, ChaosOver, Inc., San Diego, Calif. Research Roundup: What Does Research
Research Roundup: What Does Research Tell Us about Flexibility and Organizational Effectiveness?
Workplace Application: Attend this session and hear from a panel of leading academicians on cutting-edge research about how workplace flexibility contributes to an organization’s success.
This session will present the latest research on the relationship between workplace and workforce flexibility and organizational performance and effectiveness. It will also identify key risks associated with implementing workplace flexibility programs, and how organizations can manage those risks effectively. At the conclusion of this session, you will be able to describe the key variables that affect this relationship, and develop an action plan for implementation. Finally, we will identify the key risks associated with implementing workplace flexibility programs, and how organizations can manage them.
Facilitator: Mark Schmit, Ph.D., director, Research, SHRM, Alexandria, Va.
Panelists: Wayne Cascio, Robert H. Reynolds Chair in Global Leadership, University of Colorado Denver; Stewart D. Friedman, Practice Professor of Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and Ellen Ernst Kossek, University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University, School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Thursday, November 10
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Change as Transformation
Moxie for Managers: The Secret to Turning Managers into Middle Leaders Who Instigate, Influence and Effect Change
Workplace Application: This session will help you prepare managers to evolve into middle leaders that instigate, influence, and effect change in your organization by understanding the behavioral economics and cognitive biases that are driving every human being’s actions.
This session will provide the eight tenets that underlie people’s behaviors and actions, and how to deploy them to prepare your middle leaders to influence change. You will learn how to prepare middle leaders to create transformation, not just transactions with people in day-to-day interactions as well as how to make managers matter in your organization.
Presenter: Ann Tardy, J.D., president, The LifeMoxie Consulting Group, Red Bank, N.J.
HR and the Business: Strategic, Co- Owners of Flexibility
Workplace Application: This session will help you create a plan for successful co-ownership of flexibility with the business line in your organizations.
Flexibility is most effective when it’s an ongoing conversation between managers and employees. What role does HR play in establishing and supporting this flexibility dialogue within the business? Using professional services firm BDO, LLP as a case study, this interactive session will help you create a plan for successful strategic co-ownership of flexibility in your organizations.
Presenter: Cali Williams Yost, CEO and founder, Flex+Strategy Group/Work+Life Fit, Inc., Madison, NJ
The Future of Work: Why and How to Make the Shift
Workplace Application: This session will explore why and how companies need to change the way they manage people for the new world of work.
The way we work is ripe for transformation. Businesses need greater efficiency and people want a new deal. Yet many organizations are resistant to change, and still feel the need to “control” people to know they are working. During this session, the presenter will explain why companies need to change the way they manage people for the new world of work, and how you can make the transition. You will hear about the changing role of work in people’s lives, why many current flexible work approaches are inadequate, and the business reasons for changing how people work and are managed. You will discover from unique research and international case studies drawn from the presenter’s new book, Future Work, what organizational culture and management skills are required.
Presenter: Alison Maitland, co-author of Future Work, international journalist and speaker, St Albans, U.K.