Jason Lauritsen
Employee Engagement Expert
Jason shares compelling insights with franchise teams for how to create a consistent system culture which motivates and retains their most important resource: their employees. He delivers practical advice gained both from experience as an HR executive and leader along with studying data from thousands of Best Place to Work organizations from small to large. Jason reveals that what really matters when it comes to building an engaging workplace for employees is clarity, connection, and love.
Advising Leaders About Workplace Culture & Talent
Jason Lauritsen is a keynote speaker and employee engagement expert. His passionate, engaging and thought-provoking style will challenge you to think differently.
Jason has been described as “a corporate executive gone rogue.” For nearly a decade, he spent his days as a corporate Human Resources executive where he developed a reputation for driving business results through talent.
Most recently, he led the research team for Quantum Workplace’s Best Places to Work program where he has studied the employee experience at thousands of companies to understand what the best workplaces in the world do differently than the rest.
Classically impatient, curious, and ambitious, Jason’s early career was a rapid progression of sales and management roles including launching, leading, and ultimately selling a small business in his mid-twenties. He’s a leader, sales guy, entrepreneur, and corporate executive — all rolled up into one.
Jason is the co-author with Joe Gerstandt of the book, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships and a frequently published writer and blogger on employee engagement, culture and leadership.
Partial Client List:
- American Society of Employers
- Brightstar
- CAI
- CUE, Inc.
- Empower Career Builder
- ICAN
- MHEDA
- NTC
- Paylocity
- PIAA
- Plexus
- Regions Bank
- SavaSeniorCare
- SHRM
- Sprint
- Waukesha County Technical College
It seems that everyone these days is saying that business is now “social.” The rise of social media and other technology has changed how we do business. These same technologies are changing the very nature of work and how the workplace must be designed. The truth is, business has always been social, and so has work. Technology has simply unleashed the power of social in new and powerful ways.
This evolution has revealed that our traditional models for cultivating talent are insufficient. The new equation for talent isn’t just about building human capital (the knowledge, skills, and abilities). It must also include social capital (the value that exists within relationships) if you are to unlock your organization’s true capability for innovation and performance. This thought-provoking and actionable session will reveal to you the new talent equation and how the next evolution for Human Resources is to become the social architect of the organization.
Learning Objectives:
- Explore how the evolution of the organization and the rise of social technology has fundamentally changed how value is created within the organization. Uncover how this shift now requires an expanded definition of talent that considers the power of personal relationships and networks as an amplifier of impact.
- Discover how cultivating connection, as a means to build social capital, is an under-utilized but powerful strategy for gaining competitive advantage.
- Learn six powerful strategies with twelve specific tactics for creating a work environment that fosters connection and grows social capital as a means to fuel innovation, engagement, and performance across the organization.
1: What is Employee Engagement?
Through individual exercises and group discussion, participants will explore what employee engagement looks and feels like in the workplace and how it impacts our work and lives. This exploration will move the idea of engagement from the realm of concept into a tangible connection with behaviors and results.
2: Defining Employee Engagement
To drive employee engagement requires a clear understanding of what it is and how it works. In this section, participants will come to understand engagement as a set of outcomes we work to earn from our employees. Then, the focus will turn to understanding the five dimension of employee engagement and the role that management and leadership plays in each.
3: Lessons from Best Places to Work
Based on insights drawn from analyzing employee data collected at thousands of organizations through Best Places to Work programs, myths and best practices about what employees look for in a best place to work will be shared and discussed.
4: Engagement Builders & Killers
At this point, the workshop turns to a very practical, “how to” focus. Participants will discover three powerful engagement builders and two toxic engagement killers. These concepts will be shared, explored and practiced through individual and small group exercises.
5: Action Planning
To close the workshop, each participant will spend time reflecting on the content of the workshop in order to make specific commitments. These commitments will reflect how the leader will take immediate action to increase engagement with those they lead. The plans will then be shared and discussed with peers for feedback and support.
As the pace of change accelerates, leaders must face the reality that what we’ve always done isn’t working any longer. Innovation is a requirement of survival. And innovation demands disruption.
Knowing disruption is needed is one thing, doing it is another. It requires an ingredient that can be hard to find: Courage. To do the work that will truly make a difference demands that you face your fears of failure and rejection and move beyond them.
In this session, we will confront the most common fears that are holding you back and replace them with the mindset and skill to find your courage.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify key mental obstacles that are holding you back from making a bigger impact
- Explore the nature of courage and how to find more to fuel your work
- Discover some key skills to equip yourself to move past your fear and accomplish breakthrough results
Work has been defined in many ways over the years: a contract, a transaction, a value exchange. This led to describing humans as capital and designing systems that treat people like assets to be managed and optimized. Is it any wonder that employees’ feeling of engagement within these organizations continues to drop? It doesn’t feel good to be treated like an investment to be maximized.
To reverse this trend requires that we understand what work is for employees, a relationship, and a critically important one. Research has shown us that employees crave the same things from work that they do from other important relationships in their lives: appreciation, connection, acceptance, communication, and support. In this session, we will explore how designing the employee experience through the lens of a healthy relationship will focus your employee engagement efforts for greater impact.
What you will learn:
- Deconstruct employee engagement practices to discover why and how the current model is falling short by focusing on maximizing employee discretionary effort
- Discover that for employees, work is an important relationship and that the work experience should be designed as a relationship for employees rather than as a company process to be optimized
- Gain a deeper understanding of the elements that make for a healthy relationship and how to use this model to design a more engaging and fulfilling experience for employees at work
Becoming a “Best Place to Work” is at the top of many organization’s priority lists. To attract and keep the best talent requires fostering an engaging culture where people want to work. But, building an extraordinary workplace is easier said than done. In fact, it’s hard to even know where to start.
This dynamic session will reveal research-based insights into the what, why and how of building and sustaining a “Best Place to Work” for your employees. And (spoiler alert) it’s not about installing ping pong tables or sleep pods.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand what organizations with exceptional workplaces do differently than others to engage and retain their best talent
- Discover the common elements found within “Best Places to Work” and what they tell us about how to create the most engaging workplaces
- Gain practical advice for how to take action within your organization to implement the lessons from “Best Places to Work” in order to increase employee engagement and performance within your own organization
Franchise Speakers
