Workshop Topics

We have 18 workshop choices for you this year including total rewards strategy, healthcare, wellbeing, retirement, regulatory compliance, leave and disability, employee engagement and professional development.

Something for everyone on the benefits team!

 

Professional Development

Total Rewards Leadership on the Upswing: Adding Fresh Ideas and Approaches to Your Toolkit

Today’s Benefits and Total Rewards leaders have an opportunity to do more than manage programs. They can help create an environment where people and careers thrive. Join leading employers as they share how they’re connecting benefits, wellbeing, learning, coaching, and career growth to create a more seamless and rewarding employee experience. Through real-world examples, we’ll explore how organizations are spotting workforce needs, making smarter investments, and measuring what matters. Walk away with a little lagniappe (a New Orlean’s term, pronounced LAN-yap, that means a little something extra or an unexpected bonus!) for your leadership toolkit: fresh ideas, practical approaches, and new ways to connect health, wealth, wellbeing, and growth.
Facilitated by: Aon and Gallagher

Beyond the Words: Communicating Ideas That Shape Culture

Benefits leaders routinely bring forward ideas that affect employees, executives, and the culture of an organization. But a strong analytical case is not always enough. Leaders must also communicate the meaning behind an idea—confidently, clearly, and in a way that helps executives see its potential.

This 75-minute interactive workshop explores the part of communication that exists beyond the words themselves. Participants will examine how presence, energy, physicality, and nonverbal behavior affect whether their ideas earn attention and trust. Working in small groups, participants will create and deliver a short presentation in which one person serves as the verbal storyteller while the remaining group members communicate nonverbally. The exercise challenges teams to decide how nonverbal communication can strengthen a message without distracting from it.

Participants will leave with greater awareness of how they are experienced while communicating, a practical framework for aligning verbal and nonverbal communication, new ways to make analytical recommendations feel human and consequential and a memorable shared experience they can discuss and apply after the conference.
Facilitated by: Ryan Carey, CEO of BetterOn

 

Global Benefits

Reimagining the Global Benefits Function

A broader discussion on how leading organizations are redesigning their global benefits function through new operating models, technology, automation, shared services, and evolving vendor ecosystems. The focus is on building more strategic, scalable global benefits organizations while reducing manual effort, improving the employee experience, and enabling benefits teams to focus on higher-value work.
Facilitated by: WTW

AI and the Future of Global Benefits

A practical discussion on how AI is moving beyond pilots to reshape benefits strategy, governance, decision-making, vendor management, and employee experience. The emphasis is on how global organizations are using AI to transform the way benefits are designed, managed, and delivered.
Facilitated by: Milliman

 

Healthcare

Benefits in Perfect Harmony: Turning a Noisy Ecosystem into a Connected Experience

Organizations continue to invest heavily in benefits, yet many programs remain underutilized as offerings expand and vendor ecosystems become more complex. This session explores how leading employers are improving engagement, simplifying employee decisions, streamlining vendor partnerships and optimizing their value, reducing redundancy, and ensuring every solution delivers clear value, measurable impact, and real behavior change.
Facilitated by: Aon

Healthcare Cost Strategies That Delivered Results

Healthcare costs keep rising faster than budgets, and benefits leaders need more than promising ideas. They need strategies with proof behind them. This session looks at cost containment levers such as pharmacy management, network and site-of-care strategies, plan design, and holding vendors accountable. It also covers emerging solutions and providers that are earning a place in the benefits portfolio. WTW facilitators and CEB member peers will share what worked, what didn't and how they measured impact.
Facilitated by: WTW

Pharmacy Strategy Reset: What’s Next After GLP-1s?

GLP-1s may have dominated the conversation, but the next wave of pharmacy innovation is already here. Explore how specialty medications, cell and gene therapies, biosimilars and emerging treatments will reshape employer strategies over the next three to five years. Join this roundtable discussion to learn practical approaches to managing cost and risk while balancing access, affordability and better outcomes.
Facilitated by: Marsh

A Big Easy Approach to a Not-So-Easy Challenge: Building governance for a complex PBM landscape

Pharmacy benefit strategies have become more complex – spanning PBM models, specialty solutions, and emerging cost pressures. Organizations that lack a formal governance structure to support effective PBM decision-making can address that by establishing governance structures and advisory councils to improve consistency and accountability. This workshop demonstrates how strong governance helps organizations make more strategic decisions, align stakeholders, improve transparency, and support long-term planning. Adopting strategically deployed governance can be a lever for cost containment and organizational alignment.
Facilitated by: Gallagher

 

Wellbeing

The Next Phase of Wellbeing: From Programs to Measurable Outcomes

A practical discussion on how to determine which wellbeing investments are delivering real value. Attendees will learn ways to measure ROI and VOI, move beyond participation rates, improve vendor accountability, and make better decisions about which programs to keep, change, or eliminate.
Facilitated by: Milliman

 

Retirement

Financial Wellness 2.0: From Employee Benefit to Business Strategy

Once viewed as a voluntary perk, financial wellness has emerged as a strategic workforce investment. As organizations compete for talent and seek to improve employee outcomes, leaders are looking for ways to integrate financial wellbeing into broader Total Rewards and workforce strategies. This session explores how employers are aligning financial wellness initiatives with business goals, workforce planning, retirement readiness, and employee experience objectives to create measurable value for both employees and the organization.
Facilitated by: WTW

Designing Benefits for Real Life: Financial Wellness Across the Employee Journey

Employees' financial needs vary significantly throughout their careers, from building emergency savings and managing debt to preparing for retirement and navigating major life transitions. A one-size-fits-all approach is no longer sufficient. This session explores how organizations can design financial wellness strategies that support employees at every life stage, creating a more personalized benefits experience while improving engagement, financial outcomes, and workforce resilience.
Facilitated by: EY

 

Governance

From Benefits Spend to Business Value: Building a Strategic Partnership with the CFO

Benefits decisions are business decisions—and stronger alignment with Finance is essential. Discover how leading employers are moving beyond one-time approvals to build an ongoing partnership with the CFO. Through real-world examples, explore how to frame benefits investments, align on risk and trade-offs, and create strategies that deliver value for both the workforce and the business.
Facilitated by: Marsh

Building Governance Models for a New Era of Total Rewards

As workforce needs, technology and AI continue to reshape the world of work, traditional benefits governance models may no longer be enough. Explore how employers are evolving their governance structures, strengthening Total Rewards decision-making and clarifying roles across teams. Gain practical insights for creating a more agile, collaborative model that turns bold ideas into better outcomes.
Facilitated by: Marsh

 

Compliance

Managing Compliance with Cost Containment Strategies & An Update on State Leave Laws

As employers look for new ways to control rising healthcare costs, many strategies can create unexpected compliance challenges. Join a discussion of the key compliance considerations tied to popular cost containment approaches, including eligibility restrictions, benefit exclusions, GLP-1 access limitations, third-party vendor carve-outs, FICA savings plans, and what they mean for your fiduciary risk. We’ll also address recent state law leave updates and the increasing complexity for employers of all sizes.

Regulatory Compliance Roundtable

Come prepared to share your questions and discuss the latest developments in compliance due to legislation and regulation changes and litigation events.
Facilitated by: Alliant

 

Leave and Disability

When the System Misses a Beat: Rethinking Leave & Disability

Employers invest significantly in benefits designed to support employees during some of life’s most important and challenging moments. Yet when employees actually need to use those benefits, they can find themselves frustrated and unsure of where to turn, what they are eligible for, or how leave, disability, and other programs work together. This session explores how leading organizations are closing that gap by simplifying navigation, better coordinating vendors and processes, and designing the experience around the employee. Learn how employers can ensure the value of their benefits investment is truly felt when it matters most.
Facilitated by: Aon

Examining the Leave Experience Ecosystem

Over the last several years, employers have invested significant time, resources, and attention in improving the leave experience. Growing leave complexity, rising employee expectations, expanding state mandates, and advances in technology have driven organizations to pursue a more seamless, connected experience for employees navigating time away from work. Leave planning tools, employee-facing technology, integrated platforms, and enhanced communications have all emerged as potential solutions. But where are we today compared to 24 months ago? Did these efforts deliver what employers hoped for? More importantly, have they meaningfully improved the employee experience?

Participants will assess their own organization’s current state, then complete a “hoped for vs. reality” grid for the most common leave experience tools, comparing what each was expected to deliver with what it did. Together, we will examine which process improvements have been attempted, which worked, which fell short, and why. We will then discuss which tools and approaches employers should revise (if already tried) or consider adopting (if not). Participants will leave with a clearer picture of where their leave experience stands today and how it compares with peers in the room, practical lessons from employers’ successes and missteps, shared candidly in a peer setting and a short list of next-step opportunities, plus a take-home scorecard to measure whether the changes are working. Come ready to share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what you’d do differently.
Facilitated by: Brown & Brown

 

Employee Engagement

AI and the Future of Benefits Decision Support

As AI transforms the employee experience, leading organizations are looking beyond content creation and chatbots to solve a bigger challenge: helping employees make better decisions. Through practical examples, participants will explore how AI-enabled guidance can help employees navigate health, wealth, wellbeing, and work with greater confidence. You'll leave with actionable ideas to simplify complexity, improve engagement, and build trust while using AI responsibly.
Facilitated by: Segal

 

Hot Topics

Hot Topics Roundtable

Back by popular demand ... Bring the topic that is hottest for you and discuss it with your CEB colleagues. Hear their thoughts and experiences and leave with encouragement and new ideas.
Sponsored by CEB Senior Advisory Council