PURPOSEFUL HUSTLE BLOG

Photo by The Malicotes Rebecca Dekker, PhD, RN, is the founder and CEO of Evidence Based Birth® and the author of Babies Are Not Pizzas: They’re Born, Not Delivered! Dr. Dekker has earned a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD in Nursing. Previously, Dr. Dekker was an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing. In 2016, Dr. Dekker left academia to focus full time on the mission of Evidence Based Birth. The team she leads at Evidence Based Birth is working to create a world in which all families have access to safe, respectful, evidence-based, and empowering care during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

How to Incite Change After an Employee Resource Group Event If your business objective is progress, which it undoubtedly is, then the purpose of your employee workshop is to prompt some type of change within your organization. Whether the speaking engagement is about safety or goal-setting, you want your staff to make real advancements after the event.

You know that moment when you’re watching a television show, and one of the characters is in mortal danger, or the two characters whom you just know have to end up together have a special moment where they just might kiss, and then there’s a commercial? Or worse, the episode ends? And you ball your hands into fists and scream at the sky, “NOOOO!” Most of us know that moment. It’s a universal tactic: If you end on a note where the audience just has to know what happens next, you’ve got them hooked for another episode. Or, in the world of your employee resource group, another meeting.

The pressure is on. You’re the head of your employee resource group (ERG), or perhaps on the committee. And now it’s fallen to you to plan an event—one that captures the soul of your group, keeps people in their chairs, and maintains the company’s goals. And you realize: You don’t know where to start.

Ask any event planner, and they will tell you that their job is not easy. Even if they love it, they can surely regale you with stories of events gone wrong, of troublesome vendors, of technical mishaps, of catastrophes and disasters and cataclysms that undercut your otherwise perfect event. After all, if event planning is a career unto itself, it can’t be all that easy, can it?

The centerpiece of almost any special employee resource group event is the guest speaker. After all, many of the members of an employee resource group already know each other. They’ve met at work, or at previous events or meetings. They’ve heard each other’s stories, perhaps even worked directly with each other. So one of the best ways to draw in an audience is to put someone on the agenda who has a fresh perspective. Someone who shares your values or ideals or goals but whom you don’t see in the break room.