SHRM MENA Conference

As we examine the future of work, the potential impression that HR's leadership can make in ensuring business success is immense. In keeping with our belief that HR has the power and the responsibility to advance the very nature of business to create better workplaces and ultimately, a better world, SHRM’s new brand initiative: Cause the Effect focuses on the new horizon of the world of work, and seeks to actively influence the landscape of business.

We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome. Know more about discovering the steps to earning your path to fulfillment and living without regrets - from the world-renowned executive coach and New York Times bestselling author himself.

Cultivating a strong company culture is more important than ever, especially with more teams working remotely and organizations are on a mission to reduce the stress of today's workforce and help them find a work life balance to improve their overall wellbeing. Beyond this, the need to ensure financial wellbeing of employees has gained popularity in recent times. In this session, know more about the benefits Financial Inclusion, Earned Wage Access (EWA), and how technology can help implement such benefits.

The workforce, and the workplace, are changing at a pace faster than ever before, and to deliver maximum impact on results and effectively align teams and talent with the organization's strategic plans, leaders must deeply understand the business, focus strategically, understand how to influence change, and play a key role in solving business problems. Join this session to be able to thrive in the business environment of the future by exploring progressive ways to evolve and disrupt traditional business practices, while building the relationships and influence necessary to gain approval and executive support.

Stories resonate and stick with the audience in ways that data alone does not. When it comes to presenting data effectively, the use of pictures and story-telling cannot be emphasized enough. Know more about eliminating clutter, building credibility and ultimately driving audiences to understand and act, as part of this session.

If there were any boundaries between work and life remaining, those were shattered as our work entered our homes on a more full-time (or over-time!) basis. And weren't we saying we were too busy before all of this? Professionals are being stretched to the limit, and burnout is just around the corner if we can't find and maintain balance in our lives. This session is a fresh breath of air for you to set boundaries, preserve your energy, and banish burnout once and for all, to reengage with meaningful work.

The hybrid workplace has brought in the realization that blended learning is a common-sense concept that results in great learning success. The blended learning approach is a lot more than simply acknowledging that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to training. Blended learning can be a big advantage since more than one training method to train on one subject is utilized. Hear from experts on how the upskilling and reskilling requirements can be met aided by technology.

There is a direct and measurable relationship between employee engagement and an organization's success. Employees who know that they are working towards goals that drive business outcomes, as well as their own goals for professional growth and learning, develop ownership in the organization's success that boosts employee engagement. Join this session to connect the dots from organization goals to job descriptions to individual goals, learn the different goal types and measures, and see how ongoing coaching and feedback leads to a more effective performance review process.

In the GCC, the workforce has traditionally been cosmopolitan and mostly made of expats. This trend has been challenged over the past few years where GCC governments have taken a firm stand on nationalization efforts to ensure that the native population is not overlooked. Join this session to see how you can optimize your workplace to attract local talent and shift the mindset in your organization from seeing nationalization as a compliance mandate to seeing it as a socially responsible role to build the local talent and give back to the local communities as well as being a key competitive advantage and a driver for the economy.

Understandably, managers are the greatest drivers of engagement for their direct reports. People join companies, but leave managers. With the Great Resignation raging on, modern management is all about empowering teams and retaining top performers. Providing for superlative employee experience while ensuring ample avenues for career progression hold the key to long tenures in organizations. In this session, you'll learn how to build a high-performing and engaged team that can tackle any business challenge, any day.

Diverse, Digital, & Distributed workforces are the future. And in the absence of a culture of ownership, grasping success can be challenging. It is important to bring objectivity to subjective ideas in terms of what an ownership culture entails. Every workplace has Owners, Renters, and Vandals. Owners make big commitments, continually increase value, reach for responsibility, include others, and see the big picture. Shaping an environment, whether in-person or remote, where everyone wants to invest their best daily, transforms culture! This session will equip you with language, understanding, and tactical next steps towards achieving success.

The classic performance appraisal process has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. Shifting from a once-a-year review process to make pay decisions and disciplinary actions, the performance management system is now a business driver and an employee retention tool. Some organizations have abolished the performance appraisal but still have a performance management process. This session underscores the shift of the performance management system to a more productive, versatile, value contribution process that pleases employees, their managers, and top executives.

While technology is undoubtedly among the leading factors impacting business disruption, it often takes a lot more than technology alone to ensure business success. Organizations need to also consider the human side, to make digital transformation succeed. Leaders need to foster the right digital culture and enable the right technological tools and empower people for digital success. This session will explore actionable insights for leaders to improve digital leadership and culture in their organizations.

Most people are inclined to put their energy into dealing with what's right in front of them-that is, what needs to be done today. But when it comes to the future workforce, prioritizing the here and now is not the optimal strategy. To keep pace with the anticipated demands and priority shifts of the next decade, organizations must start actively engaging in developing workforces today, and technology plays a major role in ensuring this transformation. In this session, know how leaders can leverage the best of WorkTech with key leadership skills in order to engage their current workforce and motivate them to up their game.

Hybrid work brought with it a unique set of perks, as well as challenges. With the flexibility and excessive exposure to technology, came the perils of weakened cybersecurity and its devastating after-effects. As the threat of malware attacks loom, organizations are having to ramp up their efforts to secure safe usage of technology and identify trusted devices so as to protect the emotional wellbeing of its people. This session explores how blockchain technology and quantum mechanics can be used to fortify your organization's cybersecurity safety net.

While referring to Technology and the Future of Work, it's only fair that organizations ponder over which path to adopt. Some experts predict a dystopia with high employee dissatisfaction caused by technology overdose, while others foresee a utopia where technology plays the role of a saviour in our lives. The determining factor would be how the world of work and its support system would respond to the ever-changing scenario. This session discusses perspectives associated with the need for WorkTech innovation and its ramifications.

Energy is everything. It is the spark that brings hope, joy and the ability to express who we truly are so that we may share our unique gifts with the world around us. Once we discover what energizes people, we must then create a space for their interests and passions to be nurtured, developed and shared. When this occurs, magic is born - especially when their story is aligned with that of the organization they work for. In this inspiring session, you will learn how to awaken the energetic potential of your workforce as a catalyst for sparking creativity, innovation and extraordinary career stories.

In today's and future workplaces, organizations are under pressure to compete and sustain the growth of the business and its continuity. Leaders can no longer afford to rely on 'comfortable' hiring decisions and need to challenge their existing paradigms when it comes to empowering women, youth, and people of determination. Women are at times subconsciously dismissed because 'only a man can do the job', so are youth and people of determination because they either 'don't have enough experience' or 'are not fully capable' respectively. Join this session to see how you can shift this paradigm in your business and leverage these exceptionally capable diverse groups to help support your organization's vision, strategy, and business continuity.

Mental health is overlooked by many people and stigmatized by even more. But attitudes are changing and the pandemic has accelerated that shift. As employees open up, the overall feeling is that they felt worn down, burnt out and irritable at the end of the workday. As organizations scamper to implement innovative EAPs encompassing mandatory, incentivized mental health days, mental health scheduling support, and subscription services for mental wellness, this session discusses how selfcare needs to be made the new norm to deal with the issue before it snowballs into an all-new pandemic.

Empathy is a critical HR leadership skill. It helps to build and sustain positive workplace relationships, foster diversity and inclusion, encourage cooperation and collaboration, and facilitate conflict management. Empathy generates an appreciation for others, paving the way to more productive working relationships. As managers realize the need to hone empathic leadership skills, improve leadership effectiveness and increase their organizational culture, this session explores ways to create a culture of empathy to have a pulse on your team and provide insights on how to meet the needs of your employees.