Program & Keynotes

Engagement is Emotional
Presented by Tammy Robertson, Professional Speaker, Coach and Author, WorkHeart Consulting

Understand the limitations of if-then rewards, extrinsic motivation, and mechanistic systems that feel disingenuous and adopt real practical and dynamic communication processes that create trust, respect and influence. (A Tool Box of Suggestions will be included in master handout.) Discover the three principles of inspiring leadership – Authentic Presence, Self Direction and Full Engagement – simple practices that build on new expectations of today’s more evolved, conscious and self-aware employees. Review The Great 8 – how to have a conversation in ten minutes or less that helps people think better, get clear and be inspired to take action! We’ll look at: Inspiration vs Motivation: Is there a Difference? Does it matter? There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Motivation used to work. It’s time to inspire … Do you know why?

Leaders at Play – Creative & Engaging Leadership for a New World
Presented by Vince Gowmon, Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, Remembering to Play Events

Join us for the Conference Kick-Off celebrations! Meet and reconnect with others over scrumptious fare and then hear Vince Gowmon speak on Leaders at Play, a fun and interactive look at how play can support your leadership style in today’s rapidly changing world. Using collaborative and creative activities, communicate and connect in a way that supports levity and an expanded possibility mindset. Get to know your peers in unique ways, and walk away energized and ready for the start of The Better Workplace Conference 2012!

Building the Bridge as You Walk On It: Leading Transformational Change
Presented by Dr. Robert Quinn, Margaret Elliot Tracey Collegiate Professorship, University of Michigan; faculty of Organization and Management, Ross School of Business; Co-founder and Director, Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship.

This talk is about creating excellence in your organization. It is about increasing bottom line performance while ensuring human engagement. The normal assumptions of management and organization are oriented to knowing and controlling. Excellence derives from the collective process of learning and becoming. In this talk Dr. Quinn will draw on research from the new fields of positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship and from cases in his new book, The Deep Change Field Guide. He will explore an entirely new conception of leadership and explain how anyone can use four simple questions to take themselves and others to a state of optimal influence and adaptation. In short, we will learn how to make transformational change, which means learning to build the bridge as we walk on it.

Workplace Wellness: A Transformational Change in New Brunswick
Presented by Michelle Bourgoin, Director of Wellness, Government of New Brunswick

Explore how the Government of New Brunswick undertook a lead role in implementing a comprehensive workplace wellness program for Public Service employees.

By taking a proactive approach to employee wellness and health risk prevention, this initiative has identified conditions and risks impacting employee wellness, performance, and community relationships. The knowledge gained during the implementation of this program has been used to tailor health and wellness services to optimize change.

Requiring a broad change management perspective coupled with transitional challenges occurring within government, knowledge gained through wellness profile screenings, employee participation, and feedback from wellness committees, has been used to target health and wellness services, optimize and guide personal change and enhance employee engagement. Recognizing that buy-in to the program was essential to the program’s success; change agents have been used to build resilience, innovation, and sustainability for the program. Innovative tools and tactics were key to system transformation to help address challenges with employee engagement, participation, and effective communication and to build on the strengths of existing wellness activities throughout government departments.

Participants will have an opportunity to experience some of the challenges encountered during the implementation of the program and will have a chance to hear and ask questions about the Government of New Brunswick’s strategic journey toward workplace wellness. As well, they will gain insight into lessons learned and build new skills and leadership tools to achieve success.

Sponsored by

Breakout Seminar 1B
Stream: Healthy Minds

Mens sana in corpore sandwich: Sleeping, eating, and moving for healthy minds
Presented by Billy Strean, Chief Exhilarator, Exhilarated Performance and Professor, University of Alberta

This session will be a practical, provocative, fun, and experiential exploration of the foundations that support healthy minds.

Premise: Although “mens sana in corpore sano” – a healthy mind in a healthy body has great appeal, it reproduces a dualistic conception of the person. “We tend to forget that a long-held assumption does not thereby become a fact, and we often even resent being reminded” (Goswami, 1993, p. 10). Although we may talk about “healthy minds” as if they are distinct from healthy bodies, it is clear that these are conceptual distinctions instead of phenomenological realities. Cognitive science has shown that our minds are not, and cannot be disembodied (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). The concept of mind separate from the body is a metaphorical concept (Strean & Mills, in press). Clearly these ideas depart drastically from pervasive Cartesian discourses that have dominated and also posited a determinable, objective reality disconnected from subjective experience (Strean & Strozzi-Heckler, 2009). With the recognition of how all components are inextricably linked, we can focus on the component of “fuel.”

Also repeated on Thursday.

Breakout Seminar 1C
Stream: The Leadership Toolbox

Wellness & Resilience Solutions in a Changing World – for you and for your organization
Presented by Catherine Morisset, Wellness & Performance Coach, Imagine Plus

This session will enable and empower participants to determine, plan and integrate effective strategies to help individuals and organizations build functional wellness, performance and resilience in an ever-changing world and workplace.

Sponsored by

Beyond Engagement: Spirit at Work as a Healthy Workplace Strategy
Presented by Val Kinjerski, Principal Consultant, Kaizen Solutions

Whereas organizations are searching for new ways to engage and retain workers, employees are seeking an improved sense of wellbeing and increased meaning through their work. Is there a strategy that can meet the needs of both? Yes. One new approach – the creation of spirit at work – aimed at increasing employees’ meaningful experience at work and sense of wellbeing – and, in turn, the success of the organization – shows much promise.

Breakout Seminar 2B
Stream: Healthy Minds

Trends in the Role of EFAPs in Organizational Health: Practical Insights From Research
Presented by Mark Attridge, President, Attridge Consulting Inc.

This seminar offers new insights into the state of employee and family assistance programs today. We will review where it needs to be headed to be successful in the future, how organizations can better collaborate with EFAPs and how to take advantage of these trends to be better positioned for organizational success through promoting and protecting employee mental health and well-being.

Sponsored by

Breakout Seminar 2C
Stream: The Leadership Toolbox

The Titleless Leader
Presented by Nan Russell, President, MountainWorks Communications

How people work, communicate, collaborate, and manage responsibilities has changed. Knowing how to create natural followership, build influence, and lead others with or without title or authority, no matter your role, is a workplace necessity. To do that effectively requires a new kind of leadership: the titleless kind. No one needs to appoint you, promote you, or nominate you. You decide. It’s not rank that gets you results, it’s actions. Discover uncommon behaviors that enable you to lead initiatives, work with ad hoc teams, and influence cross-functional, geographically, and generationally diverse people, from your current position. Disregard myths from past decades of what works at work, apply actions grounded in today’s psychology that achieve results, and can be used with any staff development approach.

See below for details

See below for details

You Already Know How to Be Great
Presented by Alan Fine, founder and president of InsideOut Development

This session will be a practical, provocative, fun, and experiential exploration of the foundations that support healthy minds.

Twenty-five years ago, Alan developed the GROW Model, a basic performance model considered by many to be the gold-standard approach among executive coaches and corporate leaders worldwide. Alan’s approach to performance breakthroughs comes most often, not from acquiring additional knowledge, but from removing internal interference that allows people to act on what they already know. Good decisions lead to effective actions leading to productive results. In addition to his work consulting with fortune 500 leaders, Alan is also very much in demand as a speaker and thought-leader, where he incorporates an engaging mix of humor and commentary drawn from the performance-driven world of the professional athlete.

Sponsored by

Breakout Seminar 3B
Stream: Healthy Minds

Mens sana in corpore sandwich: Sleeping, eating, and moving for healthy minds
Presented by Billy Strean, Chief Exhilarator, Exhilarated Performance and Professor, University of Alberta

This session will be a practical, provocative, fun, and experiential exploration of the foundations that support healthy minds.

Premise: Although “mens sana in corpore sano” – a healthy mind in a healthy body has great appeal, it reproduces a dualistic conception of the person. “We tend to forget that a long-held assumption does not thereby become a fact, and we often even resent being reminded” (Goswami, 1993, p. 10). Although we may talk about “healthy minds” as if they are distinct from healthy bodies, it is clear that these are conceptual distinctions instead of phenomenological realities. Cognitive science has shown that our minds are not, and cannot be disembodied (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). The concept of mind separate from the body is a metaphorical concept (Strean & Mills, in press). Clearly these ideas depart drastically from pervasive Cartesian discourses that have dominated and also posited a determinable, objective reality disconnected from subjective experience (Strean & Strozzi-Heckler, 2009). With the recognition of how all components are inextricably linked, we can focus on the component of “fuel.”

Also repeated on Wednesday.

Breakout Seminar 3C
Stream: The Leadership Toolbox

Co-Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace
Presented by Steven Hughes, Manager of Training and Development, CTI Canadian Training Institute

The goal of this session is to introduce the concept of psychological safety and why leaders in organizations need to strive to achieve this quality when working towards creating healthy workplaces. This program will provide an introduction to three pioneers who have contributed to our foundational understanding of psychological safety – Amy Edmondson, David Rock and Martin Shain. Prepare to experience an active session involving dyad work, imagery and the Circle process. Participants will take away three practical processes to help create and sustain psychological safety in their workplace.

Leadership, Mindfulness and Good Work: creating a culture for business excellence
Presented by Dr. Michael West, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology, Lancaster University Management School; Senior Research Fellow, The Work Foundation; Emeritus Professor, Aston University.

Poor leadership costs businesses greatly but good leadership not only makes economic sense, it builds human communities for health. This keynote explores the costs of poor leadership for health and well being of the workforce. It will demonstrate in contrast how leadership that develops engagement of people at work is great for business, good for employees and contributes to wider social good. It will describe the practical ways in which leaders can promote cultures of engagement through their behaviour and through encouraging effective leadership at all levels. Key to this is creating positive emotional environments in the workplace and a strong and clear focus on key performance objectives.

It is not enough to attend a talk and commit to resolutions, however. Leadership is a moment-to-moment and enduring responsibility. Participants will be given a method for becoming outstanding leaders continuously and ensuring they continue to develop their leadership abilities and sensitivity through the practice of mindfulness. Using practical demonstration, participants will have a taste of how to achieve this.

This presentation will also explore the role of our personal values in enabling us to create organizations that are connected with and enhancing the communities of which they are a part, exploring what it means to create Good Work and Responsible Organizations.

Attendance at this workshop is limited to the first 75 delegates who choose this session when registering.

Moving Minds at Work
Presented by Mary Ann Baynton, Co-Chair of the Technical Committee for the National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, Great-West Life; Dr. Merv Gilbert; Dr. Dan Bilsker

In this half-day session you are invited to help us develop workplace activities that combine heart health, mental health and employee engagement.

As a result of participating in this session you will:

• Learn more about how research is compelling us to take mental health breaks.
• Contribute to the creation of a new public workplace wellness resource.
• Receive complementary workplace wellness resources to support you back in your workplace.
• Connect and collaborate with other workplace health & wellness professionals.

Project Background:

Fifty-two of the activities developed by professionals like you will be selected and developed into a resource of weekly workplace activities for businesses across Canada. As a participant you can choose to receive credit as a contributor to the final national, bilingual resource that will be freely available to all Canadians.

The criteria for the activities are that they:

• Involve physical movement
• Have a positive effect on mental health
• Engage employees at the worksite
• Are safe for diverse populations including those with disabilities
• Low cost or no cost and easy to set up
• Take no longer than 15 minutes

This is one of three sessions being conducted across Canada. Come and contribute to the development of these important resources and then use them to support efforts in your own workplace!

Sponsored by

This session will demonstrate how your organization can benefit from properly managing mental health issues in the workplace. We will discuss best practices in managing workplace mental health—pre-disability, during disability, and on employees’ return to work. Explore what you can do to build awareness and fight stigma, and how to access necessary support resources. Learn what your organization can do to enhance resiliency around mental health issues in the workplace.

Sponsored by

The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) recently embarked on a journey to renew its vision and values. Our approach was designed to ensure that the new vision and values will be of real, strategic, and lasting value to the organization – we had no appetite for a token activity or “paper exercise” without meaning or value. Georgina MacDonald will tell the story of this journey of renewal from its inception to its completion, and will share the amazing conversations, insights and surprises discovered along the way. She will also discuss work that is underway or planned to ensure that VIHA really “lives” its new values every day.

Sponsored by

The new National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety publication date is set for fall 2012. Some forward-thinking organizations have already begun to adopt the Standard. Come and hear about their success and why your organization should consider taking an approach to improving psychological health and safety.

Sponsored by

In many workplaces there may be pressure to avoid taking days off due to sickness or there may be pressure to show up despite being sick specially when it comes to mental health. This is known as Presenteeism. A consequence of this may be that an individual may turn up at work but only work at, say, 70% of his or her capacity for a longer period of time and then subsequently go on disability leave for even a longer period of time. All of this is a hidden fee to organizations that may be at least as high as absenteeism costs. Organizations may prevent presenteeism with a whole set of actions.

Sponsored by

According to a recent study of online behaviour, four out of five internet users search online for health information, making it the third most popular pursuit, and many of those same users rely upon peer-to-peer health discussions as reliable sources of information. As more than five million Canadians go without a family doctor and increasing numbers of consumers lean on questionable sources of health and wellness information, employer wellness initiatives can serve to bridge this critical gap. This session will explore the concept of consumer health care, and the role of employers and employees in illness prevention, wellness promotion and the encouragement of personal health accountability. It will also discuss the strategies organizations can employ to contribute to measurable and positive outcomes.

Sponsored by