Attorney Charlie Plumb represents management in all phases of employment law and labor relations, including compliance with state and federal regulations. He leads programs on best practices for avoiding legal missteps in the recruiting process and conflict arising from the employer/employee relationship. Charlie will provide plain English instructions for how to spot and eliminate A/E/C remote employee recruiting and management practices that can trigger a complaint with regulatory agencies, even an expensive lawsuit. His workshop at A/E/C PeopleMAX drew rave reviews and we are honored to have him back.

As the pandemic eases and demand for A/E services has already increased significantly, many A/E firms are feeling pressure to expand their teams immediately. Yet it’s not always feasible for firms to offer higher compensation packages for new employees after this historic year. What if there was a better way? Mariah Meyer, Executive Vice President at BRR Architecture, an 11-office, 300+ employee firm, will explain how it is thriving in an environment where demand for highly productive architects and engineers is starting to again exceed supply. You’ll get step-by-step guidance on creating a culture of continual improvement and professional development an alternative recruitment and retention tactic. By focusing on these initiatives, BRR has created satisfied employee ambassadors who support the firm’s recruitment initiatives and further amplify the brand. Since creating this sense of purpose and a culture of continual improvement, BRR has enjoyed several years of growth, and differentiated itself from other firms.

In this session, you:

• Understand how to make your firm's culture enhance recruitment messaging
• Learn how fostering a sense of purpose, more than adding perks, benefits recruitment
• Get low-cost ways to create a culture of purpose and differentiate your firm
• See how a personalized, hands-on recruiting approach delivers superior ROI
• Learn how to develop strong employee ambassadors for the firm

• What makes hybrid work, work? How hybrid work differs from work from home
• How to identify who would be eligible for hybrid work approach
• The benefits of hybrid work for your most valuable A/E/C talent
• Solutions to the challenges with implementing a hybrid model

88% of A/E/C firm employees and 94% of executives believe a strong firm culture is the key to success. Two-thirds of prospective candidates say that culture and core values are the most important factor when considering career opportunities. The fact is, culture is quickly becoming the competitive advantage for A/E/C firms in a post-Covid world. We know that culture is key, but it's also a mystery. Whether intentionally or accidentally, every firm has a culture, but only about 1 in 4 of executives say they understand it. Is it bean bag chairs? Is it unlimited PTO? Is it remote work? Let's take the mystery out of engineering a performance culture and install practices that attract, engage, and retain superstars while boosting morale, productivity, and, ultimately, profitability.

• Identify culture cancers: Examine the key culture-busting behaviors many leaders unintentionally make that have been exacerbated during the pandemic.
• Reboot your cultural framework: Formulate a set of robust shared values and high-performance standards that undergird every culture.
• Supercharge engagement: Identify the proven strategies and tactics that will help embed the cultural changes, energize team members, and boost productivity and morale.

Great design and technical staff, the lifeblood of your firm, are the hottest thing in recruiting right now, and that means yours are probably getting approached by other headhunters on a daily basis. Problem is, you can't throw money at all of them to keep the wolves at bay, so you need a formal, logical, and defensible professional staff pay structure supported by sound financial underpinnings. In this action-oriented session, A/E/C firm CFO Jenifer Navard uses hard salary data and real-world examples to explain:

• Why position descriptions are a terrible way to set salaries right now
• The 4 critical factors that must guide every salary offer for design and technical professionals, and the high costs of ignoring them.
• How the latest survey data on chargeability, billing rates and direct labor multiplier can help you determine the financial impact of salary increases.
• How to establish an equitable market-based salary structure for key contributors and potential new hires.
• The right way to look at gender pay equity in staff discussions.

A study released in September 2020 by Upwork found that 36% of the U.S. workforce earned income through freelancing during the pandemic, an increase of 8 percentage points over the company’s 2019 study’s results. Meanwhile, changes in technology, increasing demands on A/E firms, and evolving social norms for interpersonal interaction in a post-COVID-19 world require a more creative strategy for how we do business. As the traditional workplace is redefined by these and other changes, firm owners and managers have an opportunity to refine and improve the way our industry completes projects. Specifically, A/E firms can increase workflow efficiency by tapping into the fast-growing trend of on-demand, freelance talent. The A/E field has been relatively slow to adopt the freelance model, but the pandemic experience has shown how remote workers can perform as efficiently and often more cost-effectively than onsite employees. An increasing number of A/E firm leaders now recognize that freelance staff is a viable option to address workload fluctuations, creating a growing trend that’s likely to explode at some point. This presentation by management operations expert Marc Arnold, AIA, illustrates how more efficient use of freelancers and a more flexible staffing approach can help A/E firms improve workflow efficiency on the way toward achieving the elusive goal of selling value rather than just selling time.

• Create a more flexible workplace that aids productivity, morale and financial performance.
• Build on the experience with and acceptance of remote workers, whether on staff or freelance.
• Move your practice away from hourly based to value-based project management and compensation.
• Reconfigure your workplace to better accommodate today's business realities and prepare for the future.
• Incorporate freelance staff into your workflow, and avoid common pitfalls in the process.

As more A/E/C firms embrace a permanent hybrid WFA arrangement to accommodate their valuable talent, more Principals and PMs report employees struggling to remain fully productive when working remotely. From loss of culture and collaboration to distractions and disengagement, talent management professionals have their hands full! In this session, workforce management thought leader and A/E/C firm VP of HR Kathy Prock will give us some proven strategies for keeping everyone accountable and focused on executing projects:

• How to use disciplined communication schedules to pull teams together.
• 4 elements of a productive “town hall” zoom meeting your remote employees will love.
• Time allocation, monitoring, and feedback strategies that satisfy top leaders.
• Remote workforce management tools that solve for workflow, security, and productivity.
• Steps A/E/C firms are taking to maintain culture, collaboration, and connectivity while people work remotely.

A journey of a pre-COVID remote company that engages employees and technology to achieve growth and profitability. Learn management ideas that will impact your firm’s performance and achieve results and success in a remote world.

Could your firm's project managers and Principal be sending the wrong message when communicating with clients? Could they unwittingly damage your firm's brand and its ability to keep project pipelines full by projecting a disengaged or unconfident attitude? After technical ability, the most important determinant of success in professional services is the ability to leverage "presence", the nonverbal signals we send through body language. In this session, master A/E/C coach Dean Hyers explains how you can become your firm's Presence Champion, the leader who helps key team members nurture, display, and embody a brand-consistent presence that instills confidence in clients and drives repeat business. You learn how to:

• Improve your own presence in meetings, conversation, presentation and virtual "Zoom-style" interactions.
• Communicate to protect team member vulnerabilities.
• Become your firm's presence champion, with specific actionable steps to elevate your team.
• Model “the new bold,” a presence that is all at once “command yet also nurture.”
• Avoid negative impacts of group-think, emotional volatility, and overly assertive individuals.

Your A/E/C firm's ability to attract, hire, engage and retain the BEST talent has a direct impact on your bottom line. But it's getting harder and harder to find that talent, given a rapidly recovering economy and firms' committment to retaining their key contributors. Website postings and job board ads only attract candidates in an active job search, NOT the 85% of the talent pool who are employed. Skill based requisitions and long hiring processes could also put your firm at a competitive disadvantage. But fear not! You CAN achieve your talent recruiting goals using the tested techniques that global talent expert Barb Bruno brings to her closing keynote:

• Six words that dramatically improve the talent you will recruit and hire.
• Voice mail, email and in mail that will be answered by top talent.
• Triple your referrals of top talent and fill requisitions faster.
• How employee engagement and retention starts with recruiting.
• The impact on recruiting post-Covid
• How Salary Ban Laws are affecting compensation
• New emphasis on DEI