WTPF- The Business Forum for HR Professionals

WTPF Events in 2010

All Monthly Program Meetings adhere to the following schedule:
Registration: 8:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. and Program: 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m

Wednesday, September 15

Compensation Trends, Strategies and Information in Today’s Market (< Register Here)

Join WTPF in September for an interactive program on compensation. In this seminar we will explore total rewards trends, best practices and share insight on what’s happening in the D.C. area, as well as the broader market. You will also gain valuable perspective based on some the trends emerging from the new WTPF compensation survey as well. This session will also provide practical strategies to address today's top five compensation challenges including salary compression and pay for performance.

This seminar will be led by Rebecca Toman, CBP, CCP, a Senior Account Manager with Pearl Meyer & Partners. In this role, Ms. Toman designs and publishes compensation and benefits surveys and advises clients on total rewards programs to attract, retain, and motivate key talent.

Rebecca Tomain - Pearl Meyer and Associates

Rebecca Toman is a Senior Account Manager at Pearl Meyer & Partners. In this role, Rebecca designs and publishes compensation and benefits surveys for a wide range of industries and employee populations. Rebecca advises clients on total rewards programs to attract, retain, and motivate key talent.

Rebecca is also a faculty member in the Business and Economics department at Framingham State College where she teaches a graduate course on Compensation and Performance Management.

Previously, Rebecca has held compensation roles at Salary.com. Rebecca has a B.S. with concentrations in marketing and finance from Syracuse University, holds a M.A. in Human Resource Management from Framingham State College, and is a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) and a Certified Benefits Professional (CBP) through WorldatWork.

Rebecca has spoken at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference and WorldatWork’s Total Rewards Conference on the topics of Managing Millennials, Salary Compression, and Compensation Surveys. An active volunteer, Rebecca serves her profession by coaching job seekers at CareerWorks, a non-profit career center.

Program Rescheduled for Wednesday, October 6
All-Day WTPF HR EDGE (< Click here to Register)
This event is open to both members and non-members.

Our HR EDGE event will feature a line-up of exciting speakers that will focus around the four aspects of our event: Engage, Develop, Grow and Execute. An all-day affair, EDGE offers enticing development and networking opportunities to both WTPF members and non-members.

This year’s speakers include:

Jim Haudan - Root Learning- Keynote
The Art of Engagement

Jim Laudan is a different kind of CEO. He has a passion that goes beyond building his own successful company, Root Learning. For the past 20 years, he has been helping organizations and individuals unleash hidden potential by fully engaging them in their work. Starting as a coach and school administrator, it’s not a stretch that the company he co-founded focuses on business learning – the kind that produces real results by engaging people to deliver on strategies.

Headquartered in a little town in Northwest Ohio, Root Learning’s team, just 100 people strong, partners with senior teams at major companies worldwide to build creative ways to execute strategy. They do this through drawing people into the business by tapping into basic human curiosity and intelligence. Jim believes that business results don’t come from creating a great strategy, but by meaningfully connecting all of the people in the company to bring it to life. And the Root team agrees, resulting in five straight years of making the list of the Best Small and Medium Companies to work for in America.

Jim leads a group of creative, analytical people who combine art and dialogue in innovative ways. Clients include some of the biggest names in business, including Starbucks, IBM, Dow Chemical, Pepsi, FirstEnergy, Bank of America, and Hilton Hotels – more than 500 companies and tens of millions of people. In 2008, Jim wrote a in response to the impact that the Root method has had on such a great number of people. The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gap Between People and Possibilities (McGraw-Hill, 2008) reflects two decades of lessons learned in consulting with senior teams at some of the largest companies in the world.

Dean Herring, NetCentrics
Building a Culture of Innovation

HR can play a significant role in promoting innovation. HR-centric activities such as talent management, employee engagement, evaluation, compensation, motivation, hiring for an innovation profile can make or break an innovation process. HR teams are chartered to increase engagement and improve talent management; innovation creates new roles, responsibilities, measurements, and questions about evaluation and compensation. Providing them with some insight and tools would be our suggestion for helping them contribute.

Angela Beatty, Towers Watson
Taking Engagement and Performance to the Next Level

Discuss the critical link between employee well-being and sustained engagement as proven by recent Towers Watson organizational research.

Provide definition around engagement and employee well-being and why it is more important than ever for organizations in the wake of last year’s economic crisis.

Attendees will gain an understanding of how to evaluate well-being in all its dimensions, and how to draw crucial insights to shape the right practices and programs.

We will also draw from the publication, Closing the Engagement Gap, How Great Companies Unlock Employee Potential for Superior Results, co-authored by Julie Gabauer, leader of Towers Watson’s Talent and Rewards business.

Tom Finn, Lifeline Consulting
Handling Pressure: Developing Your LifeLine

HR professionals shoulder heavy, sometimes untenable workloads. The leaders they support manage fast-paced, frenzied workplaces. How does this kind of pressure affect you, your leaders, and your organization? The session explores how you react to pressure and what the consequences are, personally and for the business. LifeLine’s new research has shown four common responses to overload – what’s yours? Tom will also touch on how knowledge of human systems, particularly dynamics in family systems, can limit or expand our ability to handle heavy responsibility in a global, 24/7 world.

Group discussion. Participants pinpoint the state of pressure and overload in their own role and in their organizations. We then indicate together what the costs are to their organizations (combining with our research).

The Pressure Profile©. Participants do a short self assessment of their own style in reacting to pressure. We discuss the impact on their ability to handle "the new normal."

Family Mottos. This is an activity to show where their pressure profile may have come from. We use this activity to show the effect of family systems and other strong group influences on how leaders react under pressure (our belief is that people revert to their earliest learnings about accountability, leadership/followership, collaboration, communication, and other key dynamics when under fire).

Shawn Westfall, BossaNova Consulting Group
IMPROVing HR

Leveraging improv techniques to build strong relationships in business, thereby providing better service to your customers whether they are internal or external customers. Work Can Be Fun(ny). A two-hour improv comedy workshop with an emphasis on fun. That’s right, sometimes in order to work better, you just gotta kick back and laugh. Don’t worry, though: we’ll take time out to help you connect what you’re experiencing to your day-to-day work. Your staff will talk about it this experience for months, years even. The deliverable? Fun. Lots of it.

Casey Golden, Small Act

New Forms of Communication: Social Networking

The change in communications is not evolutionary. It is revolutionary. The growth and stats are staggering (Facebook alone has more daily users (370M) than there were people 'online' in the entire world in 1999 (320M).

The question now is: How do we use this new paradigm to increase engagement with our current employees? How do we recruit and attract new great hires in this social world?

In this interactive session we will focus on three core items:

1. Understand the key methods for success in social media

2. Investigate some compelling case studies

3. Discuss next steps for your organizations to start using tomorrow

With a clearer understanding and specific tactics as takeaways, you will be able to make an immediate impact for your organization.

Wednesday, November 3

Ensuring Your Affirmative Action Plan Will Withstand an OFCCP Audit (< Register Here)

Did you know the OFCCP has just staffed an additional 250 auditors? Did you know that companies receiving American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars receive an automatic audit. Did you know a call from a disgruntled employee, former employee, and/or applicant can lead to an audit? Are you confident that your documented good faith efforts are strong enough to withstand the scrutiny of even the most critical auditor? In additional to answering these questions, this program is targeted to all government contractors to help ensure a successful outcome in the event your affirmative action plan and processes are audited. Bring your questions to our expert, Bridget Pulivarti, Practice Leader at Helios HR who has delivered over 175 affirmative action programs and led nearly 20 successful audits. Helios HR provides outsourcing, consulting and recruiting services that optimize your workforce and HR operations.

The program topics will include:

Components of an Affirmative Action Plan
Applicant Tracking & Disposition
OFCCP Audit Selection & Process
Audit Outcomes
Question and Answer session

Past Programs

Tuesday, March 2 (please note, this program will occur on a Tuesday, rather than usual Wednesday morning program date)

The Financial Impact of Not Hiring the Top-third - Speaker: Lou Adler

By definition people in the top-third work harder, they don’t make excuses, they’re more reliable, they’re more flexible, they get along better with their co-workers, and if they’re managers, they hire better people. Unfortunately, much of this is difficult to discern during a typical interview, even among those who are fully-qualified by experience and academics. Worse, the top-third doesn’t look for new jobs nor accept one using the same decision process as the bottom-third. As you’ll discover in this action-packed talk led by Lou Adler, the financial impact of not hiring the top-third is enormous.

Specific Topics Include:

    * Understanding the Differences Between the Top-third and Everyone Else
    * Find Out If You Inadvertently Eliminating the Top-Third from Consideration
    * Calculating the Impact of Hiring the Top-third vs. Bottom-third
    * Why You Need to Begin Implementing a Raising the Talent Bar Strategy Immediately

Wednesday, April 7

C-Suite Panel Discussion: How Strategic HR Plays a Key Role in Successful Companies
(Online Registration is closed. Walk-in registration is welcomed!)

The WTPF C Suite panel has been a perennial favorite, and we’re please to bring it back again with a fresh perspective from a new group of executives. Come learn from local business leaders as they talk about the critical role HR plays in their organizations, and importantly, how they see HR developing in the future. At this panel you’ll hear first-hand what’s important to C level executives - what they need, expect and appreciate from their HR team. You may even get perspective on what hasn’t worked. Use this opportunity to reflect on the challenges you face in your company and gather ideas that will help you make an impact in more strategic ways through new approaches and “C Level” thinking.

Wednesday, June 2

Deliver Your HR Programs with Project Management Precision (< Click Here to Register)

Successful HR programs have solid planning, risk mitigation, execution and measurement methodologies behind them. However, this can seem an impossible feat, especially when faced with time competing demands, multiple priorities and time limitations. At this interdisciplinary seminar we’ll take a look at some basic project management principles and see how they can be applied to HR delivery. Take away some key project planning and implementation tips that will help you become even more successful as an HR professional.