2026 Agenda

In today’s workplace, the shared beliefs that drive organizational success are evolving. While most organizations adopt a leadership-driven culture, the future lies in cultivating an employee-centric approach—one where employees not only experience the culture but shape it.

This session will unpack strategies to uncover how employees experience your culture, identify gaps, and amplify culture promoters while addressing detractors. By centering the employee voice, you can create a culture that drives engagement, alignment, and results across all levels of your organization.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the fundamental shift from leadership-driven to employee-centric organizational culture
• Explore how listening strategies uncover actionable insights about employee experiences.
• Learn how to identify culture promoters and detractors to close cultural gaps
• Discover a roadmap for embedding listening as a foundational strategy for sustainable success

This session will explore how you can adapt to evolving labor market pressures and develop a state-of-the-art hiring program that balances automation, personalization, and compliance to deliver a seamless experience for candidates and employees alike.

Key Takeaways:

• Data-Driven Success: Learn how Follett leverages predictive analytics and market insights to forecast hiring needs, understand fallout rates, and fully staff retail locations with precision
• Accelerated Speed of Hire: Explore Follett’s highly automated hiring process, driven by AI and advanced workflows, enabling candidates to progress from application to offer within minutes while ensuring compliance and improving satisfaction
• Seamless Payroll Integration: Understand Follett’s decision to directly payroll seasonal employees, enhancing both the employee experience and operational efficiency
• Continuous Improvement: Discover the strategic steps Follett took with its recruiting partner to refine its hiring system, achieve better staffing metrics, and deliver exceptional experiences for candidates and employees
• What’s Next: Get a glimpse of Follett’s future plans for innovation in seasonal hiring, focusing on meeting job seekers where they are and creating a world-class candidate journey
• This session is ideal for organizations managing high-volume hiring who want to stay head of market pressures, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall candidate experience

The latest research from Achievers Workforce Institute (AWI) finds that just 15% of employees feel connected to their colleagues and only 28% feel capable of meeting unexpected challenges.

And yet it’s connection – to the mission of the organization, managers, and colleagues at work – that drives the resilience of individuals and teams so they can survive and thrive in uncertainty.

Join AWI’s Managing Director, David Bator, for a tactical and practical perspective on the central role of recognition in nurturing frequent and meaningful connections, and how organizations can shape the behaviors that help their people, their teams, and their company.

• Explore the concept of “Leadership Fatigue” and how prolonged disruption has reshaped expectations for today’s leaders.

• Understand why IQ and EQ are no longer enough, and how Process Intelligence (PQ) helps leaders adapt, align, and lead more effectively.

• Assess whether your current leadership development strategy is helping you retain and recognize emerging leaders—or losing them.

• Discover how to build a leadership culture grounded in clarity, connection, and consistency—the non-negotiables of future-ready leadership.

• Learn the four core elements of PQ and how they transform individual leaders into high-functioning, resilient drivers of organizational success.

The talent and skills organizations need are changing faster than hiring cycles can match. As labor market shifts and employee career expectations evolve, workforce strategy is becoming more complex – and more critical – than ever.

Join Guild’s Executive in conversation to explore how HR leaders are designing experiences that make growth inevitable and how to approach workforce development, career mobility, and talent investment, including:

• How workforce demographics and labor trends are reshaping talent strategy.
• The practical steps organizations are taking to make career mobility a reality.
• How HR leaders are using impact storytelling to build support for workforce investments.

• How to deliver maximum end-to-end PERFORMANCE with minimal effort
• How to enable problem solving at SCALE with cross-functional teams
• How to RETAIN your people by enriching their work day and sense of purpose
• How to leverage a zero loss mindset to build in excellence LONGEVITY
• In this session Performance Solutions by Milliken (PSbyM) will show you how the best organizations are thriving in the current challenging landscape and how their teach-coach-mentor model of partnership helps these organizations engage their employees to excel with rapid ROI.

• Aligning recognition efforts with your company’s core values to reinforce purpose and culture with every celebration
• Empowering employees at every level to participate, creating a culture of peer-to-peer recognition that feels genuine and inclusive
• Leveraging data and feedback to continuously personalize and optimize recognition experiences for maximum impact
• Integrating recognition touchpoints throughout the employee lifecycle—from onboarding to anniversaries—to strengthen engagement at every stage
• Moving beyond one-size-fits-all rewards by offering diverse, meaningful options that resonate with today’s multigenerational workforce

• Exploring the critical role neurodiversity plays in fostering inclusive and high-performing workplaces
• Designed for C-Suite HR executives, the workshop will highlight the business case for embracing neurodiverse talent, including the competitive advantage it offers in terms of innovation, problem-solving, and creativity
• Gaining insights into how neurodiverse individuals, including those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other cognitive differences, contribute uniquely to teams, and learn how inclusive hiring practices can tap into a wealth of untapped potential
• Guidance and real-world case studies, attendees will be equipped with practical strategies for creating an environment where neurodiverse employees can thrive
• Policies, workplace accommodations, and leadership approaches to support neurodiversity at all organizational levels, ensuring that all employees—regardless of cognitive makeup—can succeed and contribute meaningfully
• Empowering to build more diverse, equitable, and innovative workplaces that drive both individual and organizational success