Employee Engagement Summit 2017

CHAIR - Dr Amy Armstrong, Senior Faculty Member, Ashridge Executive Education, Hult International Business School

Amy holds a First Class Bachelor's degree, an MBA, PhD and is also a senior faculty member in Ashridge Executive Education at Hult International Business School. Amy runs leaderships courses within the Ashridge Executive MBA for the Creative Industries (EMBACI) the online Masters in Management (MiM) degree.

Amy recently returned to Ashridge from the University of Bedfordshire where she was a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behabiour. She was previously an Ashridge faculty member for ten years, engaging in research, working with a variety of corporate clients and leading postgraduate programmes. She is a regular writer and speaker on the topics of engagement, authentic leadership, resilience and compassion at work and is particularly interested in how 'crucible experiences' of personal trauma (such as critical illness and bereavement) affect the way in which managers view and approach their work. Amy is also a visiting lecturer at Aston University and she leads the research steam into barriers to engagement for Engage for Success, a Government-led movement which is seeking to improve engagement and well-being levels across the UK.

Cathy Brown, Director, Engage for Success

Currently the Director of Engage for Success, Cathy has wide ranging experience across the public, private and third sectors in raising awareness and providing practical guidance to organisations looking to improve employee engagement. With a background in delivering strategic transformation programmes for a FTSE 100 company, she recognises the importance of values, good management, authentic leadership and the ability to listen in creating environments where people can bring the best of themselves to work every day.

As a long time public speakers and spokesperson for Engage for Success, Cathy engages and energises audiences around business change, leadership and innovation. She passionately believes that helping people find a better way to work can make a big difference to people;s lives, their organisations and ultimately: the country.

Dr. Mark Slaski, Chief Psychologist, WorkplaceBuzz Ltd

Dr. Mark Slaski is Chief Psychologist with WorkplaceBuzz, and widely regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of leadership and engagement. For the past two decades, he has worked with major organisations across the world to build performance excellence, advising C-suit executives on aligning people and business strategies. Mark's greatest asset is his depth of knowledge and insight into human psychology and performance. His greatest skill is his ability to communicate his expertise to help people and organisations achieve greater success.

Mark believes that to fully unlock the talent of any business requires leaders at every level to create engaging workplaces for those who follow. Mark is also a senior lecturer in Organisational Psychology. His own research supports the growing scientific evidence - 'higher engagement equals superior performance, better customer service and an increased sense of belonging and wellbeing'.  

He has presented his findings at a variety of international conferences and published numerous articles. He is also author of Equaliser a globally used online survey and toolkit designed to transform workplace engagement and create great places to work. 

Alice Browne, Talent Manager, Brainlabs Digital

Having graduated from Cambridge University in 2015, Alice joined Brainlabs, the fastest growing tech company in the UK. Immediately heading up the HR department, she wrote the employee handbook, creating initiatives based on scientific research rather than more traditional, accepted methods.

Alice works very closely with the CEO, who started the agency with the mission to "create the best company to work for in the whole wide world" and this has remained a core focus for the company's success. Extremely fast growth has been a massive challenge for a company that prides itself on it's highly inclusive, laid-back culture, prompting the HR department to embrace and initiate innovative change and improvement. Alice has now put several processes in place, working with the tech department to automate everything from the screening of potential candidates to the running of performance reviews without compromising the young and vibrant culture.

Amina Graham, RHP Group Executive Director for Corporate Services, RHP

Amina Graham joined RHP as the Executive Director of Corporate Services in 2008 after 22 years at Marks and Spencer. She has a wealth of business experience in customer service, people management , organisational development and complex change delivery.

At M&S she led the successful delivery of a portfolio of strategic programmes which made a significant contribution to the group's return to growth. Amina's commercial acumen and expertise in customer service has helped RHP deliver sector leading digital services; achieve the gold standard in Investors for People; gain first place in the 2016 Great Place to Work list; win the 2015 CIPD overall award for best employer and employee engagement; RHP being recognised as the most innovation friendly organisation in the housing sector; and RHP becoming one of the top performing organisations in the sector with customer satisfaction at 85% and employee satisfaction at 95%.

Amina's innovative approach was recognised in the HR Most Influential 2016 list.

Chloë Marsh, RHP Group Head of Engagement, RHP

Chloë's experience in HR, L&D and Communications has driven forward award winning employee engagement initiatives an UK leading levels of employee satisfaction, that have in turn delivered better business results.

She joined RHP in 2009 as an HR generalist and in 2011 became their Learning and Development Manager. Chloë played a key role in developing and embedding their cultural change programme 'iamrhp', leading to a significant increase in employee engagement with satisfaction moving from 88% to 97% and RHP gaining a top five place in the Sunday Times Best Companies list for not-for-profit.

Since becoming Head of Engagement, Chloë has helped RHP reach new heights in employee engagement. 

Susan Wareham, Human Resources Director, Northern Gas Network

Susan Wareham joined Northern Gas Networks in August 2005. She has over 30 years' experience working in Human Resources, predominantly in the utilities sector. Susan is committed to employee engagement and encourages a culture of fairness and equality.

Having left school with few academic badges, Susan has studied and progressed through her career and attributes her success to a strong work ethic demonstrated by her parents.

Karen Notaro, Head of Engagement Champions Network, Ministry of Justice 

Karen was born and grew up in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, joining the civil service working for the Department of Works and Pensions in 2000 where she interviewed foreign nationals for National Insurance numbers.

Karen progressed to Customer Services Manager working on the mystery shopping results before joining the then Employment Tribunal Service on promotion in May 2004, moving to work in other parts of the court service in January 2014.

Becoming a member of the Engagement Champions Forum in March 2009, Karen is now the Chair, lead designer of the annual Champions Day, and faciliates bespoke sessions across the MOJ family including Courts, Tribunals and Prisons, developing the Engagement Compendium.

In November 2016, Karen became the Head of Engagement Champions Network and is currently responsible for continuing to grow and up-skill the now 1,000 strong cadre of Engagement Champions across the department.

Cagatay Guney, Co-Founder and CEO, Peoplise 

Cagatay is the CEO of the team at Peoplise.

Cagatay is a Human Resources and Organisation Development professional with more than 20 years of experience, both as a manager in and as an external consultant to several Fortune 500 companies in the USA, Canada and Turkey.

He specialises in organisational structure, strategic planning, talent management and workforce planning. Prior to co-founding Peoplise, he has worked for Deloitte Turkey as Director of HR, for Toyota Turkey as Director of HR and Ford Motor Company as North American, Regional Workforce Readiness Manager.

Cagatay holds an MSc Degree from the Master or Organization Development Programme at Bowling Green State University. He holds a BSc degree in Political Science and Public Administration from the Middle East Technical University.

He served as a member of the State of Illinois Workforce Investment Board and Employment Committee of the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD).

Ray Mulvey, Head of Engagement & Talent East Region, Royal Mail

Ray has worked for the Royal Mail Group for 25 years, joining in Glasgow as a seasonal postal driver in 991. Having had a wide and varied career starting in operational management, to his current role, Ray is passionate about organisational development in particular the design of leadership interventions that have engagement and coaching practice at their core.

Ray is on of a cadre of internal business coaches with a diploma in performance coaching from Lane 4 / Middlesex University. His commitment is to dedicate 25 hours per month to help, support and encourage personal growth in others. Outside of Royal Mail, Ray is a board trustee of a charity which helps adults with disabilities to live the most active and independent lives possible.

Nick Hayter, Chartered Psychologist and Senior Managing Consultant, IBM

Nick is a Chartered Psychologist and Senior Managing Consultant within IBM's Workforce Science & Analytics Practice. He specialises in helping organisations impact their business through data-driven decision making - creating a strategy to listen, analyse and act on priorities for engaging and enabling their workforce.

As a former psychometrician, he is comfortable using advanced analytics to draw conclusions from data and he has extensive experience of facilitating presentation and workshops with business leaders, where the aim is to establish consensus regarding the priorities for follow up action.

Julie Menninga, Head of Learning and Development International London, Ketchum

Julia leads Ketchum University International and is responsible for strategy, learning design and delivery for Europe and Asia, plus over 20 affiliate offices. With more than 9 years of experience in HR and Learning & Development with fields including HR strategy, talent management, recruitment , employer branding, training design and delivery, learning culture and leadership development: Julia designs and delvers training for professional competencies in communications, client relationship management and leadership.

With more than 10 years experience in communication consulting and communication management with a focus on corporate communications, corporate publishing, internal and HR communications and change management, she consults teams in developing learning structures, designs and content.

She is part of the Jury of the 2015 and 2017 Global Council of Corporate Universities awards and is a member of the jury of the UK Employee Experience awards 2016 and 2017.

Trevor Lister, Operational Response Engineer, Northern Gas Networks

Trevor started at NGN on 1 September 2014 as an Operational Response Engineer. In this role, he responded to emergency calls regarding gas leaks and any unsafe gas situations. Trevor quickly became involved with Team 10 focusing on improving customer service and sharing best practice across the network.

Trevor proceeded to work on a number of projects in the summer of 2015. The successful delivery of those projects, saw Trevor taking on board a development role as Site Manager for the purge and relight engineers in construction services.

Trevor is also involved with the NGN Colleague Involvement Group and is currently involved in the innovation project with the CNG vehicle trial.

Clare Ramsay, Head of Technical Delivery, Northern Gas Networks

Clare Ramsay took up the role of Technical Project Manager for Northern Gas Networks in May 2015 before moving into the role of Head of Technical Delivery in March 2016.  She has 14 years management experience, having undertaken up roles both in the private and public sector. 

Clare is passionate about supporting the transformation of the IT infrastructure to provide intuitive IT for colleagues, enhancing and driving their ability to perform within their roles.   

Clare is a member of the NGN Colleague Involvement Group and is also part of the Professional Development Programme running within NGN.