Gabriella Rosen Kellerman

One of the most significant barriers to a corporation’s ability to support employee thriving is structural and woven deeply into the fabric of how we think HR has to work. 150 years ago, the corporation had separate, unrelated arms working on providing social welfare support for employees on the one hand, and instructional training on the other. Today, behavioral science, including performance science and neuroscience, have definitely demonstrated the inextricable link between psychological wellbeing and performance. Our most pressing employee challenges today – building resilience; navigating uncertainty; cultivating creativity; increasing belonging – sit at the nexus of two still separate functions: Benefits/Total Rewards and Talent/Learning and Development. How can we move beyond an outdated mental model for supporting employees in order to do so more effectively, more proactively, and more holistically? This session draws on speaker’s original research to explain how and why we came to today’s structure; the downsides of the current structure; the potential value of a holistic approach; and the possible solutions. Ideally suited for forward thinking HR teams focused on preparing employees for the Future of Work.

As technology automates the more rote parts of our work; and as the pace of change presents ever-more novel challenges; the jobs to be done by humans require more and more creativity, at every level of the organization. While we all have the ability to be creative, many of us don’t think of ourselves this way or know how to build this skill. This session draws on the speaker’s original research into how creativity manifests at work, and how it can be built. Learn about the four types of creativity in science and industry. Learn to identify these types in yourself, your team, and your organization. Then, go deep on the behaviors that help improve creativity for us and our teams. Participants can expect to improve their daydreaming, develop their ability to coach for creativity, and build their skills in eliciting richer creative outputs from themselves and their teams.

Resilience is a foundational skill for the modern professional. Over the course of our careers we navigate change, after change, after change, and we need to be able to keep coming back for more. How can we do that while remaining positive, energized, and productive? Using data from hundreds of thousands of employees across industries, the speaker outlines five key skills that produce resilient outcomes: Cognitive agility, emotional regulation, optimism, self-efficacy, and self-compassion. Learn how to build all five and how to coach your teams to build them, too. Participants can expect to leave the session with a transformational toolkit to help themselves and their teams thrive through uncertainty and change.