On September 10th we held the first Employee Engagement Conference in London. For those who attended I was the red-head with the video camera, zooming in on people during the sessions and pestering people for interviews during the breaks. Though there in a work capacity, I was eager to hear the speakers and discussions around engagement. What I came away with could only be summed up as “inspiring” and below are a few of my personal highlights.
First was Alison Lowe’s opening keynote. Her honest depiction of her journey as CEO of the charity Touchstone was fantastic. She spoke not only about the good times, but the bad times as well (and trust me, there were some bad times). The bluntness which she approaches everything is a level of authenticity that everyone talks about but many are not brave enough to uphold.
Another enjoyable session was hearing Jan Hills of Head Heart + Brain delve into the neuroscience behind successful engagement. Not surprisingly a key point was that happy, positive people create environments which stimulate engagement (no brainer, right?). However, I know Jasmine Gartner who spoke at our engagement conference in NYC would have challenged that happiness does not equal engagement. Should have gotten these two ladies together to discuss their ideas!
The other speaker which I took a lot from was our closing keynote, Monty Halls. Admittedly he is not an HR or engagement professional, but through his work and life adventures he has seen how engagement plays a vital role in keeping teams together. Between funny stories and images of sharks, he dropped several gems of information like “Choose your attitude, because sometimes it’s the only thing you can control”. How true is this for taking responsibility for our personal engagement?
In reality there is way too much information and learnings to compress into a blog post, so please take a moment to scroll through the tweets below which captured all those things throughout the day.
