Leadership Conference & Best Places to Work

For 2020, our new Leadership Conference and Best Places to Work have been combined.

This virtual Leadership Conference is designed for leaders and emerging leader representing companies of all sizes in our community. The focus is to improve our company cultures to meet the demands of our customers and balance the needs of our talent pool. You will learn from existing organizations how they have changed their culture to incorporate more open and transparent communications engaging more employees and working together to better the community. 

Additionally, our Best Places to Work program recognizes organizations who are changing and embracing new employment and leadership practices. Investing in this program positions your company in front of business leaders of all sizes, and says you care about this community and wish to support those leaders making a difference in the lives of your customers and employees.

We will hear from our Keynote speaker for the day Dirk Buengel, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, followed by Patricia Wooten, Human Resources Manager with the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and New River Valley Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM) Programs Chair.

Participating in Best Places to Work provides your company AND YOUR TEAM BRAGGING RIGHTS AND A SENSE OF PRIDE.  You will also gain insights into how your organization is doing culturally and strategically. You can also see areas such as communication, alignment of mission, and more, that you can improve upon and develop a plan to improve.  There are two components of this survey. One is for the Leadership team to complete. The second survey is for the team members/employees to complete.
The computer-generated results measure the gaps between the two groups. The higher the score, the more substantial the employee alignment is with that of leadership. We recognize those companies with high alignment scores. Your Chamber never sees who responded, although we encourage you to open this to all employees. Chamber membership is not required.

Company or Organization Leaders complete this one:
https://virginiatech.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6G6oZRMh3dFdZOd (Due by August 16, 2020)
 
Team members or Employees complete this one:
https://virginiatech.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2mkcUMGYzuvejNX (Due by August 16, 2020)

2020 "Wall of Fame" Nomination Form (Due by August 16, 2020)

2020 "30 Under 30" Nomination Form (Due by August 16, 2020)

Does Culture Matter?
 
Culture includes stuff like norms of purpose, values, approach; it is the stuff that is hard to quantify, hard to evaluate, and hard to measure. This means it is also hard to manage.

Strategy is the road map to where the organization is going. It has been said that culture is the invisible glue that holds the organization together. Culture is the element of trust, disagreements, communications, and resolution, and process handling.

How we get things done drives performance. By definition, culture is the set of habits that allows a group of people to cooperate by assumption rather than negotiation.

If we wish to succeed in business, we must understand that culture drives innovation, execution, and whatever it is going to be.

When the evaluation of best places to work was developed, the Chamber worked to have both strategy and culture built into the criteria.

Nilofer Merchant, the corporate advisor, says culture will trump strategy every time.
 
Join us as we learn more about Strategy vs. Culture and an additional presentation on “How to change culture.”