Concurrent Sessions

Tuesday, October 23, 2007 through Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Building an Effective Carrier Relationship
The likelihood of another hard workers' compensation market makes even the most seasoned risk manager apprehensive. Is your program built on sand or on a rock-solid foundation? Given the cyclical nature of workers' compensation premiums, stormy times are inevitable. Given this fact and the NAIC and NCCI efforts to mandate multiple coordinated policies, strong relationships with carriers will be critical to the success of each and every PEO. This session will focus on successful blueprints for strong carrier relationships that have proven to weather the most challenging storms. These speakers will provide the essentials for building an effective risk management infrastructure that anticipates and prepares for a groundswell of change.

Dashboard Indicators: Effectively Benchmarking Your Risk Management Program
This session will share a best practices blueprint for effective risk management benchmarking. PEOs and their partners collect and report on a dizzying array of data points. This session will help you cut through the clutter and build a scorecard to assess the health of your risk management program.

The Evolving Banking Landscape
Your PEO's interface to the banking landscape is critical. Fitting your structure into an evolving and changing banking world will help you take proactive steps to meet your financial objectives. How do banks and banking regulators view PEOs? What new standards will impact ACH and underwriting (and possibly provide barriers to entry for newer/smaller PEOs)? PEOs should be prepared for new requests from banks, new alternatives to issuing checks, and new forms of payment that can reduce the risk of insufficient funds from clients. Our speakers will share proactive steps you can take with your existing banking institution to protect your PEO and your clients.

Migrating from Paper to Online Enrollment: Roadmaps and Landmines
The cyber world is today, not tomorrow. Yet, every PEO struggles with converting administration and services to online processes via the Internet. PEOs struggle with internal challenges and with smaller customers who feel threatened or intimidated by online technology. What should you research before launching online administration? What are the legal issues to consider? Experts will discuss proven blueprints for success. This panel will explore concrete examples for issues essential to success - moving your IT network off-site, managing server capacity, upgrading equipment, and using Web tools with electronic signature options. Key legal compliance issues and the importance of instituting safety measures will be addressed. This session will give you the tools to weigh the value-added benefits new technologies offer.

Managing Change Internally, Selling Change Externally
Now build it! Your executive team has the blueprints for improved internal strategies and operations that enhance client service delivery and make your employees lives' easier. If only your clients and staff would buy in! Learn how to transform the vision into the new structure. This session focuses on the day-to-day reality of getting internal and external staff to buy into new processes, see the change as non-threatening, and overcome passive resistance. From convincing clients to submit information online to educating clients and employees to use new tools to their full capacity, our experts walk you through the pitfalls and practices that helped them successfully turn their vision into a value-added reality.

Protecting You and Your PEO: Keeping Your PEO 401(k) Compliant
Is your 401(k) plan built to code? An onslaught of lawsuits against retirement fund companies has indicated cases of shoddy wiring, incomplete foundations, and a host of other problems. Today, the Pension Protection Act (PPA) is receiving increased attention. In today's environment, it is essential that you understand the rules governing fiduciaries, the basics of 401(k) discrimination testing, the essentials of WSE plan design, issues related to automatic enrollment and safe harbor, and how to best structure your plan. Our panel of experts will discuss true hidden costs, key questions fiduciaries should be asking, best practice fiduciary standards, and how pending lawsuits on the horizon could impact you.

The New Immigration Regulation: Whose Responsibility Is It Any Way?
Clients and PEOs are asking the question: Yours, Ours, or Theirs? It's an increasingly complicated reality. Illegals are getting more sophisticated in efforts to avoid detection and regulators are getting tougher on employers with illegals. Get the latest on the new state laws and how they impact clients with employees in multiple states. How will new regulations impact your responsibility with contractors and sub-contractors and employer tax liability for illegal workers? Will it change rules regarding discrimination and verification? Proposed Federal immigration regulations will impact paperwork, client retention, and potential penalties. We will explore recommended best practices for helping your PEO and your clients stay on the right side of the law.

Recruitment and Retention: Services, Training, and the Changing Workforce
True architects of ingenuity will be able to capitalize on the rapidly shifting changes in America's workforce to find innovative new ways to enhance their own recruitment and retention efforts — and that of their clients. Recruitment and retention are always ranked high on the list of topics PEOs most want to explore so they can better support client services. How can you do a better job of attracting and retaining a stellar force? Which services will the changing workforce most value? Learn how to develop a toolkit that can help you capitalize on the strengths of the emerging X, Y, and Boomer generations, while also capitalizing on new deliverables that can generate additional revenue.

Unveiling Today's Greatest Sales Opportunity — The Private Equity Sector
Can private equity be the answer to PEO growth? Our speakers will show you how the hottest sales niche may be the vertical markets represented by private equity firms with access to small to medium clients who need PEO services. Learn the questions you should be asking, which platforms you need to offer to serve this market, and how to qualify this potential outsourcing opportunity. See how you can determine the needs of the potential private equity prospect, research databases to find the right match for your company, and break into this unique sales niche. Through a dynamic role play, we will explore the strategic, operational, and financial approaches, the timelines, and the practical applications required to qualify PEO services and products for this potential new market.

Using Sales Technology to Reach Your Prospects First
Proactive sales intelligence can help you find businesses that are more likely to buy your PEO services. How do you find those potential opportunities and get to them ahead of your competition? We will show you how sales triggers can help you fine-tune your prospecting, offer actionable information, and improve your ability to get in the door and close the sale. This combination of technology and common sense sales triggers can be the missing key to building your market share.

Don't Blame the Attorneys: Understanding and Selling the Client Services Agreement
Selling a sketch is easier than selling a blueprint. Sales professionals often trip over explaining terms in your blueprint (the client service agreement). But buy-in from a client on a solid client service agreement is essential for building a long term relationship. Don't let these trip ups and inaccurate explanations lose a sale or cost you retention. This session will provide common sense, professional explanations for those contract provisions that are not self-explanatory or cause concern with prospective clients and their trusted advisors. Learn how and when you introduce a CSA into the sales process. Explore how to meet client concerns or questions without increasing exposure.

The Intersection between the Regulatory Environment and PEO Growth
Architects of Ingenuity in the PEO industry need to have a hospitable regulatory environment if they are going to maximize their potential. A key element to PEO industry growth is having a regulatory framework in place that provides legal and operational certainty. Given the sensitivity of PEO profitability to the regulatory climate, every PEO should designate a staff member to be actively involved in legislative and regulatory issues. This session will address the opportunities and challenges facing PEO growth and profitability and will provide insight on how best to affect positive regulatory change.

The PEO Storyline: The Media Landscape on the PEO Industry
Hear a prominent reporter and syndicated columnist in the HR field discuss media perceptions of the PEO industry, workplace stories, and what reporters think of big HR issues like immigration and minimum wage. This peek behind the curtain will shed light on the PEO's current reputation in the media, what's interesting about PEOs to reporters, what reporters are seeking from PEOs, and how PEOs can most efficiently cater to those needs.

CEO Workshops
CEO workshops will be a new addition to the line-up of concurrent sessions this year. Keynote presenters will offer advanced interactive workshops limited to PEO CEOs immediately following their keynote addresses. These interactive workshops will offer additional opportunities for Q & A with the expert, as well as time to discuss related topics specific to the PEO industry.

• Optimizing Your Human Capital to Build Market Share: Getting Hardwired for Success with Chuck Martin: Learn how to create a job description in your company, define executive skills that are required, and identify a five person team whose skills complement one another.

• Maximizing Technology to Build Market Share: Web 3.0 for PEOs: Driving Profits and Making Clients Happier with Scott Klososky: Learn how to think and grow like an ebusiness. You'll learn more from Scott and your peers about customizing your own search engines, developing technology infrastructure, and using that infrastructure to enhance service delivery.