August Meeting: AACA Annual Forum

7:30 am – 8:00 am

Registration, Networking, Continental Breakfast

8:00 am – 8:15 am

General Business Session

8:15 am –  8:30 am

Break, Continental Breakfast

Session #1:
8:30 am –
9:30 am

Break:
9:30 am –
9:45 am

Session #2:
9:45 am - 10:45am

Finding the Strategy in HR Analytics: Linking HR to Business Value

HR Analytics has been identified as one of the top 5 concerns for HR across the globe yet 86% of companies admit to having no analytics talent in HR. Join Tracey Smith in this session to learn how HR leaders can leverage HR analytics to make better talent decisions and connect HR data to business outcomes.

Learning Objectives: 

• Assess the maturity level of HR Analytics in your own organization
• Select the right metrics and HR Analytics technology to best suit your needs
• Determine the steps for performing an effective analysis
• Connect HR results to business results to demonstrate HR’s value

Tracey Smith - President of Numerical Insights, LLC

Tracey has been recognized as one of the "Top 50 Global Influencers in HR Analytics." Specializing in business analytics, Tracey has helped well-known companies in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Europe plan and execute their strategic initiatives. From strategic planning to hands-on analytics projects to technology assessments, Tracey has worked with companies in multiple industries and multiple countries to turn analytics into business value.

Incentive Compensation Today: What’s Hot? And What’s Not?

Take a quick tour of the incentive compensation landscape of leading US companies to understand what’s hot, what’s not, and what role incentive compensation may play in creating the high impact rewards structure of the future.

Drawing on incentive trends and practices emerging in the current competitive marketplace --as well as on a detailed national survey of over 300 organizations-- David Cheatham, a Specialist Leader with Deloitte Consulting LLP, will highlight current practice and key considerations for typical incentive compensation programs. Programs highlighted will include the annual incentive plan, discretionary bonuses, spot awards, project completion and retention bonuses, and team awards.

Additionally, David will discuss the four critical components that must be present for any incentive program to be successful and how to determine if your plans meet those criteria or not.

David Cheatham - Specialist Leader at Deloitte Consulting 

David is a creative and collaborative thought leader in innovative approaches to total rewards strategy, design, and communication to maximize the return on investment in employee rewards programs. A frequent speaker and author on compensation and total rewards topics, David serves as an instructor for WorldatWork certification programs and spent more than 20 years at The Coca-Cola Company serving as Compensation Director.

Stepping out from Behind the Curtain: Selling the Value of Your Sales Compensation Program

While many HR and Sales Operations Executives have mastered the art of sales compensation design, there is still often a gap between analytical reviews of comp data and the communication that is provided to the executive level sponsors and stakeholders. Being able to break down the dry numbers into simple messages and insightful commentary that allows an executive to make decisions remains a challenge for many.

Based on years of experience working with executive teams, this session will walk participants through meaningful illustrations of how they can boost the value of their plan performance review and create & deploy tailored sales compensation plan evaluations that are enlightening and impactful for key executives.

This session will:

• Explain how to effectively set expectations with sales executives about what success in your programs should look like
• Explain how to add value to the business through executive sales  compensation  reviews
• Explain the big picture points of what is most important from target-setting to payouts
• Explain how to show how sales results impact pay & whether or not pay was predicted based upon historical results
• Illustrate the components of compensation to further highlight what’s driving overall pay
• Explain and provide examples of the proper tools and visuals that can help illustrate the messaging to executives.

Joe Owen - Director, Sales Compensation & Analysis at Cox Communications

Joe Owen has direct experience aligning sales compensation strategy in a traditionally decentralized organization and building a best-in-class sales compensation organization from scratch. Previously, Joe spent twelve years at Verizon Business, formerly MCI, in Sales Operations, the last seven of which were focused on sales compensation, coordinating the complicated space between Sales, HR, and Finance. He has spoken previously on the practical approaches to gaining efficiency & effectiveness in sales compensation programs by viewing them through a Sales Operations lens.

10:45 am – 11:00 am

Break, Refreshments

11:00 am –12:00 pm

Keynote Presentation: Competing in a Chaotic Economy - Todd Buchholz 

As the presidential election race kicks into its final months, companies must grapple with crucial questions:  Can the Fed prod the economy to recover, while Brexit and other worries drag down sentiment?  Will the Fed keep its independence or be turned into a tool of the White House?  Will the next president look to hike the minimum wage and tighten overtime rules, or give firms more leeway on employee work rules and compensation? Will the next president take a “get-tough” attitude with China? Will the U.S. build up bigger and bigger debts without tackling entitlements? By “connecting the dots” of the world economy, former Presidential advisor Todd Buchholz will help you develop a timely vision for the economy, the financial markets, and the dramatic presidential race ahead.  

As a frequent commentator on the state of the markets, Todd Buchholz brings his experience as a former White House director of economic policy, a managing director of the $15 billion Tiger hedge fund, and a Harvard economics teacher to the cutting edge of economics, fiscal politics, finance, and business strategy. Buchholz is a frequent guest on ABC News, PBS, and CBS, and he recently hosted his own special on CNBC. Buchholz has debated such luminaries in the field as Lester Thurow and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. 

Before joining Tiger in 1996, Buchholz was President of the G7 Group, Inc, an international consulting firm whose clientele included many of the top securities firms, investment banks and money managers in New York, London, and Tokyo, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. His commentaries were closely read by officials at the Federal Reserve, Bundesbank and Bank of England. From 1989 to 1992 he served at the White House as a Director for Economic Policy. Buchholz won the Allyn Young Teaching Prize at Harvard and holds advanced degrees in economics and law from Cambridge and Harvard.