Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea and continental breakfast as you meet your fellow attendees.
Sign-in, pick up your materials and enjoy a continental breakfast before we start the day.
Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors! 

Welcome to the Employee Communications & Experience Conference. 

In this fast-paced forum, you'll get to know your fellow peers, their biggest internal communications challenges, and a few fun facts. 

Engagement starts with connection, and belonging is what makes it last. In a time when employees are seeking purpose, community, and support, organizations must create experiences that help people feel valued, included, and connected to something bigger than themselves. This session explores practical strategies for fostering engagement and belonging in ways that strengthen culture, improve retention, and enhance the overall employee experience. 

Walk away ready to: 

• Create intentional experiences that strengthen employee connection and belonging 

• Foster a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and included  

• Use communication to reinforce purpose, culture, and shared values  

• Build engagement strategies that resonate across diverse teams and work environments  

• Strengthen retention and performance by creating a more connected employee experience 

Employees don’t just listen to leadership communication—they interpret it as a signal of trust, stability, and direction. In an environment where credibility is fragile and expectations are high, leaders must communicate with clarity, consistency, and authenticity to truly connect with employees. This session explores how organizations can strengthen leadership communication to build trust, reinforce culture, and align employees around what matters most. 

Attendees will learn how to:  

• Increase leadership visibility through intentional, consistent communication practices  

• Craft messages that balance transparency with clarity during complex or sensitive moments  

• Strengthen trust by aligning leadership tone, timing, and messaging across channels  

• Equip executives and leaders to communicate in a more authentic, human-centered way  

• Measure the impact of leadership communication on employee trust, engagement, and alignment 

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers. 

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors and be sure to fill out your evaluation forms. 

Employees don't experience organizations through mission statements, policies, strategic plans, or values posted on a wall. They experience organizations through moments. Those moments become experiences and those experiences become culture. 

While organizations invest heavily in communication strategies and employee experience initiatives, the most influential driver of employee experience is often the manager.  

In this session, we'll explore how everyday leadership behaviors shape employee experience and influence engagement, performance, retention, and culture. Attendees will learn practical ways to bridge the gap between organizational strategy and employees' day-to-day reality, creating workplaces where people feel informed, supported, valued, and empowered to do their best work. 

Walk away ready to: 

• Understand how your leadership behaviors shape the employee experience—whether intentional or not. 

• Bridge the gap between organizational strategy and employees' day-to-day reality. 

• Reduce confusion and friction through clear expectations, accountability, and support. 

• Turn everyday interactions into opportunities to build trust, clarity, and connection. 

Organizations navigating constant change share a common failure pattern: they keep simplifying their communication strategies while their environment grows more complex. The result is a widening gap between what leaders send and what employees actually receive, trust, or act on.   

This session presents a practitioner case study from VCU Health, a large academic medical center, where AI tools were used to architect and scale two signature development programs that do something most communication strategies cannot: they build the internal human complexity that makes change land. 

Drawing on systems theory, psychological safety research, and measurable retention outcomes, this session will show how intentional AI-assisted program design can turn ordinary employee interactions into generative experiences that strengthen culture, deepen engagement, and create the kind of connection that survives organizational turbulence. 

Attendees will leave with a replicable framework for using AI not just to produce content, but to design communication ecosystems that make people feel seen, capable, and connected, even when everything around them is shifting. 

Key takeaways: 

• Why simplifying communication during complexity makes the problem worse, and what to do instead 

• How AI was used to design, build, and scale human-centered development programs at a large academic medical center 

• The link between psychological safety, generative interaction, and measurable retention outcomes 

• A practical framework for designing employee experiences that build culture from the inside out 

Reservations have been made at a number of local restaurants.
Don't miss this opportunity to have lunch with your peers at a local DC hot spot!
 

**Everyone is financially responsible for their own lunch. 

How do you welcome and facilitate connection and belonging with employees of a new acquisition starting on Day 1? In this case study, hear how one organization partnered across IT and HR to welcome and integrate new employees on Day 1 by leveraging Viva Engage to immediately connect almost 1500 employees during a period of significant organizational change. Learn the strategies used to introduce a new digital workplace platform, encourage participation, and create a more connected employee experience across a growing workforce. 

Walk away ready to: 

• Use Viva Engage to support connection and culture during periods of change and integration 

• Build a Viva Engage adoption strategy that goes beyond Day 1 

• Increase employee participation and engagement in collaboration tools like Viva Engage 

• Partner effectively across communications, HR, and IT teams to drive success 

• Identify lessons learned and best practices for sustaining long-term adoption and value 

Take advantage of this interactive break to connect with our sponsors and experience their products and services firsthand. Each sponsor will host live demos at their table—giving you the chance to explore innovative solutions, ask questions, and find the tools that best support your work. 

In this "no-pressure" setting, you'll be able to ask your most pressing questions and receive honest feedback from your peers. 

 AI is rapidly reshaping how organizations communicate, deliver information, and support employees—but many teams are still figuring out where it truly adds value. This panel brings together leaders across industries to discuss real-world use cases, lessons learned, governance challenges, and how AI is changing the future of employee communications and experience. 

Don't stop the conversation! 

Join us at the lobby bar as you network with your peers and sponsors in the adjacent at the #ALIcomms 

Participate in raffles & sign-up for dinner with your peers! 

Want to keep the conversation going? Join a group of attendees for dinner at a local DC hot spot.
 

Sign-up at the registration desk or during the networking reception to join a group at tonight's dine-around. Reservations have been made.
 

**Dutch treat. 

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea and continental breakfast as you network with fellow attendees on this final day. 

Together we will recap yesterday's top takeaways and set the stage for this final day of learning. 

Employees today often navigate complex, fragmented digital environments to find information about their roles, development needs, and potential career paths. This session explores practical strategies for simplifying the digital employee experience by improving access to information, strengthening mobility, empowering employees to take ownership of their career journeys, and supporting long‑term engagement. 

Walk away ready to 

• Identify how to transform complex, siloed information into a unified, intuitive digital experience that employees actually want to use. 

• Create a tool to help employees easily locate role expectations, growth opportunities, and proficiency levels without navigating multiple systems. 

• Improve development conversations with clear, competency‑based structure. 

• Align digital tools, communication channels, and content. 

• Develop a roadmap for simplifying the digital employee experience while driving adoption and long-term value. 

How do you create a strong culture when your workforce is spread across offices, homes, client sites, and continents? This session explores how intentional onboarding, layered communications, and purposeful community-building can help employees feel connected from their very first day and throughout their careers. Drawing on recent global onboarding efforts and the rapid integration of a highly specialized AI team in just three weeks, we'll share practical approaches for accelerating belonging, strengthening culture, and building engagement during times of transformation. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas for creating employee experiences that scale across hybrid and distributed organizations. 

Anticipated Key Takeaways 

• Design onboarding as an ongoing experience rather than a one-time orientation. 

• Use layered communications to reinforce culture at the company, team, role, community, and purpose levels. 

• Build belonging through mentorship, recognition, and intentional connection points. 

• Accelerate integration during periods of transformation without sacrificing employee experience. 

• Create scalable culture-building practices that work across hybrid, remote, and distributed workforces. 

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers. 

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors and be sure to fill out your evaluation forms. 

Employees are navigating nonstop change—from evolving workplace expectations to new technologies, restructuring, and communication overload. This panel explores how organizations are building trust, strengthening culture, and creating consistent employee experiences across channels, teams, and moments that matter.