How to Deliver an Impactful Health & Wellness Conference in Less Than 45 Days
The Challenge
A national association’s Health Safety & Wellness Committee was looking to run a two-day conference for their Health Safety & Wellness representatives. It was early September, and the goal was to run the event in mid-November. Due to the pandemic, HSW reps hadn’t had the opportunity to meet in person for almost three years and mental health and wellness in the workplace were an increasing concern. The representatives, primarily male and in the trades, needed guidance and tools to respond to new workplace realities.
The conference theme was already chosen and announced to members – five minutes of empathy. People were anxious to get back to in-person professional development. The committee leading the effort had 75% new members and little experience running and planning conferences. They wanted to deliver a member experience that was memorable, impactful, inspiring and helpful and wanted to build capacity on the committee for running future conferences.
The Solution
TouchPoints Learning & Innovation was invited to help the committee deliver on their mandate.
Our goal was to successfully deliver the conference program and provide effective team development for the entire HSW committee while creating a repeatable blueprint that the organization could use to manage similar events in the future.
Our solution involved providing guidance and support to the committee and the organization, including:
1Create Focus and Structure
2Support the Design
We collaborated with the committee to create interactive professional development content aligned with the conference theme and achieved learning outcomes. We designed and developed participant communications, a repeatable registration process, and a participant’s guide.
3Support Facilitation
4Develop Processes to Support Future Conferences
Finally, we created a How To Plan the HSW Conference’ checklist including timelines and events to guide the committee’s next conference planning efforts.
Deliver an Impactful Conference: The Results
“We all worked amazingly well and came together. It was a positive experience. So much work is involved – lots of behind-the-scenes effort is needed. This event would not have succeeded without Carrie and Janice!”
While the effort we put in was well recognized and appreciated, this team worked well together because they were willing to collaborate, focusing on their strengths and learning while doing.
By supporting the committee strategically, we freed up their time to focus on the areas where they could add the most value: brainstorming, subject matter expertise, and, most importantly, enhancing the overall member experience.
They invested the time and effort to bring focus, clarity and shared understanding to achieve their desired outcome. Organizers took a slippery, touchy-feely concept and made it rock solid by clearly explaining to HSW reps what was expected of them and the specific steps they could take to impact mental health in the workplace positively.
We were satisfied knowing that the committee members would be much better positioned to do this together—and with less outside support in a future event.
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