HR heavyweights gather for Rewards & Benefits Summit

The second annual Rewards & Benefits Summit took place at Croke Park, Dublin, on November 19th. It’s part of a series of events organised by BusinessRiver, which is a gated network of B2B communities, and is the company behind more than 25 industry awards events.

The aim of the summit is to provide the business community with a viable alternative to the traditional conference model. Instead of keynote speakers addressing huge, half empty auditoriums, there are a series of small, intimate round table discussions. The topics explored at each table are suggested and agreed upon by the participants themselves. And the day’s activities are presided over by the summit leader, who curates the whole event.

The idea is to create the environment for peer to peer exchange. Instead of sitting passively in an audience and listening, participants not only react and engage with the themes being tabled, they determine the direction that those discussions take - which is a far more productive way of generating ideas and taking the temperature of the area you work in.

The summit leader at this year’s Rewards & Benefits Summit was Simon Hand, who is head of reward and recognition at Vodafone. He said: “This year, we touched on a wide variety of topics, everything from group risk, right through to financial wellbeing and flexible pay. I was hugely energised by the level of engagement today, I think there was a real groundswell of optimism around.”

The way the day is organised means that we participants have much more of a say in the topics that get addressed at each of the mini sessions. So there’s a real sense of inclusion

There were over 120 attendees from more than 90 companies at the invite-only event. “I found the whole day incredibly useful. It’s a great opportunity to sit down with people who work in areas that are completely different to the one that you work in, and to discover that many of the challenges that they face are exactly the same ones that you have to deal with,” said Clare Ryan, HR manager at GSK.

While Carolyn O’Hara, chief HR officer at FDB, commented: “I really enjoyed my day at the Rewards and Benefits Summit, and I found the whole thing really constructive. The way the day is organised means that we participants have much more of a say in the topics that get addressed at each of the mini sessions. So there’s a real sense of inclusion.”

Also there was Daragh O’Mahony, DAA group head of reward, who said: “It was a really productive way to spend the day. It was great being able to bounce ideas off one another. And hearing about the different solutions that other people have come up with when faced with the same sorts of challenges that you have.”

It was a similarly rewarding day for all the event’s partners, which included Laya Healthcare, Aon, and Utmost Corporate Solutions. “It’s peer leaders having conversations with each other, engaging with each other, and developing other thought processes. They are the experts in their field and we want to be talking to leaders in that space,” said Ken Byrne, Laya Healthcare corporate sales manager.

“This event is very different to other events, it’s an opportunity for the HR community to come and share ideas and concepts in a very safe environment. We’re delighted to be involved, this is the second year that we sponsor the event, and we’ll certainly be back next year,” said Ian Thornton, managing director, Aon.

“We’re in the business of providing risk solutions, and we’re interested to hear directly from some of the HR professionals about some of the challenges that they are faced with. Both today and in the immediate future, and how we can provide solutions for them,” added Shane Martin, senior account executive with Utmost Corporate Solutions.

According to BusinessRiver, it is really important to get the mix right at events like these, which is why they make them invitation only. The invitees for this summit were made up of peers and professionals from the community that BusinessRiver has built up through its HR Leadership and Management Awards.

If you would like more information about attending future round table summits, contact BusinessRiver here.