Cath Luyten

Cath Luyten has been producing TV programmes for VRT for the past twenty years. She was first employed by the public broadcaster itself, but has been working exclusively for production house deMensen since 2013. This has given her the opportunity to fully utilise her interviewing skills, in series like Buurman, wat doet u nu. For five full seasons, she has been calling on intriguing Dutch and Flemish personalities and interviewing them over a period of 48 hours. ‘When you sleep over somewhere, you create a bond that allows you to go deeper.’ She occupied the spare bedroom of people like Henny Vrienten, Jeroen Krabbe, Rene Van der Gijp… All of them gave in to the charm with which Cath convinces people to reveal their inner thoughts, but always with the utmost respect. In talk shows like Vandaag over een Jaar and Cath & Gasten, she proves that she perfectly masters the skills of curious listening, relevant responses and impeccable timing.

She is an ambassador for Mercy Ships, which is an international volunteer organisation that offers medical assistance by taking its hospital ship to the poorest African countries.

Bruce Daisley

Bruce Daisley is a best-selling author and technology leader from the UK. He spent 8 years as EMEA Vice President for Twitter. Prior to this, Daisley ran YouTube UK at Google. Daisley is an expert on the transformations that modern work is undergoing - acting as a consultant for a wide range of companies – from the hottest new technology sensations to centuries-old primary production firms.

Whether addressing governmental bodies or banking organisations Daisley has been praised for sharing an inspiring vision of the future work and leaving audiences with actionable insights into their own companies.

Bruce is the author of several best-selling books on work culture: “The Joy of Work” and “Eat Sleep, Work Repeat”.

Mark Curtis

Mark Curtis is  a serial entrepreneur and innovator who has worked in media, digital, mobile and design for over 30 years.

He leads the creation of Fjord’s famous annual report –Fjord Trends and is a thought leader around the intersection of human and technology.

Mark is a frequent speaker at conferences and commentator in the media. He has published a book, "Distraction -Being Human in the Digital Age".

Prior to Fjord, which he co-founded in 2001, he established Curtis Hoy (which) pioneered a new market sector of radio sales promotion in 1989 as the commercial UK radio industry flourished under deregulation.

In 1994 he and a business partner set up CHBi to explore the marketing potential of the (then) emerging interactive and “new" media. In 1998 he sold CHBi to Razorfish. Mark's role evolved to EVP Products and Service in which he ran a change management programme for all 2,000 employees which restructured and radically simplified Razorfish's approach to clients and projects.

Between 2005 and 2011 Mark stepped out of Fjord to run Flirtomatic, a mobile dating start-up incubated by Fjord. As CEO he raised over $10m and pioneered the mobile dating industry, in particular bringing the freemium revenue model to mobile for the first time.

Kris Legroe

Kris has over 20 years of extensive experience in HR, Shared Services and IT. At Telenet he leads Employee Services which aims to improve the employee experience end to end in people processes, Facilities, Digital Workplace and Safety & Health. With his team the current focus and initiatives are organized around 3 main themes: Workplace of the future, Workforce Tooling & Analytics and Employee Experience. In the past 2 years, the team has implemented and experimented an AI based skills engine, translating functions and strategy into skills, automating processes using Robotics process automation and conversational automation from an employee helpdesk perspective.

Kriti Sharma

Kriti Sharma is an Artificial Intelligence expert and a leading global voice on ethical technology and its impact on society. In addition to advising global businesses on AI, she focuses on AI for Social Good.
She is the founder of “AI for Good” and was VP of Artificial Intelligence at some FTSE 100 companies. Kriti has experience managing global Machine Learning and Digital products in regulated industries and has been leading chatbot projects for various social causes.
While much of Silicon Valley worry about doomsday scenarios where AI will take over human civilization, Kriti Sharma has a different kind of concern: What happens if disadvantaged groups don’t have a say in the technology we’re creating?

Pieter Van Leugenhagen

Pieter Van Leugenhagen is an all-round entrepreneur, public speaker and marketer with a penchant for immersive experiences. As co-founder and managing partner at yondr, Pieter spearheads immersive media across the globe. Yondr is an award-winning immersive media agency focusing on VR/AR, virtual worlds & digital experiences.
Pieter is a true immersive marketing evangelist, and a visionary strategist at that. He’s been at the helm of virtual reality entrepreneurship since 2014, successfully venturing beyond the
gimmick by pushing boundaries and forging strategic partnerships.
Nowadays he's mainly focussing, as one of the founders, on the launch of VRTL Academy.
VRTL inspires and educates professionals, brands and enterprises about all things virtual and puts them on the right track towards the metaverse.

Rahaf Harfoush

Rahaf Harfoush is New York Times Best Selling Author & Professor, researching the impacts of emerging technologies on our society. She was a member of Barack Obama’s digital media team during the 2008 Presidential elections and now advises Presidents Macrons National Digital Council in France.

She focuses on understanding the deep (and often hidden) behavioral shifts that are taking place within organizations. In 2021 she joined The Oxford Internet Institute as a Visiting Policy Fellow and she teaches “Innovation & Emerging Business Models” at Sciences Politique’s school of Management and Innovation in Paris.

Her third book, entitled “Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work,” was released in 2019. She has been featured by Bloomberg, The CBC, CTV, and Forbes for her work on workplace culture. It has been translated into Chinese and French. 

Formerly, Rahaf was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva where she helped identify disruptive-startups that were improving the state of the world.

Rahaf is the co-author of “The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know your Customers”  It was published in early 2014 and was listed on both the New York Times and USA Today best seller lists. It won a 2015 Gold Axiom Award for Best Business Technology Book. The Decoded Company explores how big data is providing an unprecedented opportunity for organizations to dramatically improve their decision making, increase their performance and, most importantly, intentionally create happy and vibrant work cultures.

Her first book, “Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand” chronicled her experiences as a member of Barack Obama’s digital media team during the 2008 Presidential elections and explored how social networking revolutionized political campaign strategy.

In 2019, the prestigious “Les Napoleons” named Rahaf as one of the most innovative women in France. She was listed as one of the top future thinkers to shape the world by the Hay Literary Festival in 2017. Rahaf was named as a Young Global Changer by the G20 Global Think Tank Summit.  Rahaf has also been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Shaper, and by the Women’s Forum ort he Economy and Society as a Rising Talent for her thought leadership in the fields of digital culture and technology. In 2014, Rahaf was also named as a “Canadian Arab to Watch,” by the Canadian Arab Institute. She is a member of the German Marshall Network of Transatlantic Leaders.

Rahaf’s writing has been featured in HBR, Wired, The Globe and Mail, Fast Company, Monocle, The Financial Times, Techonomy, The Next Web and many more. She is a frequent commentator on France24 and the CBC. She has been speaking about Digital Culture and Technology since 2006. 

In her spare time, Rahaf enjoys instagramming too many pictures of her dog Pixel, learning how to play the ukulele and working on her first novel.

Peter Rutanga

After 17 years in international roles for large Tech Companies such as Microsoft, Fujitsu, Oracle, Peter joined CoachHub's exciting mission to democratize access to coaching at all career levels in July '21. CoachHub is the number one fast-growing pioneer in the field of AI-driven employee coaching platforms and provides access to more than 3500 Top Business Coaches worldwide.

As responsible for the Belgian & Luxembourg markets, Peter helps companies thrive by developing Easy-to-Use, Scalable and Measurable Coaching Programs, using CoachHub's AI-Enabled Employee Coaching Platform, to help turn Individual growth into Desired Organizational Outcomes.

How to build a World Class Onboarding Experience for Young Talent by Democratizing Coaching

As the War for Talent is gradually shifting to the War for retention, CoachHub and Ausy have partnered to enhance Ausy's Onboarding and Talent retention strategy, in order to help Ausy realize its "Tech with Personality" promise. In this Breakout Session Marie Monteyne, Knowledge Manager and Ausy Academy Lead, and Peter Rutanga, Enterprise Transformation Manager @ CoachHub will share how Ausy implemented their in-house Academy to speed up their young talent's growth by providing them very specific and personal guidance during their onboarding experience. They'll discuss how personalized digital coaching helped improve their self awareness and sense of belonging with Ausy as they are dispatched on Tech consulting missions.

Together with:
Marie Monteyne

Daan De Wever

Daan De Wever studied Economics at the KUL, followed by a Masterclass in Financial Management in Antwerp and successfully followed several management programs at the Vlerick Business School. Daan started his career in 2001. From the very beginning he gave his entrepreneurial spirit free rein. At the age of 21 he founded, together with his brother Samuel, Belgian Network Solutions (Benesol) that sells server space for Belgian IRC channels. In 2004 he led (together with the CEO) the successful start-up of Infranea, a construction company specializing in 3D engineering, and in 2008 he founded Destiny. The entry of a number of business angels and small start-up funds made it possible for Destiny to become a prominent Belgian player in the then still small cloud telecom market.

Today Daan is CEO of Dstny, which has grown into a leading European provider of cloud-based business communications, delivered both directly to companies and through partners and service providers. In this fast growing scale-up, Daan saw a huge opportunity to apply his experience in the information and services industry, as well as skills in M&A, management and coaching a young, dynamic team. He built Dstny in a sustainable way. From the first acquisitions in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, over crucial acquisitions in 2021 in Sweden and Denmark, to the most recent acquisitions in a.o. UK today. Dstny's rapid but sustainable growth has been achieved by Daan through an arrowhead acquisition process and buy and build strategy thanks to attracting the right investors: Mentha Capital Private Equity in 2015 and in December 2019 French Apax Partners took up the torch.

In February this year, Daan united the more than 10 companies in the group under one new brand identity and changed the name from Destiny to Dstny. To further build European brand awareness, Daan also steps into cycling sponsorship and with Dstny becomes the new co-title sponsor of the Belgian UCI Worldtour cycling team Lotto-Dstny starting in 2023.

Today, Dstny - under Daan's leadership - has grown into a leading European player in interactive and cloud-based business communication tools that operates in 7 European countries (Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, UK) from its headquarters in Brussels, employs more than 900 people, helps simplify the daily lives of more than 2.5 million users and closed 2021 with annual revenues of €190 million.

Together with:
Jonas Geleyn – Vitamins@Work

Jonas recently joined Vitamins as their new CEO. He has a demonstrated history of working in the consumer goods industry. In his most recent role, Jonas held the post of Global Head of Value Retail at Unilever. Jonas has a strong commercial outlook and an entrepreneurial approach to business development. Together with a multidisciplinary expert team he proudly introduces Vitamins as a purpose driven compass to navigate employee well-being and engagement in the future world of work.

Sara Cauwenbergh

Before Sara started working as Recruitment Evangelist for Indeed, she delved into search engines such as Google and Bing and social media algorithms such as Facebook. She trained and coached companies as well as internal employees on their digital knowledge and applying the right marketing mix.
Today, Sara analyses data from the Indeed search engine. She helps employers make their search for the right candidates easier by introducing them to the insights of online job searching.

Session

The labour market is undergoing a major transition. The scarcity of talent continues to rise and employers are doing everything they can to attract the right people on time.
In this breakout we will discuss what developments we are currently seeing and look at shifts and the impact of the pandemic. We discuss where the opportunities lie and what risks are involved.

During this session

• We are sharing insights and trends on the Flemish labour market
• You will find out how the pandemic has affected the behaviour of job seekers
• You will learn how to actively search for talent as an employer in a competitive labour market

Soetkin Vincké

Soetkin has been working in ICT for 17 years, with a strong focus on digital collaboration.
For her, technology needs to go hand in hand with business outcomes and employee wellbeing. Her quintessential conversation partners are therefore HR, Communication, and C-level.
No bits and bites here. But a firm understanding of what a business needs to thrive as a great place to work.

Data as the pillar of modern HR

For HR Business Partners, hybrid work (or whatever the new hype-word is) comes with its own set of challenges: the combination of remote work and work at the office, has increased the need for data-driven HR. How to measure employee wellbeing, when you hardly see co-workers anymore? Luckily, data is abundantly available, as people work together ‘in the cloud’. And maybe we can help prevent burnouts and map employee tendencies, making use of these data. Join us in the break-out room to learn all about how data can be the pillar of modern HR, and allow an organization to become even more people oriented. And don’t worry, no IT PhD’s needed here. The data works for you, not the other way around.

Andrew Simmonds

HR Entrepreneur, Owner of Profile Group and Talentfinder

Born in England, Andrew studied Business & Marketing and developed his career as European Sales Manager for a toy company.
In this role, he was sent to Belgium and there he decided to create Profile Group in 1990.
Starting from zero he built a company focused on recruitment and technology to bring innovative solutions to the market.
Today Profile Group is the recruitment company with the largest palette of recruitment solutions with 3 offices in Belgium and its software development team based in Thailand.
Developing technology that can improve both the recruiter and the candidate experience whilst providing strong HR analytics for managers is Andrew's purpose.

Recruitment technology that gets you chosen

We will talk about the fact that the recruitment market has changed with of course less candidates but more importantly a new generation with new needs and aspirations.
That is why recruitment technology, built initially to 'de-select' candidates, should now focus more on engaging candidates and helping companies to be chosen.
We are sharing our insights on how the use of best practice technology can help companies get chosen.

Together with:
Jeroen Van Geel – Profile Group

Karolien Scheerlinck

Karolien Scheerlinck is manager of the VDAB AI Center of Excellence. She is responsible for developing VDAB’s first Artificial Intelligence model “Distance to the labour market”. This model is currently used to prioritise jobseekers according to their probability to find a job. The AI Center of Excellence has a track record of award-winning tools, such as our AI vacancy matching engine Jobnet and our orientation tool Jobreach. Previously she worked as a research engineer at the Belgian railway company Infrabel and Be-Mobile.

Using data and AI to discover competences and new career opportunities

At VDAB, we notice that, because of the complex and dynamic labor market, citizens have little insight in their competences or skills. They don’t know how their jobs are evolving through time, and because of that they don’t know whether their skills are still relevant. In addition, they have no idea which occupations are closely related to their current occupation in terms of required skills. 

VDAB is therefore investigating solutions that quickly, easily and clearly inform citizens about their position in the current labor market, so that they can decide what the next step can be in their careers and which trainings they could possibly follow to boost their curriculum. Within this domain, we have developed an application, known as “Competentiecheck”. This application provides citizens with several valuable insights regarding the latest skill evolutions on the labour market, their position on the labour market and which trainings can be relevant for them. This application results from a thorough skill trend analysis and is based on the VDAB Skill Framework, in which all currently requested jobs and competences are captured.

Together with:
Sarah Vluymans – VDAB

Michael Neefs

Michael is a passionate HR-Tech expert, leading the Cornerstone new business Sales in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Experienced entrepreneur and excited employee sharpening his next decade's plan with a strong focus on transforming Human Capital Management and people success through instrumental cloud-based software solutions delivered by Cornerstone OnDemand.

Bringing more than a decade of experience of Digital transformation of IT, Sales & Operations organizations, Michael loves to engage with HR organizations to improve and solve their complex challenges, connecting to the suitable technology when appropriate.

Michael guides international, public sector, medium-sized & large companies to align their People strategy with their Corporate or Business strategy. His goal is to increase the business impact and value that Cornerstone’s Solutions is proposing.

During his spare time, Michael is engaged to his music producter life and crafting contemporary art & painting.

Preparing for the Future of Work: Building Business Impact into your L&D Strategy

We’re probably all tired of hearing the phrase “The New Normal,” but we know that with changes brought by COVID that learning and the role of L&D will never be the same. This is a year of transformation – a sort of L&D mid-life crisis.

But what are we transforming into? In many ways L&D is coming face to face with its own mortality in a ‘’ change or die ‘ scenario. Traditionally, we’ve relied on surveys and happy sheets to prove ourselves, knowing that what we are building has value – the value of learning and driving learning culture. But how do we prove it to our partners in the business ? A new piece of tech or buying that cool motorcycle can take us only part of the way. In order to survive and thrive, it’s time to look at it in a new way and take advantage of this transformational moment to re-evaluate our own L&D business strategy.

Together with:
Glenn Van den steen

Frans van de Ven

Frans guides executive teams and their HR partners through the domains of leadership, talent management and organisational change. Today he shares his professional experience, which he acquired at companies such as IBM, Siemens, PwC and Johnson & Johnson, as an independent coach advisor for Randstad RiseSmart. In that role he works for a wide range of national and international clients, both in the private and public sector. Frans is a guest lecturer at Antwerp Management School and an executive coach for Vlerick Business School.

Unlock your internal talent marketplace

How are you monitoring and managing your internal talent marketplace? Are you still using a reactive, case-by-case approach? Or are you working towards a pro-active, integrated and data driven approach? At Randstad Risesmart, we definitely opt for the latter option. Using "high tech" to capture smart data, plotting personal performance, potential and ambitions that predict possible career development options and actions. Using "high touch" to convert this information into professional and caring career conversations and talent review discussions.

Wondering if you should participate? Take our free 5-minute “talent management maturity scan” to determine how advanced your current internal talent marketplace practices are.

Together with:
Wouter Van Bockhaven – TalentLogiQs

Francisco Bolanos Vainstein

Francisco Bolaños Vainstein, is an expert in topics related to labor markets, political economics and socio-economic panels. He is Manager in Communications Research & Insights at StepStone, since 2022. He has been invited to international TV, Deutsche Welle, as expert in economics; and has published newspaper articles in Latin America, foremost about labour markets and gender differences. He has worked as Research and Teaching Assistant at the University of Wuppertal where he has taught political economics, microeconomics, and international economics. He was scholarship recipient and full-time participant of the Advanced Studies Program at the Institute for the World Economy in Kiel, Germany. He speaks English, German and Spanish. Francisco advocates that we should embrace diversity to build more resilient societies

The great, global Arbeiterlosigkeit: Its consequences and chances for HR

• How do global labor markets develop in the next years?
• Why should we describe the emerging situation as great “Arbeiterlosigkeit” (German neologism, invented by Sebastian Dettmers –  best translated as “unemployeement”)
• What does that mean for HR and how should companies react right now to ensure future success

Mitch Goovaerts

Mitch Goovaerts is responsible for the lead of ATOSS in the BeLux market on sales, marketing and implementation.
Starting with studies in economics, law and management, Mitch has a deep experience in technologies and their impacts on large enterprises regarding the value proposition.
After more than 12 years working on digitalization of processes for companies and supporting them in their cloud strategy, Mitch is now leading the #1 digital workforce management company in Europe for the Belgian market.

Jürgen Errijgers

Jürgen is an HR technology enthusiast with over 15 years of experience in successfully assisting organizations in addressing their HR challenges with the smart use of Oracle HR technology solutions.

Oracle ME is the only complete employee experience platform that empowers your talent to connect, grow, and thrive.
With a full understanding of the needs, aspirations, and the "me" behind every worker, you can design experiences that bring out the best in every person.

Your employees are ready for a next-level experience. Employees aren't resigning—they're redesigning what they want work to be. So what can you do to attract and retain top talent in such a competitive market?

Oracle ME provides personalized guidance and creates meaningful connections by bringing together employee communications, workflows, listening, networking, and support on an open platform. It uses your workforce data to deliver a unique experience to every employee to help them thrive.

Leni Willems

Leni is a career coach and advisor within the Randstad RiseSmart organisation. ‘Connecting and guiding people’ is what drives her. Leni has a national role and supports organisations through the domain of proactive career & talent management and personal leadership.

She has been working at Randstad RiseSmart since 2013 and guides people in creating a clear vision on their career. One of her strengths is analysing personal needs and career possibilities. Together with her coachee, she translates this into clear goals, achievable through a focused plan and thorough analysis. With her positive attitude and open mind, she creates a culture of reliability and respect.

Why don’t you install a career helpdesk on your internal talent marketplace?

In a world where most products and services are “at our fingertips'', HR needs to rethink its service-provision model to meet the employee expectations in a challenging labour market. Do individual employee requests for personal support reach you in time? Do you have the bandwidth to respond appropriately? Do you have the smart data needed to analyse employee issues and detect trends and hotspots?
At Randstad Risesmart, we are convinced that our career coaching on demand can become your trusted partner in being a well respected and much appreciated employee champion. Our purpose built technology allows your employee to choose a career coach and to book a session within a couple of days. Acting as an objective, neutral and confidential first point of contact for your employees, we provide a rapid response. Fostering personal leadership, together with your employee we make a plan for the right course of action. In case of structural challenges, we are at your side to discuss (and implement) the right solutions respecting of course all confidentiality. Come and see what career coaching on demand can do for you and your organisation.

Kim Van Loo

Kim is the leader of the mysdworx marketplace.  He’s passionate about digitalization and employee experience. By inspiring people, brining them together, sharing ideas and thinking outside the box, he turns ideas and theory into results.

The mysdworx marketplace: the single platform giving access to all world of work solutions.

How can you offer a high end employee experience to your workforce? Wouldn’t it be great to give your employees access to all relevant HR tools & apps via one single point of entry?
No more hassle, but intuitive and always accessible! The mysdworx marketplace is the platform that provides answers on the challenges in the world of work for both employers and employees. Embracing HR as a service, the mysdworx marketplace is the new standard in digital employee experience.

Guy Van Neck

Guy Van Neck is a CEO of MobieTrain, the company he founded in 2015. Guy holds 4 masters degrees, including MBA at Chicago Booth and substantial experience in Retail industry, managing the European business for BARE International for years, which is a mystery shopping and audit company.

Learning in the flow of work - How do you create an engaging employee experience for your frontline employees?

With 'Learning in the flow of Work', training is given a central place in an individual’s day-to-day job.
How can you as an organization facilitate 'learning in the flow of work'?
What is an optimal combination between micro and macro learning and what are the criteria for an L&D tool that integrates all elements?

Jan Devos

Jan Devos leads the Belux Enterprise business at LinkedIn. Jan is a proud father, enthusiastic leader, with a strong passion for people and learning. Over the last 5 years Jan has been focused on leading the growth of LinkedIn in Belgium and Luxembourg by connecting LinkedIn members with opportunities. Jan and his team partner with companies large and small to help power their workforce strategy, leveraging LinkedIn’s solutions across talent, learning and development, and employee engagement to help companies harness the power and potential of their workforce so that they can drive competitiveness and fuel business growth.

Jan strongly believes that people drive innovation, change and prosperity. Today’s environment requires putting people at the centre of your talent strategy, solves both business and employees’ needs. The relevancy of an organization will depend on how they take care of their people.

Leveraging skills and learning to win big in the new battle for talent

 In 2022, meeting the demand for talent and planning for the future is becoming increasingly difficult. The world of work has changed completely over the last two years. People are rethinking not just how and where they work but also why they work. Organizations’ must dive deep into leveraging skills to hire successfully, evolve internal mobility, and help employees go for the career path they want – all whilst evolving their workforce culture, fostering equity, and belonging.

Jill Everaert

Jill Everaert is manager of SD Worx Academy, the learning channel and partner on payroll, socio-legal and other HR domain within SD Worx.
As an experienced trainer and learner, she’s curious and passionate about everything that touches learning, development, people & technology.

The Netflix of learning : The future of learning and how can you offer taylor made content

The world has changed, employers seek new talent, the expectations of employees have evolved and so have their learning habits & needs. Personal development has become a key requirement for new talent. People choose an employer who can help them reach the next level of performance. Their expectations are high; therefore HR teams & learning platforms have to grow to raise the bar. Instead of a unidirectional software that offers courses, a learning tool must be a real digital learning partner for both employers and employees.

Alice Tranchant

Alice Tranchant has 10 years of experience in HR, with a passion for talent and career development. In 2017, she created the Solvay digital studio, an internal incubator to promote entrepreneurship, agile ways of working and accelerate digital projects. Since 2019, she is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of huapii, a talent platform for organizations to unleash the full potential of their people.

HR Tech as an enabler of an open and transparent performance culture.

Technology is literally changing the face of HR, providing leaders with collaborative ways to manage their talents and an unprecedented amount of data to drive smart decisions.
In this talk, Alice will demystify the culture change HR tech can enable (spoiler: your people leaders are key) and separate fact from fiction through concrete customer cases.

Jonas Maerschand

Jonas Maerschand, FLOWSPARKS' Sales Manager who has a background in food retail. FLOWSPARKS® is a flexible learning environment. Whether you’re at the early stages of e-Learning development or you have years of experience, with FLOWSPARKS® you have an innovative and powerful tool which offers you a big range of possibilities. Today, the Ghent-based company is planning an international expansion.

Yannick Peers

Yannick Peers works as Design & Innovation Lead with Accenture Song, transforming how companies interact with customers and employees. Passionate about innovation, design and business. He co-leads the Metaverse Strategy practice in BeNeLux & France.

His focus is on developing new services, digitally enhanced physical products, and digital native products that help companies create immersive experiences capable of increasing revenue growth, retention, and reputation. 10+ years’ experience of working with large companies in different industries. A strategist, designer and facilitator who helps companies embrace change and (re-)build user-centric products and services.

Embarking on the Metaverse Continuum

Metaverse fever is spreading around the world, bringing with it promises, excitement and unanswered questions.

The metaverse is a new convergence of physical and digital worlds, an evolution of the internet that enables people to move beyond “browsing” to “inhabiting” in a shared experience—enhanced by advancements in 3D, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). It’s a place where people can meet and where digital assets—land, buildings, products, and avatars—can be created, bought and sold. This new system of place will shift our digital behavior and has the makings of a new cultural epoch. Businesses will need to understand how their customers and employees will exist in this new world.

Bram Vanderborght

HR is not only about white collar-workers, and tech is more than AI. Engineer, researcher and robot expert Bram Vanderborght and his team at the BruBotics lab (Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec) design robots that are intended to cooperate with human factory workers and make their job easier: “Not everything can or should be automated.”

Bram Vanderborght runs a lab of over 60 researchers and is in the middle of wheeling in investors for a large exoskeleton project: “Exoskeletons are an extreme version of collaborative robots, or cobots as we call them. An exoskeleton is a robot you put on, and it extends your muscular strength.”

Across industries, companies are looking into a way of creating more ergonomic labour conditions for blue-collar workers, Bram explains. And each type of movement is different. Painting ceilings with your arm over your head the entire day, placing new windows into cars; hanging beneath a train to fix or check-up on machinery, filling shelves in supermarkets or replacing drill heads on a marine platform, it all requires careful design.

Bram Vromans

As an experienced people manager, Bram is having a broad expertise in project, portfolio & digital management in the telecom, energy & retail sector.
Bram is combining his work as a Country Digital Manager at IKEA Belgium with a teaching assignment at the university of KU Leuven and a mentorship/advisory role for several start-ups.

As an experienced & pragmatic chief digital officer, Bram has been leading change and transformation programs as well as optimizing processes in different organizations. Moreover, he has been supporting management teams on growing e-commerce and the use of self-service platforms.

At IKEA, Bram is taking full responsibility for the digital agenda of the country and leading the digital team to ensure that the organization is ready to provide the best customer journey possible.
Next to that, he is a proud dad of two, an eager traveler, sports addict and dance music producer.

The potential in the Metaverse for brands and retailers explained through some concrete use cases

Melina Gorrebeeck

Melina Gorrebeeck is a sociologist and she takes as co-owner of LAMMP the company to a new era of human centered design and operations of real estate and virtual environments. Her focus is on neuroscience applied to architectural design and more in general on the user experience in a (virtual) office. With its innovative concept, LAMMP wants to bring people into building from the first sketch. We do this by transforming the office design into a metaverse office space from day 1. This allows us to use measure with neuroscientific research if the design is really doing what it has to do: improving wellbeing and performance. After the design phase, you will have a great place to work both in a real life and a virtual way. Human sciences teach us so much about creating great places. Melina's goal is to put these insights into practice.

How neuroscience helps us create better (virtual) offices. 

Bart Auwers

I am a Managing Director in Strategy & Consulting leading Accenture’s Talent & Organization / Human Potential practice for Belgium and Luxembourg. For the last 15 years I have been working with companies from different industries (Consumer Goods, Industrial, Banking and Public Services) to transform their HR business into a Employee Experience focused, digital enabled service. Outside work, I am a passionate sports man (swimming, running and cycling) and a dedicated father of two kids.

Together with:
Liesbet Holsters - Accenture

Liesbet Holsters

Liesbet holds a Master in Human Resources Management (Antwerp Management School – class of 2000). She started her career as a Consultant at Accenture in 2000. After almost 8 years she joined BASF as an HR Business Partner where she worked until 2018. Liesbet then went back into HR Consulting at KPMG as of September 2018 to then rejoin the Talent & Organization Practice at Accenture Belux as Associate Director. Liesbet is a positive and dynamic person with a pragmatic and go-getter mindset. Her main drivers are people, projects and she has a big interest in Change Management, HR Transformation and Leadership & Culture. Over her career Liesbet has worked across various industries both in and outside of Belgium.

Omniconnected Breakout room session

The pandemic has impacted many if not all organisations: they have had to fully shift to hybrid ways of working. Today, in addition to giving people full flexibility, they feel the need to belong and feel connected, even more included than in the past. Organisations must rethink their way of doing things, once again. This break-out session that will be hosted by Bart Auwers & Liesbet Holsters (Talent & Organization Practice Leads at Accenture in Belgium & Luxemburg) will give you the key elements to consider when reimagining your organization’s future of work and the essential first actions you can take tomorrow in your organization. They will walk you through the cultural transformation that they have experienced and are still implementing at Accenture.

Anne Behnke

Anne is a Global Business Solutions Architect at Degreed - the upskilling platform that empowers life-long learning and connects skills to learning and opportunities. With over 7 years of SaaS experience in various roles and covering many different industries, she is passionate about consulting organizations of all sizes in Europe and beyond on how innovative technology can transform their organization.

How managers can contribute to a positive learning culture

If your organization is feeling the pains of the ongoing Great Resignation, you’re not alone. A recent Microsoft study found 41% of workers globally are likely to consider leaving their current employers within the next year. Why? Typically, it’s for one or two reasons. The first? A bad boss. The second? Lack of professional development.This means managers can be instrumental to the success of company L&D initiatives.
In this session, we will explore why it’s important for managers to encourage development and practical steps managers can take to create a positive learning culture.

Stefan Van der Wilt

Stefan Van der Wilt has over 20 years of experience in selling, designing and deploying HR Software. Stefan currently leads the Workday Solution Consultant team for Benelux covering the Large Enterprise customer segment.

Becoming a skill-based organisation – How do I manage the transition?

Join us to learn the three main discussion dimensions we encounter most when engaging with prospects and customers around becoming a skill-based organisation.

Together with:
Thomas Pensaert- Deloitte

Richard Doherty

Richard Doherty is senior director solution marketing at Workday with EMEA-wide responsibilities for Workday's HCM applications.

Prior to joining Workday, Richard was part of a team that pioneered cloud based HR solutions in Europe. Joining Jobpartners as one of the first employees in 2000, Richard held a number of positions across professional services, sales and marketing, helping Jobpartners grow into one of the market leaders in Europe. In 2011 Jobpartners was acquired by Taleo, the cloud recruiting leader at the time. Richard subsequently spent time at Taleo and Oracle as HCM Strategy Director before joining Workday 5 years ago.

Data, skills and the employee experience

With all the change and disruption our employees are facing it has never been more important to listen to our employees. Based on an analysis of 19 million comments submitted by nearly 1.8 million employees across 1,000+ companies we’ll share what’s important to your employees, why you should focus on skills based people strategies and how to design an employee experience aligned with your employees’ expectations.

Tamara Makoni

Tamara is an award-winning inclusion specialist with 11+ years' experience leading programs in global organisations. Today she helps leaders in Belgium and abroad to drive inclusion and empower diverse teams, creating fertile conditions for innovation and growth. She has worked with clients in different industry sectors focusing on topics relating to belonging, diversity and cross-cultural leadership. 

Deborah Kuness

Debs is a UK-based psychologist, and has worked within the field of Employee Engagement for over a decade. As an experienced consultant, facilitator and executive coach, Debs has deep expertise across the employee experience lifecycle, and has used this to support organisations across sectors and geographies. This includes the application of psychological theory and best practice to Employee Engagement, individual, team and organisational development, organisational culture and change. Previously, Debs worked in the field of clinical psychology, and holds a Masters degree in Forensic Psychology.

The evolution of employee voice: game changers

During this session, Debs Kuness, Peakon's Senior Psychologist, will discuss her perspective on how employee listening strategies are evolving. More specifically, she'll highlight the core ways that Peakon’s philosophy, methodology and technology are enabling listening strategies to match the reality of today’s pace of change, and in turn elevating the role of employee voice in shaping critical business decisions.

Servaas Bingé

Dr Servaas Bingé is a entrepreneur, general practitioner and sports physician. From his work as chief physician of Lotto-Soudal, the oldest professional cycling team in the world, he developed the concept of "healthitude", combining our health, attitudes, and daily choices. He is a sought-after speaker on topics of health and is the author of six books.

Kim Milants

Kim is all about creating value with and for people. As a creative spirit she likes to get rid of the box instead of thinking outside the box. She looks back at an extensive experience in all aspects of organizational development throughout the past 15 years and this in various roles both from a business point of view as an HRD as from an advisory perspective. She guides and supports companies on the move in the realization of strategic HR ambitions. from her functional focus she always works from a broad technology perspective to find the best digital solutions for the needs of our customers

Kicking of digital HR transformation in a resource constrained world

Organizations are facing numerous challenges to get digital HR projects started due to budget constraints, shortage of resources, business uncertainty or even disbelief from higher management in these projects. We will give you tangible insights and recommendations to start your digital HR journey given these complex circumstances. Premium Sound Solutions will give you insights on how they tackled these challenges with a pragmatic and smart approach towards digital HR. “Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein

Together with:
Gunther Van de Velde - Premium Sound Solutions

Joost Houtman

With 15 years of international experience as a consultant in gathering employee feedback, Joost has seen how technology plays an increasingly important role in this and also offers exciting new opportunities. As Employee Experience Strategist at Qualtrics, partner of SAP, he helps organizations to modernize and focus on continuous employee feedback.

EX Trends: How technology changes employee listening programs 

Annual employee surveys have been a staple for many organizations. They bring much value, but many companies want to gain a richer source of feedback. New technologies enable just that and drive the momentum from survey ever closer to a company-wide conversation.

Yannick Valles

Yannick leads the people experience team at Terumo Europe. Founded in 2022, this team is the engine for digital and data driven HR with their employees in the center supporting and guiding them through their career at Terumo Europe.

How Terumo Europe uses data to identify and fix the most pressing issues its employees face

In this not-to-be-missed fireside Q&A, Yannick Valles, People Experience Manager at Terumo Europe talks to Léon Peeman, Senior Customer Success & Engagement Manager at SAP. Yannick explains how the continuing uncertainty brought about by COVID-19 accelerated Terumo Europe’s employee experience programme, and why he believes EX should be ingrained into an organization’s DNA, rather than being a one-off event.

Together with:
Léon Peeman - SAP

Donald Ross

Donald has been at the sharp end of learning and development for over 25 years. His background encompasses all aspects of learning from its management through technology to the development and delivery of synchronous and asynchronous learning, both formal and social. Donald was also heavily involved in SAP’s own Learning Transformation journey.

Future-proofing your workforce by attracting and retaining talent

See how the SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace and the concept of Dynamic Teams drives talent mobility, organizational agility and upskilling/reskilling.

Thomas Van de Weghe

Thomas is senior manager at the HR Transformation team at Deloitte Consulting. His team guides organizations through complex changes in HR and HR IT by bringing together Deloitte experts and best practices within all crucial domains: HR strategy, HR process, HR technology and change management.

Elia’s strategic hr transformation project

Learn all about ELIA's strategic HR Transformation project where change management, HR process optimization and a full suite SAP SuccessFactors implementation go hand in hand. During this session the Elia project leaders will discuss their strategic ambitions, implementation approach and most important lessons learned.

Together with:
Dorien Veraart - Elia

Dorien is responsible for the PMO function at Elia, managing cross-functional HR projects and HR reporting. She joined Elia HR at the start of the HRIS transformation journey and is now still involved in the further development of SAP SuccessFactors and other digital projects within HR.

Bart Van Hove

Bart Van Hove is Competence Lead and Solution Designer at Flexso. His focus is on creating HR tech solutions to optimize and digitize organizations HR approach and environment in SAP SuccessFactors.

Innovative competence management at Umicore: the Competency Matrix

The Competency Matrix is a solution that maps out the competencies within an organization at a glance. Bart Van Hove of Flexso tells you how the Competency Matrix was developed and implemented at Umicore, world player in material technology.