So often in our organizations and communities, we fall into a cycle of reaction. A problem happens, and we respond. We fight fires. We contend with emergencies. Researchers call this "tunneling": We don't see the big picture, and we don't think about the future, we just keep pushing forward from one crisis to the next. What if instead we could shift our energies upstream -- uncovering and addressing the source of those problems?

In this talk, Heath will reveal how some leaders have learned to spot problems in advance: There's a school district that can predict which students will drop out -- 4 years before graduation. There's an internet service company that can predict which customers are likely to cancel their subscriptions -- as early as two weeks after they sign up! When we shift from downstream response to upstream planning, it can cause miracles: One company eliminated 25 million customer support calls by asking, "How can we make sure our customers never need to call us?" And one nation in Europe has almost eliminated teenage substance abuse by asking, "How can we create a teenage culture that offers such compelling sober activities that teens simply don't feel like drinking or doing drugs?"

Heath will share the three forces that push us downstream, as well as the powerful levers we can use to start preventing problems before they happen.

The way that organizations work has changed, and keeping employees productive through great employee experiences is a key performance indicator for IT teams. Employees are working in a distributed manner but there are challenges to delivering a consistent experience on any device while maintaining security. Learn from VMware’s IT team how they’ve been able to successfully navigate the transition with tips and tricks for other organizations to make the same shift.

In this session you will learn:

• How to ensure remote employees stay productive from onboarding to off boarding
• How IT can scale to manage and measure employee experiences of the distributed workforce
• What you should be considering for bringing employees back to the office

Join us in the networking lounge for group discussions on hot industry topics chosen by the editors of Reworked, or gather your own group and lead a discussion all your own.

Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

In the 2020 State of the Digital Workplace study, organizations reported marked advancements in implementing digital tools to support newly remote workforces.  Regardless of readiness most organizations had no choice but to leap into new ways of working, communicating and managing their teams and projects.  Having closed the year, we’ll speak with a panel of leaders of organizations that have made major advances in their digital workplaces from the start of 2020 to its finish, and gain insights into their DW trajectories for 2021 and beyond.  Moderated by Sarah Kimmel, VP of Research at Reworked/CMSWire, panelists will discuss:

• Digital adoption trajectories across various units of the workforce
• Comparisons of platform rollouts throughout the enterprise, what areas are thriving, and why (plus their top challenges, and solutions visited) 
• The leadership roles and team structures critical to the success of their digital transformation
• Next steps for their organizations as they seek to evolve and mature throughout continued uncertainties in 2021

HR teams everywhere are being asked to do more with less. Despite the investment in cloud-based HRIS systems, manual processes and tasks consume up to 65% of an HR team’s day. Instead of having your HR professionals spend their time filling out paper forms, tracking down signatures, and waiting for approvals, there is a better automated way. Every leading organization today is looking to rapidly improve their HR processes to attract, onboard, and retain talent with consistent business processes and digital experiences.  

Given the impact of recent events, HR teams benefit from documenting their HR processes and automating what can be automated to help employees stay connected while working remote. HR teams that can navigate these fundamental workplace shifts will be well-positioned for the new normal going forward.  

This session will provide practical, real-world guidance for leveraging visual and easy-to-use process mapping and workflow automation software to modernize HR processes and deliver exceptional digital experiences for employees.  

In this session you’ll learn how:  

• Mapping the processes helps set a standard on what to do  
• Automation fits the entire employee life cycle 
• To utilize forms to collect and store data, eliminating manual work and increasing the employee experience   
• To rapidly adjust processes: Automate work-from-home processes, from new policy sign offs to requesting equipment

In 2021, IT will be tasked with taking on a feat more difficult than the sudden transition to remote working – ensuring a smooth transition during strategic changes for the business; hybrid working, real estate downsizing and office space cuts, all while keeping people online and connected. IT performance is central to any modern business, both in terms of productivity and employee experience. But businesses are grappling with their largest set of challenges yet, which is why IT is stepping into a bigger role as a digital employee experience driver.

In this session, you will learn:

• What does a 2021 work environment look like and how to manage it?
• Did the pandemic help or hurt IT’s reputation?
• How can IT help the business take a customer approach to its employees and improve the quality of company culture when everyone is remote?

Join us in the networking lounge for group discussions on hot industry topics chosen by the editors of Reworked, or gather your own group and lead a discussion all your own.

Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

While recent advancements have created great opportunities for digital workplace success, the year ahead promises an abundance of decisions to be made at the enterprise, team and individual levels on how work gets done. Critical to maintaining today’s momentum is clear definition of the vision, goals and overarching strategy for growth by way of digital workplace optimization. Tools and technologies make success possible, but only the teams of humans who use those tools can make it a reality. Moderated by Siobhan Fagan, Managing Editor of Reworked, panelists from across industries will discuss the key components to a powerful digital strategy, harnessed by considerations that include:

• The keys to upskilling/reskilling your employees in digital channels, and why that will be critical as physical channels return
• How an enterprise grows workforce agility and trust, and why both are important to nurturing digital optimization
• The building blocks to a strong, resilient culture - specific to virtual organizations or hybrid environments 
• The 3 essential workforce considerations you must prioritize when resources are lean 

Employees want a simple and effective digital workplace so they can deliver value, so how can we meet their needs? When individual departments choose their own point solutions with varying taxonomies and data structures to meet their own goals, it results in a fractured employee experience. This “siloed” effect is the result of decentralized decision making and the lack of proactive data & knowledge management strategies.

At the core of the digital workplace are individual applications that serve different needs, each often offering its own set of data and knowledge that employees struggle to access. By thinking differently and focusing the enterprise IT strategy on AI-powered search and knowledge, teams can begin to unlock their potential towards a unified digital workplace that works for employees.

Join us to learn how Adobe strategizes to create a unified workplace experience that crosses company sites, departments and applications. You will learn the importance of:

• Using search and knowledge as core pillars to unify the digital workplace
• Combining design and agile thinking to meet the voice of employee
• Elevating IT’s role in shaping the employee experience

The sudden shift to remote work caused intranets in the digital workplace to become a valuable and critical asset to companies to keep employees engaged and connected. With so many competing priorities, IT teams need a compelling business case and ROI strategy that lives past the implementation phase.

Join Amit Bhatnagar, Sr. Director of IT at Nutanix, as he shares how he helped lead quantitative and qualitative tests to prove ROI. Get insight on strategies that help demonstrate the value of an intranet in your digital workplace. 

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Demonstrate ROI of your Intranet
• How IT can measure employee productivity of a distributed workforce
• Build an effective case showing ROI through A/B testing and surveying

Join us in the networking lounge for group discussions on hot industry topics chosen by the editors of Reworked, or gather your own group and lead a discussion all your own.

Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

Many organizations have invested heavily in the customer experience over the last few years to drive innovation and market leadership. But the top organizations recognize that investing in the digital employee experience is key to execution and long term growth. This organizational mindset is even more important in 2021 as employees remain in a hybrid work environment for the foreseeable future.

Join us as we discuss how world-class organizations like MGM Resorts, Amazon and Hilton recognize the importance in delivering a modern digital employee experience for all of their workers to deliver award-winning customer experiences.

In this session you’ll learn:

• How to use frameworks like the Service-Profit Chain to map out and build your ideal employee experience
• The role of technology in delivering a digital employee experience that works for every worker
• How to measure results that connect to your larger business objectives

The pandemic forced many into uncharted territory and fast adaptions. Darwin had nothing on the evolution organizations underwent, and the field of employee experience was no exception. While we lost normalcy, the experience created a greater need than ever to truly listen to employees and understand their needs in order to thrive in this uncertain environment. And this need created an opportunity to elevate the significance of employee listening to inform business decisions.

In her closing keynote address, Shawnté Holland shares the story of how her organization adapted its approach to employee listening and successfully accelerated its evolution toward an even higher value-add capability integral to workplace success.

I'll take '90s Pop Culture for $500 ...

Does the phrase "Be kind, rewind" sound familiar? How about, "Did I do that?" If so, your odds are looking good.

The winner of today's Jeopardy game will receive a $500 e-Gift Card, courtesy of our event sponsors.

Join us for this live, interactive game of Jeopardy! as we close out our DWX21 Winter Session. 

Dan talks with Reworked editor Mike Prokopeak about how the pandemic reshaped our priorities at work and home and what we can do to rise above the day-to-day and make meaningful upstream changes that improve our results.

For more conversations like this, be sure to subscribe to our Get Reworked podcast here.

Why do good teams kill great ideas? Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs. Drawing on the science of phase transitions, and using stories that range from James Bond to Steve Jobs, Safi shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them.

Meticulously researched and undoubtedly fascinating, this talk offers fresh insights from a new kind of science—showing the three techniques that creatives, leaders, and visionaries can use to liberate the ideas trapped inside small and large companies everywhere.

So you want to build a platform that connects and celebrates every worker.  How do you find a common thread? 

Global companies have the challenge of keeping employees across multiple countries, departments and roles informed and connected. To help drive business, companies need to transform how they reach and engage their global workforce.

Learn suggestions for how to develop a flexible, modern intranet experience that recognizes and celebrates the cultural and geographical differences of employees, while still providing them access to corporate resources and information.

In this session you will:

• Learn ways to balance local and global content, and streamline content distribution
• Explore the strategies and campaigns used to connect communities, and empower your communication and regional teams
• Gain tips on establishing processes, procedures, and metrics
• Learn maximize and connect with existing technology and bridge your IT and comms processes

How can we make complex ecosystems seem simple for teams in this next phase of work? 

In this panel discussion, we will share real-world examples of finding the tools that best fit your teams, options to address platform limitations and silo challenges, and employee-centric approaches to technology modernization to garner stronger outcomes in employee productivity and engagement.

During this rapid-fire session, you will have an opportunity to watch and review high-impact demos from some of the most innovative products in the market.  

By participating and sharing your feedback on the product demonstration, you will be automatically entered to win one of three $50 eGift Cards. 

Demo #1: Virtual headquarters for the new hybrid workforce

According to Gartner, the hybrid workforce is here to stay. Companies are moving to a modern intranet to create a virtual headquarters and streamline corporate application usage. See how a modern intranet:

• Establishes a single source of truth to find information
• Increases other apps' usage with single sign-on that simplifies the digital workplace
• Decreases the dependency on IT through distributed intranet administration across all departments.

Presented by: Clint Patterson, Senior Solutions Consultant @ Simpplr

Demo #2: The Formula for Transforming Your Digital Workplace and Modernizing Your Intranet

Productivity, communications, and experience. Learn how Workgrid uses this key combination to help companies:

• Deliver tailored communications to employees
• Bring together information from multiple systems of record
• Streamline processes and task-based workflows
• Offer a friendly, natural language chatbot, available to answer questions 24/7

Best of all, with Workgrid, you don't need to replace your existing intranet. You can deliver these features on top of your current intranet and/or via a mobile app.

Presented by: Erik Martel, Account Executive @ Workgrid

Demo #3: Digital Adoption for Employee Productivity

Pendo’s digital adoption solutions simplify complex user experiences by bringing automated, personalized guidance to your employees within the software applications they use for work. Just-in-time resources help teams increase productivity and improve compliance, step-by-step guides boost your training efforts, and comprehensive analytics help you understand application usage and behaviors. Join us to see Pendo in action.

Presented by: Clay Miner, RVP Sales Engineering @ Pendo

Demo #4: Nexthink Experience: Exploring the Leading Digital Employee Experience Management Platform

When IT is under pressure to make it all work, your next move matters. Discover how Nexthink provides IT teams with the real-time analytics, employee sentiment and automated remediation needed to resolve all kinds of disruptions before they happen and improve employees’ digital experiences.

Presented by: Michael Lovewell, Solution Consultant @ Nexthink

The pandemic accelerated existing trends in remote work and IT was faced with supporting employees in distributed locations. In the past year, companies had the challenge of keeping remote employees engaged across geographical locations, departments, and roles.  

Join Michael Jose, VP of IT at Talend, as he shares insights on strategies that will shape the new work hybrid workplace to create a great employee experience. Learn how to prepare for the future of work with collaboration and communication tools in your tech stack. 

In this session, you will learn:

• How to modernize an IT-centric Digital Workplace
• Strategies to connect employees on a centralized employee platform
• How to support a hybrid work model with IT

2020 was all about adapting quickly and staying afloat. With a year of remote work under IT’s belts, the pressure is still high; not only are their teams responsible for issues that do go wrong, but now the expectation is that they are equipped to deal with anything that could go wrong in a dispersed environment (and ideally catch it before it does). So how can IT teams be prepared for anything and everything? And how can they ensure seamless collaboration across different technologies, time-zones, and departments as teams continue to work from home and transition to hybrid models in the future? Global Director of Digital Transformation at Nexthink, Tim Flower sits down with David Paul, the Director of the IT Service Desk at TRC Companies, Inc. to discuss.

In this session, you will learn:

1.  How to develop an IT strategy that is both proactive and agile

2.  How to support hybrid models that accommodate both full time remote, full time in-office and hybrid employees

3.  How to leverage IT visibility to address tech issues before they disrupt cross-departmental collaboration

How do we collaborate across teams to solve big problems?

In this panel discussion, we will hear from practitioners involved in transformational initiatives powered by modern systems. Panelists will discuss challenges overcome through workplace innovation, the people and system drivers that are enabling cross-team achievements, and how the right collaboration structures advance bigger initiatives company-wide.

Future Forum, a consortium backed by Slack, conducts research and hosts executive forums to help leaders transform work in a people-centric and digital-first world. Recent research indicates a majority of knowledge workers want flexibility in their work. Plus, organizations embracing this shift experience better business outcomes. Tune in for insights on the business advantages of flexibility, connection, and inclusion in the workplace.

In this session, you will learn:

• How knowledge workers want to work in a post-pandemic world
• Learn more about the Future Forum Remote Employee Experience Index
• The three themes to re-imagine work in 2021 and beyond

The intranet isn’t dead, but it must evolve to meet rising expectations and provide greater support to employees. Many organizations today are faced with transforming and implementing a robust digital employee experience centered around high-touch care, employee wellness, personalized information, and moments that matter. This includes improving the technology landscape and executing on a long-term program strategy that is highly automated, personalized, and centered around the most critical asset – employees. Join Rob Ryan to learn about the trends, strategies, and best practices for building an effective digital workplace that delivers compelling employee experiences from day one.

Join us in the Lounge where many of today's speakers will be on hand to answer your questions, or gather your own group and lead a discussion all your own.

Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

The way of work has changed.  Organizations have shifted to a distributed work model and are supporting employees to work flexibly from home or the office.  Employee expectations have shifted, and IT teams are having to do more with less.  Instead of supporting employees and devices in a set number of locations, there are now many “branches of 1” all over the world.  Ensuring a great employee experience, maintaining security and connectivity across different devices and networks is a huge challenge.  Learn how VMware, as your core platform, can help you assure employee experiences, modernize IT, and deliver secure access without compromise. 

In this session, you will learn:

• How to meet the expectations of the anywhere workforce
• How to maintain security and connectivity across different devices and networks
• How to ensure you have the IT flexibility to scale as you grow.

In this closing keynote address, Susan Cummings, SVP of Northern Trust, will offer a framework to achieve collective innovation across digital teams, and discuss lessons learned in evolving the digital workplace of one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, and one of the oldest banks in continuous operation.

Northern Trust’s digital workplace is a complex ecosystem of business needs and opportunities coupled with geographic nuances that span culture, risk, compliance, privacy and security.  

Prior to 2020, the institution knew that 5-year roadmaps and end-state visions and projects were being replaced by agility and the need to keep pace with an evolving, re-imagined way of living and working.  The remote work experience in 2020 re-emphasized “persistent change” and required Northern Trust digital workplace leadership to enable an efficient and productive employee experience with speed, flexibility and innovation.

In this keynote address, Susan will share the levers to:

1. Create visibility and collective innovation across your digital teams

2. Leverage industry knowledge, best practices and experience to inform and grow your teams’ and organizations’ thinking

3. Enable governance aligned to business needs and priorities

Feeling a bit cooped up? Need to take your mind for a stroll? Here’s a team-building game that will take you around the world in 60 minutes! We’ll send you off to explore the world’s best museums and historic locations—all via amazing websites. Stops along the way include the ancient streets of Pompeii, Italy, the long-buried Terracotta Army in China, A beautiful pagoda in Kyoto, Japan, A creepy “mermaid” in London, An artist’s haunting studio in Mexico.

As a special incentive, each member of the winning team will receive a $50 eGift Card!

In his opening keynote presentation, Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and dean of the Josh Bersin Academy, will share the priorities for creating a successful digital workplace experience. Bersin will cover topics such as how continuous learning should be factored into the employee experience, considerations for prioritizing work to be done, and the importance of multi-functional teams. He will also preview his company’s latest research findings on employee experience, the latest trends in supporting technologies, and how EX relates to employee engagement. 

The workplace has changed. Most companies have a mix of employees working in physical office locations and others working remotely. As employers begin to reopen the physical office and invite employees “back to work”, the one constant isn’t so much change. It’s opportunity.

What opportunities can you see in digital transformation? With the right technology to re-energize your workplace, you can reset expectations to a new way to work, and a new way to communicate with the workforce.

Today, most companies are traditional with their internal communications methods in that communications are mostly “top down”. But as we look to re-energize the workforce, what if we enabled employees to communicate with their colleagues? They have knowledge and experience to share. As they do, they also have the opportunity to develop their personal brands.

Why should you help your employees develop their personal brands?

1. Helps employees grow their careers which is proven to increase engagement at work
2. Helps establish your employees as thought leaders and trusted subject matter experts inside and outside of your organization
3. Raises your organization’s profile as an employer

Join Gregg Apirian and Greg Monaco as they help us reimagine what two-way communications can look like and how it can help employees build their personal brands.

With hiring projected to increase, and employees looking for career growth within their organizations, the significance of onboarding and career mobility has never been higher. In this discussion, panelists will share how their companies have built solid foundations for both new, and newly mobile, team members to succeed.  We’ll hear insights into managing onboarding remotely through today’s HR platforms, key methods to successfully engage employees in new roles, and how their organizations measure success. This panel will provide insights into a people-focused and effective approach to help create — and sustain — the momentum of an engaged workforce.

During this rapid-fire session, you will have an opportunity to watch and review high-impact demos from innovative marketplace products.  

By participating and sharing your feedback on the product demonstration, you will be automatically entered to win one of three $50 eGift Cards. 

Use your remaining time here to network in our DWX Slack channel, and advance your spots on the DWX Challenge Leaderboard for the chance win several great prizes!

Demo #1: Robin's Demo Derby

Presented by: Brendan O'Neil, Product Marketing Manager @ Robin

Demo #1: About OpenSesame

Learn how OpenSesame can help you train your employees through eLearning courses and increasing your L&D programs. 

Presented by: OpenSesame

Demo #3: iOffice's Demo Derby

As you plan your team’s return to office strategy, see how the next generation of workplace management software can help you transform into a smarter, more efficient organization. iOFFICE has tools to implement a safe return to your agile workplace, maximize your space today and in the future, and uncover data to drive a better bottom line. Rebecca Symmank shares a brief demo of both the mobile Hummingbird App and iOFFICE’s full desktop solution.

Presented by: Rebecca Symmank, Enterprise Solution Consultant @ iOffice

What defines culture as companies adopt hybrid work models? How can teams communicate and share their values with employees across distributed work environments? And what exactly are those values? As companies look to reimagine the future of work, more emphasis will be placed on employees’ digital experiences as a crucial component of company culture. Are their needs adequately met to empower them to do their best work? Are they being fairly compensated for their quality work, not just their time in office? In this Q+A discussion, Global Director of Business Transformation at Nexthink, Tim Flower, and Founder of Employee Experience Design, Gil Cohen will sit down to discuss the ever-growing importance of DEX, and how it’s redefined the IT and employee experience industry. Recent industry studies show employees in DEX-focused roles earn almost 83 percent above the average IT salary in the United States. One in five IT professionals now spend over 70 percent of their week working on DEX-related activities. All of this points to the immense value these roles provide to businesses and how they will shape the future of work.

In this session you will learn:

1. The increasing importance of DEX-focused roles shaping the future landscape for the IT industry.
2. How personal IT decisions are driving organizations to be more technology enabled and foster an inclusive culture.
3. Evolving people practices to improve both human and organizational outcomes.

Work today may or may not be happening in an office, but it's certainly happening inside software. Tatyana Mamut, SVP of New Products at Pendo, will explore the link between how employees use software at work and their happiness and productivity, making the case for companies to ensure employees adopt the technology required to perform their jobs.

Good employee experience = happy employee.  Easy, right?  In this discussion, panelists will share the concepts surrounding employee experience, the underpinnings of strong employee experience, and the important correlations between employee and customer satisfaction.  Panelists will also share examples from their organizations’ employee experience journeys, including management structures and ownership of employee experience within their businesses, and how they measure outcomes in workplace efficiencies, culture and transformation.

In May the US saw a 40% increase in the total number of employees who worked in-office at least once compared to April 2021. Ready or not, people are coming back to the office. Whether that’s full-time or in a hybrid capacity, Robin can help you prepare. Our Data Science Team analyzes millions of real-life desk, conference room, and office asset reservations from our global customer base to identify significant trends for the people responsible for managing the workplace.

Join Robin’s Product Marketing Manager, Brendan O’Neil, to learn more about what trends we are seeing in offices and how they will shape the future of work.

Mike Petrusky has interviewed hundreds of leaders in HR, IT, facility management, corporate real estate and workplace research to discover the best strategies for the future of work. Over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Mike has discovered that employee experience is unique to the individual, our personal beliefs and new habits are now well established, and leadership in a hybrid world will be very complex. So, where do things stand today? We have theories about what the future workplace might look like and we think we know what our people will want when they return to offices. But, do we really know what we think we know? Mike will share what he has heard the experts say and how those recommendations match up against his personal feelings and fears. We have many human experiences in common and Mike believes that workplace leaders will face unexpected challenges moving their teams forward. Find out what it will take to be a workplace innovator in the months and years to come!

Join your peers and speakers in the Lounge for virtual networking.  Discuss the day's sessions, ask questions, and make connections across industries -- and even across the globe.

How does it work?  Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

In the past year, CIOs have accelerated talk about the digital employee experience, and how to achieve it. Traditional barriers to remote working have been removed, and a hybrid workforce is now the new norm. While organizations now recognize the extent to which the employee experience directly impacts customer experience, and therefore revenue — many are still struggling to deliver a personalized digital experience for their entire workforce.

Join Tim Christensen, Chief Technology Officer at SocialChorus with Manish Bohra, Engagement Director at SocialChorus as they shares their views on the challenges and opportunities enterprises face, the real ROI of a good digital experience, and why it’s more than just about attention management.

Karen leads Microsoft’s global talent and learning experiences efforts focused on identifying, co-creating and operationalizing the employee experience so all employees are empowered to do their best work. Her team uses community and social interaction to fuel continuous improvement, growth and change, resulting in employees who opt into talent and learning processes and programs because they believe in them as a means of addressing business objectives. As a global talent executive, leading the way in building experiences of the future, Karen will leave the attendees inspired to transform their practices and effectively recreate the new workplace.

A WORLD OF THANKS: THE GRATITUDE SCAVENGER HUNT

Need some good news?  Join us for a live group "outing" during the DWX Happy Hour!

Let’s not forget to look at all that’s right about the world and our history. This gratitude scavenger hunt combs the internet in search of the many people, places, and moments for which we can be grateful. It’s a virtual thanksgiving game you play on teams, so you’ll also come away with a better appreciation for your colleagues. You’ll follow clues to discover websites around the world that celebrate natural wonders and pioneering people who have given amazing gifts to us all in discoveries and inventions, music, food, art, education, humor, and a cornucopia of other areas of achievement.

The winning team has the chance for some great prizes.  Don't miss out on fun and thanks to wrap up the Digital Workplace Experience!

Reworked's Editor in Chief sat down with keynote speaker, Josh Bersin, before the event.  Join the conversation here.