| Breakout Sessions
The program follows the same successful format used in previous years, with a number of insightful plenary sessions plus a series of concurrent breakouts that provide each delegate the flexibility to customize his or her conference agenda.
Our objective for Forum 2010 is to provide an opportunity to share real-life experiences and solutions covering the immediate and most pressing people-related challenges being faced in the corporate world today. The agenda for Forum 2010 has been developed to address these challenges, and we have grouped our sessions' content into six broad categories.
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Country Workshops |
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| These sessions are always popular at the Forum. Each country workshop will offer a review of local HR issues, compensation and benefit trends, political climate and economic indicators. The workshops are valuable to all participants, providing an excellent background for newcomers to Latin America and the Caribbean as well as a unique opportunity to refresh participants' knowledge of a rapidly changing region. |
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Regional strategies, frameworks and solutions |
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| One positive outcome from the global economic crisis is an increase in regional strategies and controls to manage the volatility of employee rewards programs. A centralized control presents an opportunity to improve governance while saving money by leveraging economies of scale, streamlining delivery of services to employees and shortening the decision-making process. As regional frameworks are implemented around executive pay, employee health and benefit programs, training and development programs, and other HR-related initiatives such as vendor management, organizations stand to garner savings that can be carried forward well into the period of economic recovery. |
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Spend optimization |
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| Just as companies have managed their workforce costs aggressively during the downturn, they will continue to face operating pressure to optimize workforce spending and increase workforce efficiency during the upturn. This means a renewed focus on workforce cost management and value creation for long-term sustainability. Companies will need to allocate their HR spend to the employees and programs that support business goals that help organizations accelerate the return to desired levels of growth and profitability. This does not mean wholesale cutting of benefits and HR programs, rather getting more out of existing expenditures. |
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Managing risk |
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For organizations in Latin America & the Caribbean, the next couple of years will be a time of tremendous opportunity and risk. Companies face substantial downside risk in many of their employee rewards program – most profoundly in the area of employee health and retirement programs. Overall health care costs are escalating amid medical cost inflation, higher quality care expectations and a rise in stress-related claims, while retirement plans are suffering poor returns in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
The unraveling of the financial markets has also underscored the excessive risk-taking behavior of senior financial executives in the US and Europe. Multinational companies, including those with operations in our region, are imposing greater controls to ensure that their executive remuneration programs are beyond reproach at a time of tremendous scrutiny.
While Latin America has in general fared better than North America or Europe during the recession, companies that take a holistic approach to mitigate the human capital risk that could hamper their growth stand to make considerable gains in the upturn. |
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Capturing top-line growth through effective HR |
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| Companies are under economic pressures to capture top-line growth amid shifting markets. The impact of the financial crisis has far-reaching consequences – especially for the export-driven side of the region's economies. In this time of unprecedented change, companies need to ensure that HR systems and processes are in place to reduce volatility, and deliver HR programs that support the needs of their increasingly global workforces. Wise investment in HR-related programs can help strengthen employer branding and attract key talent in a competitive job market. |
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Successful M&A strategies |
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| Many financial and economic experts are stating the worst of the global financial crisis may be over. While this crisis hit Latin America later than other regions, it also seems that the recovery will be faster than in the US and Europe. This scenario, along with strong financial systems in the region will increase the number of transactions through out Latin America. But, each country is different, and as a result, it is critical to understand the strategic, operational and Human Capital implications of acquiring in Latin America. |
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