Building Connections From Day One: Activities for Integrating New Hires
Integrating new hires into a team is tricky.
Employee onboarding usually focuses heavily on company policies and processes and on getting the new hire up to speed on their role and responsibilities, which are certainly critical. Too often, though, it’s left up to chance whether and when new employees start forming connections with their colleagues.
In this highly interactive session, you’ll learn a few simple, free activities that you can lead to help team members—both in-person and distributed—get to know one another better. By helping new employees form these connections early, you’ll set them up for higher levels of engagement, improved performance, and longer retention from day one.
In this session, you will:
- Design effective team bonding sessions for integrating new hires into in-person and distributed teams.
- Lead engaging activities to catalyze connections between new and existing employees.
Speaker: Alex Suchman and Peter Williamson, Barometer XP
Track: Onboarding and Retention
Engagement Through Change—Talent Development’s Role in Thriving Through Change
Robust change methodology typically includes elements associated with addressing organizational readiness, leader engagement, and individual resistance. These elements generally occur during the planning phase of a change effort. Research from client engagement surveys before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic reveals additional factors that play critical roles in change adoption. While traditional change practices take place during the effort itself, these additional elements can be heavily influenced before significant change, increasing the effectiveness of the transformation effort. In this interactive session, practitioners will learn what these elements are and practical tactics for influencing each in advance of their next change effort.
In this session, you will:
- Understand the role of employee engagement in effective organizational change efforts.
- Learn about key areas where talent development can affect employee engagement to drive change adoptions.
- Explore tactical actions you can take to build employee engagement both during and in advance of change.
Speaker: Cheryl Jackson and Annie McManus, GP Strategies
Track: Change Management
Are You an Innovation and Inclusion Incubator or Impediment?
There’s nothing new about innovation, but innovation is always new. In this moment of digital expansion, rapid globalization, and recovery from the last few tumultuous years, it’s difficult to talk about innovation without also talking about inclusion. Drawing on pop culture and historical context across decades, from Charlie Chaplin to Apple TV’s
Severance, and leaning on research and data, this session provides a blueprint for maximizing innovation practices to achieve greater inclusivity and organizational success. During the session, you will assess your ecosystem of inclusion and explore (with curiosity and humor) what it means to be an incubator for innovation and inclusion.
In this session, you will:
- Summarize the importance of the intersection between innovation and inclusion.
- Analyze your own ecosystem of inclusion and create an ecosystem map.
- Define your own conditions for incubating innovation and inclusion.
Speaker: April Hennessey, The Ken Blanchard Companies
Track: DEI