7:15am – 8:00am
Conference Registration & Networking Breakfast

8:00am – 8:15am
Chairperson's Opening Remarks

8:15am – 9:00am
Float Pools That Actually Float: Building Internal Flexibility Without Breaking the Bank
Most float pools are either chronically understaffed or so expensive they defeat their own purpose. This session examines how smart organizations are building float programs that provide real staffing flexibility while controlling costs and maintaining quality. You'll learn what makes some float nurses love their roles while others flee after six months, how to structure compensation that's competitive without becoming your most expensive labor category and which competencies actually matter when you need someone who can function anywhere. This is a practical deep dive into recruitment strategies that work, orientation programs that prepare floats for reality, scheduling approaches that prevent burnout and metrics that reveal whether your pool is actually solving problems or just shifting them around.

• Compensation models that attract quality float staff without excessive premium pay
• Competency assessment frameworks for validating readiness across multiple units
• Scheduling strategies that balance flexibility needs with individual preferences
• Performance metrics that measure float pool effectiveness beyond simple fill rates

9:00am – 9:45am
Retention: What Actually Keeps People vs. What We Think Does
Staff can spot the difference between real solutions and window dressing. This session examines retention strategies that address what genuinely drives nurses and clinical staff away from organizations - which often isn't what leadership assumes. The discussion covers which workplace factors research shows matter most for retention, how to diagnose the actual drivers of turnover in your organization and why exit interviews reveal patterns leadership might be missing. This focuses on structural changes to how work gets done, how decisions get made and how staff are supported - not superficial engagement initiatives that don't address root causes.

9:45am – 10:15am
Networking & Refreshments Break

10:15am – 11:00am
Predictive Scheduling: Using Data to Stop Playing Whack-a-Mole with Staffing
Staffing shouldn't be a daily crisis where you frantically fill gaps an hour before shift change. Organizations using predictive analytics are moving from reactive scrambling to proactive planning - and seeing real improvements in both costs and staff satisfaction. This session demonstrates how workforce analytics platforms are helping hospitals forecast volume, optimize schedules and reduce expensive last-minute staffing adjustments. You'll learn what data actually matters for predicting staffing needs, how to move from historical patterns to predictive models and which technologies are delivering ROI versus just generating dashboards nobody uses.

11:00am – 11:45am
From Bottleneck to Accelerator: How Employee Health Drives Workforce Access and Throughput
Employee Health is often viewed as a necessary compliance checkpoint in the hiring process—focused on screenings, vaccinations, and clearances. However, when not optimized, these processes can become a significant bottleneck, delaying start dates, impacting staffing levels, and ultimately affecting patient care delivery.

This session explores how Employee Health can be transformed into a strategic driver of workforce access and operational throughput. By redesigning pre-employment workflows, standardizing processes, and leveraging real-time data, organizations can reduce onboarding delays, improve clearance timelines, and enhance collaboration across Talent Acquisition, HR, and operational leaders.

Attendees will learn practical strategies to:

• Identify and eliminate common barriers to timely employee clearance
• Implement structured operational rhythms to proactively manage onboarding pipelines
• Utilize meaningful metrics to drive accountability and performance
• Reposition Employee Health as a critical partner in workforce optimization

11:45am – 12:30pm
Cultivating a High-Performance Team
In today’s complex and high-stakes healthcare environment, cultivating a high-performance team requires more than operational efficiency—it demands intentional leadership that integrates mindset, culture, and human connection. This presentation explores a comprehensive approach to building and sustaining high-performing teams by synthesizing key principles from Anatomy of Leadership, Making Competent Organizations, Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing, and The Energy Bus. Participants will examine how effective leaders align purpose, values, and behavior to create psychologically safe, accountable, and resilient teams. Drawing on the “thinking, being, doing” framework, the session emphasizes the importance of self-awareness (being), strategic clarity (thinking), and disciplined execution (doing) in leadership practice. Additionally, concepts from Anatomy of Leadership highlight the internal drivers of behavior and decision-making, while Making Competent Organizations provides insight into system-level competence, reliability, and learning cultures. The presentation also incorporates the positive leadership principles from The Energy Bus, illustrating how leaders can intentionally shape team energy, foster engagement, and build momentum even in high-pressure clinical settings. Attendees will gain practical strategies for enhancing communication, strengthening trust, promoting accountability, and developing a culture of continuous improvement. By integrating these perspectives, this session offers a holistic, actionable framework for healthcare leaders committed to developing teams that consistently deliver high-quality patient care, adapt to change, and thrive in demanding environments.

12:30pm – 1:30pm
Luncheon

1:30pm – 2:15pm
Managing Multi-Generational Workforces: Beyond the Stereotypes
For the first time, nurse leaders are managing teams that span four, and soon five, generations. From nurses who practiced long before electronic health records to new graduates who have never charted on paper, today’s workforce brings a wide range of experiences, expectations, and perspectives to the same unit. While generational differences exist, many of the assumptions we rely on are stereotypes that can create more division than clarity. This session focuses on what actually matters when leading across generations. Drawing on real-world leadership experience and workforce data, we’ll explore how communication styles, feedback expectations, and career priorities can differ across generations—and how nurse leaders can adapt their approach without creating resentment or inequity. Participants will leave with practical strategies to recruit, engage, and retain nurses across generations while leveraging the strengths each group brings to the team. The session will also address what younger nurses are actually seeking from employers and how leaders can intentionally preserve institutional knowledge as experienced nurses transition toward retirement. Participants will leave with strategies to:

• Separate meaningful generational differences from common stereotypes
  • Strengthen hiring and retention strategies across generations
  • Use communication approaches that resonate with diverse age groups
  • Support knowledge transfer as experienced nurses prepare to retire

2:15pm – 3:15pm
Panel: Building Sustainable Workforce Solutions: From Crisis Management to Strategic Stability
Healthcare organizations have spent years firefighting workforce crises—filling shifts, managing callouts, battling agency dependency and watching turnover climb. But a few organizations are shifting from reactive staffing to sustainable workforce strategies that actually reduce costs while improving retention. The speaker will discuss how predictive analytics moved them from daily staffing scrambles to proactive planning, what it took to build internal float pools and flexible staffing models that reduced agency spend without compromising quality, how they created workplace cultures and communication frameworks that stabilized turnover, and the metrics they use to measure true workforce effectiveness beyond simple fill rates. The session addresses the hard transition from short-term fixes to long-term solutions, including how to secure leadership buy-in for workforce investments, where to start when resources are limited, and how to maintain gains when external pressures return.

Panelists:

3:15pm – 3:45pm
Networking & Refreshments Break

3:45pm – 4:30pm
Building Your Own Pipeline: Growing Talent Instead of Just Buying It
External recruitment gets exponentially more expensive every year while internal development programs can create loyal staff at sustainable costs. This session examines how forward-thinking organizations are building career pathways that create talent rather than constantly competing to poach it from others. You'll explore successful models for CNA-to-RN progression, new grad residency programs that improve retention, leadership development initiatives that prepare staff for advancement and partnerships with nursing schools that create hiring pipelines. The discussion includes ROI calculations for development programs, strategies for keeping people after you've invested in their growth and cultural changes that make internal advancement feel achievable.

4:30pm – 5:15pm
Who Will Care for Us? Understanding the Post-Acute & Long-Term Care Workforce
The post-acute and long-term care workforce plays a critical role in supporting patients after hospital discharge, yet significant challenges persist in workforce availability, training, and public understanding of who delivers this care. As demand for services continues to grow due to an aging population and increasing clinical complexity, providers across skilled nursing facilities, home health, and other post-acute settings continue to face staffing shortages and variability in workforce preparation. This session will provide an overview of the current state of the post-acute and long-term care workforce, including trends in staffing supply, turnover, and care delivery models. It will explore the evolving roles of interdisciplinary team members and highlight gaps in training and support that impact care quality and coordination. The session will also examine issues related to public transparency, including what patients and families understand about who is providing their care and how that affects trust, engagement, and outcomes. Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of workforce dynamics shaping post-acute care today and will review policy and practice considerations to strengthen workforce capacity, improve training pathways, and enhance transparency for patients and caregivers navigating the care continuum.

5:15pm
End of Day One