84: The number of speakers who will be sharing their knowledge with the benefits and HR leadership community next week.
HRE‘s Health & Benefits Leadership Conference kicks off next week, with former “Good Morning America” co-host Joan Lunden opening the event at 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday. She’ll be talking about her experiences as a caregiver and what organizations can do to better support caregivers in the workforce.
Joan Lunden
But she’ll be just the first of more than 80 speakers during the free, three-day, virtual conference, which runs May 11-13. On the final day, Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global will discuss stress, anxiety and mental resilience in a conversation with Mastercard CHRO Michael Fraccaro. And throughout the event are such experts as Suze Orman on emergency savings; representatives from Gallagher, EY, i4cp, the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Family Foundation; and top HR leaders including Upwork’s Zoë Harte, TIAA’s Sean Woodroffe and Kristin Johnson of Edward Jones.
Related: To learn more about the agenda and to register, click here.
What it means for HR leaders
After one of the most challenging years on record for employers and employees, benefits are undergoing a transformation along with so much else in our lives and workplaces. Dozens of sessions during the conference will address those changes in benefits and benefits strategy—what they are, what they should be, what they mean, how to navigate them and what the data shows about what workers want. The speakers will also address using benefits to help manage the new world on issues as new and wide-ranging as vaccine mandates, diversity and inclusion, federal policy under a new administration, hybrid and remote workplaces, and more.
With seven keynotes and 10 spotlight sessions in addition to the dozens of sponsored sessions, attendees will certainly have plenty to put into action immediately. As conference chair and HRE benefits editor Kathryn Mayer wrote earlier this week, the most important reason to attend relates to what we’ve all endured since things shut down last March, putting employee health and benefits strategies center-stage.
“Smart organizations have turned to programs and benefits offerings as their No. 1 COVID-19 strategy in an effort to help employees during the most stressful time of their lives. It’s unquestionably a vital time for benefits, but it’s also a very exciting time for benefits, too,” she wrote. “I know that HBLC attendees will benefit from learning more about how they can keep helping workers during the pandemic and beyond.”
Related: Read Mayer’s full column here.