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 3rd Annual Internal Communications for a Deskless, Frontline & Hybrid Workforce!

You’ll connect with fellow peers, gain insights into their biggest internal communication challenges, and discover innovative strategies for engaging deskless, frontline, and hybrid employees. Plus, enjoy a few fun facts along the way!

Is it possible for a non-profit association to eliminate its fixed office space but still maintain a positive workplace culture and strong employee engagement? ASCM appears to be doing just that, saving millions on real estate costs and reaping financial and health benefits for its employees.

The keys? Requiring regular in-person contacts between employees and implementing a company-wide flexible work space arrangement. The pilot year has resulted in virtually non-existent voluntary employee turnover and the highest employee engagement scores the association has achieved in the last eight years.

We’ve all heard it before: you need to do more, with less – without compromising on quality. In this session, discover how the Chamberlain Group Corporate Communications team transformed their function, strategy, and reputation with the resources they already had to become an award-winning, CEO-trusted, mixternal communications powerhouse. You’ll learn:

• How to be honest with yourself and your team that a change must be made.
• Techniques to decide where to focus your time and energy for your specific organization and team.
• How to get creative to make bold changes to maximize your output with the resources at your disposal.

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

With a new CEO, leaders spread out across the country, and a predominantly remote workforce, Teach For America needed creative ways to foster authentic leadership presence. This case study shares how we enabled meaningful dialogue and connection without relying on in-person engagement.

Key Takeaways:

• Approaches for strengthening leadership visibility in dispersed environments
• Ideas for encouraging authentic dialogue between leaders and employees
• Insights from our early experiments in executive communications

Most leaders assume everyone works like they do. They don't. This causes expensive failures.

In companies with distributed and deskless employees, this problem is stark. Leadership often designs communication and engagement from their own work reality—regular hours, desktop computers, email-based information flow. It's a proximity bias. Problems compound when large parts of the organization work in completely different worlds with different schedules, limited internet access, and hands-on job duties that make traditional approaches impossible.

This presentation shows you workplace mapping: how to systematically understand the different work realities in your organization and design engagement that actually works. You'll learn to identify where strategy occurs, where implementation occurs, and where delivery occurs, then bridge the gap between these worlds instead of forcing everyone into one.

Key Takeaways:

• Leaders may overlook communication with diverse, deskless teams.
• Proximity bias can create engagement gaps due to schedule and tech differences.
• Workplace mapping enables leaders to understand the diverse employee environments, thereby preventing one-size-fits-all approaches.

Reservations have been made at several local restaurants.

Don't miss this opportunity to have lunch with your peers at a local Chicago hot spot!
**Everyone is financially responsible for their own lunch.

In this interactive session, you will be guided through the process of creating a tailored internal communication strategy that engages frontline, deskless, and hybrid employees. Participants will work in groups to develop actionable strategies for reaching their unique workforce segments, considering technology, messaging, and engagement tactics.

Key Takeaways:

• Mapping out a tailored communication strategy for different employee groups
• Identifying the right tools and channels for each workforce segment
• Building frameworks for measuring success and adapting strategies

Explore how intentional communication strategies and leadership development are empowering both managers and frontline staff in a hybrid, deskless environment.

Key Takeaways:

• Build confidence and connection through manager-focused toolkits

• Elevate frontline voices through peer-led onboarding

• Increase engagement with inclusive, staff-driven initiatives

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers.
Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors!

Many internal communication strategies are built for desk-based employees, but how can organizations ensure that deskless and frontline workers receive timely, relevant, and engaging information? This panel will explore successful tactics for overcoming communication barriers, including mobile-first strategies, digital signage, and leveraging managers as communicators.

Key Takeaways:

• Best practices for reaching non-desk employees in real-time
• How to optimize mobile tools and technology for frontline teams
• The role of managers in delivering and reinforcing key messages

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.

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

In retail, frontline workers are the face of the brand, but too often, they’re the last to hear the message due to competing priorities, challenges with traditional internal communications methods and a fast-paced, always-evolving industry. This session will dive into how Ulta Beauty leverages WorkJam Digital Workplace as its innovative digital communication channel and how we navigate usage in a complex legal and compensation environment.

• Standardize internal messaging through channel guidelines, seasonal blackout periods, and cross-linking best practices
• Teach teams how to self-market internally through microsites and basic UX/marketing principles
• Project manage and combine cross-department efforts to eliminate redundancy and save thousands
• Build knowledge hubs that empower teams without overwhelming employees with repetitive messages
• Use tools like SharePoint, Teams, AI, and internal training to enable teams at scale

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

This session focuses on equipping frontline managers with the skills and tools needed to effectively lead communications within their teams. Through role-playing and scenario-based exercises, participants will gain practical experience in delivering key messages, fostering engagement, and creating a two-way communication flow between leadership and frontline employees.

Key Takeaways:

• Techniques for training and empowering frontline managers in communication
• Hands-on exercises to practice delivering clear, consistent messages
• Methods to create a feedback loop for ongoing improvement in manager-led communications

Many internal communication strategies are built for desk-based employees, but how can organizations ensure that deskless and frontline workers receive timely, relevant, and engaging information? This panel will explore successful tactics for overcoming communication barriers, including mobile-first strategies, digital signage, and leveraging managers as communicators.

Key Takeaways:

• Best practices for reaching non-desk employees in real-time
• How to optimize mobile tools and technology for frontline teams
• The role of managers in delivering and reinforcing key messages