Employee Benefits Summit 2009 – workshops

Sponsor-led workshops
Key benefits consultants and advisers are invited to run workshops on a sponsored basis. Each workshop is presented to groups of 3-5 delegates to ensure maximum interaction and knowledge exchange.

The 2009 workshops are:

The great debate: How to maximise the impact of flexible benefits from a business and employee perspective
In this workshop delegates will select the key areas of flexible benefits that are most pertinent to their organisations. They will then explore these topics in relation to the current market and best practice.
Tailoring each workshop to the group will allow a lively discussion around the issues that are being challenged in the current economic cycle and give delegates the opportunity to debate some common beliefs around what is possible and how best to achieve your goals.
Debate topics for selection are:
Travel:Do flexible benefits and total reward travel?
Brand:How vital are communications and engagement to a successful scheme?
Diversity:How do you reach all of your employees effectively?
Future:What are other people doing and what is the future of flexible benefits?
Measures:Cost pressure against value and appropriate choice
Failure:What are the 10 reasons why schemes go wrong and people come back to market?
Budget:What the 2009 Budget means for flexible benefits?
The aim of the session is to facilitate an interactive debate around some core issues, which will enable delegates to gain a current and viable view of what is achievable within their reward strategy.
Run by Benefex

Cutting costs not corners
In the current climate, it’s not surprising that budget control is high on many agendas. However, cutting the cost of benefits does not mean that you have to cut corners or that employees’ perception of the benefits on offer has to suffer.
The Bluefin workshop will focus on the recent projects we have undertaken on behalf of our clients to make the most of the opportunities afforded by the marketplace at present.
These case studies will show you how we have used our award-winning consultancy and our proven leading-edge online Orbit Benefits Technology to both control costs and enhance the management and communication of the benefits offered.
We’ll discuss client scenarios and explain the challenges faced and the outcomes achieved.
Issues such as the effective use of salary sacrifice will be covered – and we’ll give you the whole story, not just the ‘good news’ sales pitch.
This workshop is a must for any HR professional looking to improve their understanding of managing benefit programmes in a challenging financial climate.
Run by Bluefin

The new world of flexible savings – introducing wealth at work
In recent years a great deal of emphasis has been placed on creating a total reward strategy. An opportunity now exists to deliver a new emphasis, one that may enhance the long-term financial well being of your employees. Many of the ingredients are already in existence in the form of share schemes and pensions and other savings arrangements. However they may be combined in such a way that they significantly enhance the wealth accumulated by your employees.
The benefits are wide ranging and include:
• recruitment and retention – be an employer of choice
• employee wealth creation – increases the monetary value attached to employment
• an integrated and flexible financial benefits package – a range of savings opportunities
• empowerment of your employees – taking ownership of financial well being
• corporate and social responsibility – investing in the wealth of your employees.
We will demonstrate what wealth at work could mean for you and your employees and how it may be implemented at little cost to you.
Run by JPMorgan INVEST

Health & Wellbeing – How to maximise efficiency
Health and wellbeing is a very wide ranging area where many services and products interact. It’s therefore essential that you establish your aims and set reasonable expectations for this provision; in particular through:
• Ensuring returns are measurable; How do you go about recording these? Are they purely financial?
• Identifying and communicating the benefits to both your business and your employees
• Eliminating duplicate services and ensuring provisions dovetail neatly
• Ensuring efficiency and value from providers
• Demonstrating clarity and advantages of any process to both your business and your employees to obtain maximum “buy in”
This workshop will facilitate discussion on actions which can be taken to help you meet these aims.
Run by Lorica

Using reward and benefits to create a positive vibe in the workplace
Day by day your employees are being bombarded with negative news about job losses, business closures and so on. But this is also a great time to build a positive attitude among staff. Of course companies have to be prudent and make some tough decisions but with this can come some great success stories against a tide of adversity. Indeed when the going gets tough it’s amazing how, with the right leadership, your people can be galvanized, pull together and maybe appreciate a little bit more what you actually provide as an organisation (instead of what you don’t).
In this interactive workshop Personal Group will look at how even in these tough times forward thinking employers can create good morale by reinforcing their vision and values using the benefits package as a communication tool. The session will look at what strategies work best from both the employer and employee perspective to help you:
• Make the most of what you have
• Have positive communication
• Greater focus
• Utilise greater negotiating power
• Have a clear benefits strategy
Run by Personal Group

Why do cows called Daisy produce more milk?
Employee recognition is not just a nice thing to do for people. Employee recognition is a communication tool that reinforces and rewards the most important outcomes people create for your business.
When you recognise people effectively, you reinforce, with your chosen means of recognition, the actions and behaviours you most want to see people repeat. An effective employee recognition system is simple, immediate, and powerfully reinforcing.
Sounds obvious doesn’t it. So how come in most employee surveys, it’s the one area that most staff say could be improved.
We all grow up with recognition schemes, whether it’s our parents rewarding us for getting good grades, earning our “colours” at school for excelling at a particular sport or getting your badges at Scouts or Guides. We all know the positive way recognition shapes our behaviour.
This workshop examines:
• What are the barriers to recognition in the workplace
• How do you ensure a consistent application of recognition throughout the company
• How do you make recognition fair
• How do you recognise activities that are difficult to measure
• How do you cost justify your recognition expenditure
Run by Projectlink

Employee benefits: the next generation. A workshop to explore the future of employee benefits design and delivery
Standard Life and Vebnet will facilitate an interactive session looking at the evolution of employee benefits and a growing trend for engagement strategies that focus on financial education and management.
A review of how employee benefits delivery is changing, including the emergence of personal financial management portals, will be followed by a group discussion on the collective vision for “the employer of choice of 2012”.
Run by Standard Life / Vebnet

Ensuring your reward strategy is best positioned for the economic recovery
The current global recession has put reward strategies under the spotlight like never before. Whilst the media focuses on the removal of bonus payments and pay freezes, there is an enormous opportunity for organisations to not only rethink their reward strategy and how it can be used to engage and motivate employees, but to ensure they have the tools in place to respond when the economic recovery arrives.
During this interactive session we will discuss:
• Where are we in terms of the economic cycle?
• What actions you and other reward professionals have been taking during the downturn?
• What are the best strategies to ensure that your reward strategy is prepared for the economic recovery and that you have engaged employees?
• What shape will reward strategies take in the future and what behaviours and performance measures will they reward?
The session will culminate in you putting together an action plan for the next year covering how you will:
• Reduce reward costs
• Improve your return-on-investment
• Be better equipped to make decisions about your future reward spend
Run by thomsons online benefits

Monte Carlo – Sea, Sun, Sand and EVP – make the right choice
Defining, understanding and managing your EVP or the employee/employer value proposition should not be left to chance. As an employer you need to grasp it, align it, communicate it and evolve it.
Defining your EVP is a critical process and its expression should be seen in the everyday actions and lives of your employees.
Come along to this workshop and uncover aspects of EVP that many may miss; see and talk about ways in which EVP can be effectively defined and passionately communicated. EVP exists in all organisations; it’s just the highly successful ones that make it a priority.
Run by Watson Wyatt

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