2025 HR Conference: Call for Speakers Now Open!

Important Dates: (additional details below)

• Wednesday, Dec. 12 – Call for Speakers Open
• Thursday, Jan. 9 – HR Conference Registration Opens
• Friday, Jan. 17 – Call for Speakers Closes. Submissions due
• Monday, Jan. 20 – Speaker selection begins
• Friday, Jan. 31 – Speakers notified
• Friday, Feb. 14 – Speaker deliverables due
• Thursday, May 22 – Final slide deck and/or handouts due
• Tuesday, June 3 – HR Conference (Brookfield, WI & Virtual)

Each session is 45 minutes in length, comprised of a 40-minute presentation and 5 minutes of Q&A.

• Five (5) sessions available

All presentations will be done in-person and accommodation for virtual presentations will only be made in case of unforeseen circumstances.

Audience:

MRA anticipates an in-person and virtual audience of approximately 500-600 HR professionals with breakout room attendance between 100-300 people. HR professionals of all levels and areas of focus, including employee relations, HR generalists, recruiting, organizational development, training and development, and benefits attend the conference. They work for organizations large and small, in all sectors, including manufacturing, health care, retail, government, and education.

Topics below are of interest, but this list is not exhaustive. Don’t see your topic listed? Please submit your topic for consideration.

• Educating Employees on Compensation and Benefits: Simplifying the complexities to empower informed decisions.
• Emerging Benefits Trends: Exploring lifestyle savings accounts, mental health benefits, Captives, ICRAs, and beyond.
• The Power of Human Skills in the Future of Work: Emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and collaboration as differentiators in an AI-driven world.
• Harnessing Data for Impact: The rise of data-driven decision-making and learning in modern organizations.
• The Intersection of Pay, Culture, Flexibility, and Meaningful Work
• Mastering Vendor Relationships: Best practices in vendor selection, management, and negotiation.
• Succession Planning and Talent Development: Building your bench to secure organizational continuity.
• The Evolving Role of Managers: Demands of management continue to grow. How do we prepare and support middle management in the workplace?
• HR's Expanding Influence: Supporting people in every facet of their professional lives.
• Personalizing the Employee Experience: Lessons from Netflix and Amazon—creating meaningful, customized engagement.
• Optimizing Performance Management
• Pay Transparency in the workplace
• Mental Health & Total Wellbeing
• Considerations for the people side of AI: How to develop & train teams. Corporate philosophy.
• Engaging Gig and Contract Workers: Legal considerations, sample contracts, how to market to them, etc.
• Return to the Office: Insights from manufacturing to tech giants like Amazon and Google.
• Expanding Recruitment Horizons: Successfully sourcing talent outside traditional pools.
• Mastering Retention Strategies: Keeping top talent in a competitive labor market.
• Embracing Neurodiversity in the Workplace
• From Tactical to Strategic HR: Balancing day-to-day operations with long-term vision.
• Enhancing Staff Communication Strategies
• Preparing for Crisis Communication: Understand the critical role HR plays during a crisis and how to develop, implement, and practice a robust communication plan.
• Topic of your choice/suggestion (will only be considered if it relates directly to the conference theme).

MRA accepts proposals with the following expectations:

• Speakers demonstrate exceptional, authentic expertise around proposed content.
• Sessions are educational in nature and not used for self-promotion or as a sales pitch.
• Topics are bold, challenging, and forward-thinking. Topics need to fit clearly into the conference theme to be considered.
• Sessions presenting detailed steps and actionable takeaways from lived experience will be highly considered.
• An understanding of who conference attendees are and how your content will be consumed.

MRA prides itself on providing attendees with tangible ideas and compelling resources that they can take back to their workplace and readily implement. Be authentic and vulnerable and don't be afraid to speak of failure as well as success. Speakers are encouraged to dig deep to provide an engaging, inspiring, and fun delivery of the session. MRA conference attendees represent organizational and personal diversity, and we value diversity in our speakers. Speakers are encouraged to highlight diversity in your session where applicable, such as providing examples that reflect various cultural perspectives, ensuring statistics and demographics show an awareness of diversity, and presenting topics from unique and different angles. Keep in mind that knowledge sharing is the focus of all sessions, and sales pitches disguised as education will reflect poorly to conference organizers and attendees and will result in lost opportunities.

All proposals received on or before Friday, January 17 will be reviewed by the 2025 MRA HR Conference planning group. Selection will be determined by which proposals are geared toward HR professionals and best align with the conference theme and topics outlined above. Selected presenters will be notified by Friday, January 31.

Speaker Responsibilities:

To ensure that MRA has ample time to prepare materials and go through the continuing education approval process, selected presenters will be required to meet the following deadlines:

• Friday, February 14 – Speaker headshot, bio, final session title, final session description (3-5 sentences), and 2-3 learning objectives are due.
• Thursday, May 22 – Final slide deck presentation and/or handouts are due. These will also be provided to attendees as downloadable resources.

Failure to submit this information in the appropriate timeframe may result in removal from the agenda.

Speaker Benefits:

Conference speakers are offered the following accommodations:

• (1) Complimentary, nontransferable conference registration.
• Speaker/organization recognition as “Conference Supporters.”
• Opportunity to demonstrate expertise, knowledge, and experience, as well as to network with conference attendees.

Permission to Record and Distribute:

By accepting the speaking engagement, presenters grant MRA a royalty-free license to record, reproduce, and distribute their presentation and PDF resources in the future. The speaker retains copyright ownership of the presentation & resources.

MRA’s Noncommercial Policy:

The focus of MRA HR Conference sessions is strictly educational, and the organization and its attendees are critical of speakers or sessions that are self-promotional. Conference sessions should only advance the educational process and strictly will not be used for commercial sales pitches, self-promotion, or unwarranted criticism of a competitor. Any advance materials submitted that are suspect to this policy will be returned to the speaker for the appropriate edits.