Top experts and industry leaders worldwide will gather in Brussels for the GEB Forum 2016 to discuss and shape together the future of employee benefits.
Top experts and industry leaders worldwide will gather in Brussels for the GEB Forum 2016 to discuss and shape together the future of employee benefits. Organised by Generali Employee Benefits (GEB) to coincide with its 50 year anniversary, the event programme this year features plenty of inspirational sessions, workshops and panel debates.
Talking on the forum, Sergio Di Caro, CEO of GEB, commented: “We look forward to welcoming to Brussels our valued guests who have been accompanying our growth and working with us over the last five decades.”
“Our collaboration has been instrumental in establishing GEB as one of the strongest employee benefits networks worldwide.”
“This event is dedicated to our clients, our partners and the entire GEB network, to recognise our achievements so far and keep pushing boundaries ahead.”
Attendees will be invited to share insights on major trends and challenges, to exchange best practice and to discuss their vision on how employers can best protect and engage their employees, while gaining a competitive edge in managing their risks and their bottom line.
Frederic de Courtois, the new head of Generali Group international business, who will open the event, will share an updated view on Generali’s strategic response to global challenges, and on plans to seize opportunities ahead by building on, and further investing in, GEB network strengths.
The first guest speaker will inaugurate a thematic focus on latest insight on our brain and personal development, and on the impact this knowledge has on corporate strategies to enhance the performance of individuals and organisations.
Latest findings
Rasmus Hougaard, director of The Potential Project, will share his expertise on how to bring mindfulness at work and apply it to our daily operations. He suggests: “A mindful business is a business where individuals and teams do the right things, and not just things.”
Almost half of our time, 46.9 percent, the average worker is not paying attention.
Applying mindfulness in a business context can help by improving employees’ ability to channel attention in a more focused and purposeful manner. Research is finding that people engaging in mindfulness practices at work are getting more focused and acquire stronger collaboration skills and ability to prioritise, higher productivity, better work-life balance, and declining stress.
Etienne van der Walt from Neurozone will feature on the second day with a session that will foster our understanding of the neuroscientific value of empathy and compassion for collective team performance. In our rapidly changing and globalised societies, new values and behaviours are emerging as crucial to ensuring our resilience, self-leadership, learning and innovation capacity, and ultimately our ability to thrive in our daily lives.
Professor Jamie Anderson, nominated management guru by the Financial Times, will close this inspirational red thread with a breakthrough finale on the last day of the event. His contribution will turn the spotlight on the concept of lifework: is a high-flying career enough to be a successful person? What role our personal life should play in boosting our professional performance?
Through educational lectures at major business schools worldwide, Anderson has inspired talents and organisations to renew themselves by fuelling strategic transformation in fast changing and complex business environments.
Attendees will not only be awed by inspirational keynotes, but also be involved in hands-on exchange and discussion, with break-out parallel workshops running throughout the second day of the event. Topics have been identified to address major concerns and interests of stakeholders involved in managing employee benefits, and to bring value to their daily activities by showcasing best practice and opportunities for innovation.
Top employers worldwide: What makes them different?
There are companies that are known worldwide not only for the service or product they offer, but also for being some of the most innovative employers on the planet. Their employee value proposition is in fact an integral part of their brand. What makes them different? How does their vision translate into benefits and compensation for their employees? And what about mutual trust, does it really play a role in the roll-out of their benefits strategies? Audrey Hall of Amazon, and Cayla Kitayama of Google, will share their experiences at two companies that have distinguished themselves in terms of innovation capacity and corporate culture.
Healthy workplaces
Official retirement age is increasing, and by 2030 workers aged 55 to 64 are expected to make up 30 percent of the workforce in many European countries. Will we be able to work longer?
As official partner of the Healthy Workplaces for All Ages campaign, GEB has invited representatives from the European Commission and the business sector to explore how we can unlock the potential of the workplace to contribute to our wellbeing, and what the advantages are for employers and their workforce.
Dietmar Elsler from EU-OSHA, the European agency for health and safety at work, will introduce the All Ages Campaign and Lars Hoffman, vice president of safety at Siemens and a partner of the campaign, is invited to speak about the European dimension of the healthy workplaces.
From corporate social responsibility to sustainable social integration: What is our role in the employee benefits arena?
If initially regarded as window-dressing for bad-behaving corporations, few doubt today that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an integral part of the footprint every organisation has on its environment.
It is about making it a conscious choice to create value for the world we live in, and the people we share it with.
The new paradigm of CSR helps in realising that only creating shared value in a sustainable way will allow us to build a better future.
Companies are not charity, so they need to link their CSR actions into their core business and related business models. How can a company get it right, and what role do employee benefits play? We discuss it with Pascal Prévost, deputy risk manager at Nestlé, Lucia Silva, head of CSR at Generali Group, and Stefan Crets, director at CSR Europe.
In addition, professor Jamie Anderson will challenge attendees by going beyond traditional approaches to societal wellbeing.
Other topics on the agenda, which will be further addressed in our future coverage of the event, include big data and wide opportunities offered by data analytics and the internet of things; the future of employee benefits through digitalisation; how to roll out a global programme; and risk management and understanding and staying ahead of risks.
