In my last post I looked at employee engagement and what the future may hold. This will be one of the core topics at HRVision14, a 2 day conference in Amsterdam next week involving European HRDs and global leads for talent, branding and and engagement.

Sessions and cases studies are being delivered by a combination of TED speakers and senior practitioners from companies as diverse as Starbucks, IBM, Microsoft, L’Oreal, Phillips, Unilever, Zappos, HSBC and Siemens. There will also be a mix of workshops and ‘doctors surgeries’ with specialists in a variety of fields offering their advice and insight on a range of issues that keep the HR population awake at night.

The core specialist themes are:

• Talent Management
• Employee Engagement
• Leadership Development
• Branding and Recruitment

And there are some bold event promises too. I’ll be looking to see how they deliver on:

• Learning how to foster an environment which allows for innovation, collaboration and empowerment, where people can openly discuss central issues.
• Closing the development gaps in leader capabilities.
• Exploring how to integrate social technologies into recruitment and engagement practices with forward thinking HR professionals making the connection between having a solid social media strategy and finding top talent.
• Assessing critical future workforce gaps ensure attraction, identification, assessment and development of talent in order to ensure these gaps are closed.

Keynotes include Phillips on their global, cultural transformation, also leadership ideas outside the box (delivered by Tim Macartney), brand ambassador networks from Zappos and performance excellence with Dr Melissa Luke.

Away from the keynotes there are several sessions that interest me including rethinking internal comms with eBay, 21st Century guerrilla recruitment by Accenture, interconnected leadership and the previously referenced schmooze or lose approach to engagement.

I will be there on blogging and tweeting duties and hope to bring you some of the big themes and conversations through this blog and my Twitter feed. Follow the event hashtag – #HRVision14 – and also the twitter feed from OsneyHR, the event organisers.

There’s a promise of some fun time too with the Big Fat HR Quiz!

If you fancy some spring sunshine and HR debating in Amsterdam then there’s still time to book – hope to see a few of you there…