Tammy Dewar and Dave Whittington of Calliope Learning

This workshop will explore how measuring the shared values within an organization can provide insight into the organization’s culture and deliver a blueprint for building a culture that attracts and retains top talent. The workshop will use interactive activities and case studies to explore methods for both measuring and managing an organization’s culture. In particular, by the end of the workshop, participants will:

• understand how shared values can be used to measure organizational culture
• see how great cultures build employee loyalty and engagement
• know how to measure the cost of a dysfunctional culture
• be familiar with a model for building a strong positive culture
• have a clear strategy for starting conversations about organizational culture and values within their cities

Lisa Stevens of PDI Ninth House

Whether you have been “doing” Succession Management for years or are just starting out, this practical, hands-on workshop provides frameworks and tools you need to analyze your current processes and identify high-impact improvements.

PDI will take you through a series of exercises, where you will:

• Evaluate how well your Succession Management process is achieving its objectives
• Compare your system to a set of research-based practices and frameworks
• Identify strengths and opportunities for improvement
• Define specific changes to be implemented, priorities and timing

During the workshop, we will help you decide where you should focus and how fast you want to go. You will walk away with something you can begin applying as soon as you are back in your organization.

Note: there will be some pre-work to complete for this workshop!

12:30 pm to 1:45 pm — What’s Your Philosophy: How to Design a Compensation Philosophy that is Appropriate for Your Municipality

Nick Bishop, Hay Group

Every municipality is different, yet most have the similar compensation structures. Does your compensation philosophy fully align with the strategy and circumstances of your municipality?

You Will Take Away:

• Information to help you evaluate if you have the right compensation philosophy
• Tips to align your compensation philosophy for today and the future needs of your organization
• Success factors need to turn your compensation philosophy into strategies and policies that work

2:00 pm to 3:30 pm — Workplace Bullying - Restoring Respect in the Workplace

Ross Arrowsmith, Worker’s Compensation Board

Other provinces are expected to follow Ontario’s lead in passing workplace bullying legislation. Workplace bullying can be a difficult for many organizations to address and for this reason it is often overlooked and even ignored. Learn how to identify inappropriate workplace behaviours and equip yourself with the skills necessary to effectively address and resolve behaviours which can create a toxic work environment.

You will Take Away:

• An ability to devise a strategy for effectively managing the inappropriate workplace behaviours which can be both a barrier to the success of your organization and a risk to your employees.

The HR Trading Post has been a source of information for city/municipal HR professionals for the past 7 years. To date there have been over 10,000 visitors/users of site, and over the years we have continued to improve the site. We have more exciting enhancements coming this fall… So, get over to the HRTP session to learn about how quick and easy it can be to collaborate, share, and find key human resources information using the enhanced, user-friendly, time saving features of the HR Trading Post.

Our mandate is to serve municipal HR professionals, therefore, membership in the trading post is limited to municipal HR staff.

The need for Organizational Development capabilities is accelerating in organizations, yet internal OD expertise is often limited to a small number of overburdened HR/OD professionals. This session will explore best practices on how organizations are responding to this OD capabilities gap. It will highlight critical success factors needed to maximize the contribution of internal OD experts and develop the OD capabilities of other HR professionals and business leaders.

You Will Take Away:

• Critical success factors required to extend OD expertise in an organization
• The pros and cons of the different strategies to address the OD skill gap
• The results of a survey of over 850 HR/OD professionals assessing their OD readiness across 30 common OD and HR business partner interventions

The City of Edmonton’s Recruitment Section launched a new employment brand and integrated talent hubs this past January. Our talent hubs are dynamic and interactive, allowing potential candidates to visualize themselves in their future careers at the City of Edmonton. Talent hubs open the City of Edmonton to the world! Through engaging employee video and written testimonials, potential candidates can see and hear directly from current employees and take a look at what their day to day work is really like. Talent hubs offer a realistic job preview and an opportunity to get to know what the job actually entails while acquiring a deeper insight to the City’s corporate culture.

The City of Edmonton is the first municipality in Canada to have implemented talent hubs as an attraction and retention tool to support our Talent Management Strategy. Our employment brand also works to support our recruitment initiatives as it is the first impression the City of Edmonton makes on potential candidates. It answers the question, “Why work here?” by providing potential candidates and current employees with information they care about, everything from job opportunities, what we offer, working for the city, about the city and relocating to Edmonton.

During the workshop we will discuss:

• Employment Brand Development
• Talent Hubs & Analytics
• Lessons Learned

By the end of the workshop, participants will understand how to develop an employment brand for their own municipality and the process for implementing integrated talent hubs.

For those who are involved in collective bargaining with IAFF

• Still using your “gut” to determine if a potential candidate is the right fit for your organization?
• Struggling to get hiring managers on the same page regarding what skills, knowledge and attributes are needed for the job?
• Wish there was a tool to help you get a better read on potential hires?

This past year, the City of Lethbridge introduced a new psychometric tool, called PREVUE, into our hiring practices. We’ll show you how the process works, the benefits that we are seeing and we’ll explore how this testing can be used to enhance the true potential of existing staff.

Jane Moran of Results Coaching Systems

Social neuroscience has made some very recent and profound discoveries about how to best interact and build relationships with others. In this energizing and interactive session, you will discover:

• Useful facts about how our brains work – on the job
• A practical coaching model for collaborating with others
• Techniques for maximizing our focus and attention each day
• A tool for helping others have new ideas and take action
• Key insights into why we each think differently
• An approach for creating engagement and openness to change
• Ways of creating rapport and trust with colleagues and customers
• Tips on how to maximize energy and performance each day

The Results Coaching methodology is used in organizations around the world to increase performance and leadership competency.

Lisa Stevens of PDI Ninth House

This interactive session gives you the opportunity to hear from subject matter experts and peers, and to share your own experiences using competencies. You will explore topics such as:

• What are competencies? Why use them? What else is there?
• What is competency chaos (and how do you know if you have it)?
• How do you figure out which competencies are right for your organization?
• Types of competencies
• Using competencies in different talent management processes
• Tips and best practices for using competencies
• Common pitfalls to avoid

12:30 pm to 1:45 pm — Benefits: Building Risk Mitigation into Your Benefit Plans
Perry Dorgan of Johnson Inc.

2:00 pm to 3:15 pm — Labour Relations: Hot Topics
Bill Armstrong of Armstrong Management Lawyers

It’s time to break old habits in customer service and engage, involve and interact in encouraging and informative ways. Is the customer always right?

This session looks at new, updated approaches for coaching the Human Resource Customer. The most renewable resource we have is people. We want to coach people to be positive, proactive and productive members of our HR teams.

Not only will you will take away 5 new, updated approaches for coaching the HR customer. You will also laugh as Brenda entertains you throughout this informative and practical presentation.

Can you imagine 9 different unions working in partnership to develop and maintain the funding, design and administration of your disability plans?

Come learn how we put this innovative partnership together. See how this partnership has been successful in ensuring our disability plans are fully self-insured. You will be amazed at the success of this collaboration. You might even want to explore a similar partnership in your own organization!

A WestJet executive once asked the question… “Why is it that people always throw parties when a person leaves an organization? Isn’t it equally, or even more important to celebrate when someone joins the company?”

This session looks at how WestJet celebrates new employees through their onboarding & orientation programs. Participants will learn the strategies WestJet uses to introduce new hires to their corporate culture as well as strategies for keeping their culture alive and well.

For those who are involved in collective bargaining with Police