IABC Café

I couldn’t believe the choices we had on Wednesday morning for the All-Star Sessions–or that I had to actually make a choice. I wanted to attend about four of the sessions based on their subject matter and/or presenter.

I left my original first choice session shortly after it began, because the content seemed to be more basic than I originally thought. (I’m not going to say which session it was, because I’m not going to insult the presenter or the people who stayed.)

I then followed the muffin and coffee trail to the Monroe Conference Room, where I heard the majority of a presentation regarding employee engagement, delivered by Susan Suver of Arrow Electonics, Inc. I had been working with my company’s IT leadership to address employee engagement-related issues, so the topic was very timely.

Susan proved to be a very gifted speaker, providing a great mix of data, real-life examples and tips, based on her successes at Arrow Electronics. Arrow had grown through mergers and acquisitions into a profitable business that never addressed the need to address the issues of differing company cultures when companies were acquired. Business took a downturn, and Arrow found itself needing to face the issue of employee engagement to regain long-term profitability and a positive forward direction.

Measurements and surveys have become a fact of life at Arrow. Susan pointed out the need to survey just as frequently when things are not going well, as when the company is prospering. She described some tactics for dealing with negative views from employees–particularly from those employees who are influencers within the organization.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2005 at 7:32 pm and is filed under IABC International Conference 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.