13 - 14 October 2022
Athens
We are in the midst of a workplace revolution, especially within the rewards sector. To keep up with a constantly evolving environment and accelerate towards the future, it is critical for organizations to understand how the dynamics of work have changed, and how that impacts: rewards, talent attraction and retention, remote working, re-skilling and up-skilling, and other workforce-related challenges.
Mercer’s 2022 European Rewards Conference will help you embrace the new realities that will define the future of rewards. Be part our annual event to learn, network and be inspired to create a brighter future for your organization.
Renowned speakers: Hear from HR Leaders in top organizations in Europe as they share their expertise and insights along Mercer consultants and tell you more about how they are approaching challenges faced by Rewards professionals such as retention and acquisition of talent.
Constructive networking: Connect with like-minded peers and experts through networking games and get plenty of opportunities to socialize during the event or the amazing gala dinner in Athens.
Unparalleled information: Learn from our latest research and understand how inflation and the geopolitical situation are impacting rewards and what innovative strategies your peers have put into place to deal with these challenges.
The event will take place at the InterContinental Hotel in Athens, Greece on the 13 – 14 October 2022.
This event includes participation in the plenary and breakout sessions, networking activities, access to content and presentation materials as well as lunches and an evening networking event.
Read more about the conference agenda, registration process and our terms and conditions below.
6:00 pm | Welcome drinks reception |
9:00 am – 9:30 am | Conference welcome |
9:30 am – 10:30 am | Keynote: Crisis and its consequences in 2022: Geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges
Amelia Hadfield
Head of Department of Politics, University of Surrey, Director, Centre for Britain and Europe, Chair in European and International Relations
This one-hour presentation (including Q&A) provides a specialised rewards- and HR-oriented audience with a clear, succinct appraisal of the key elements of political upheaval that have impacted the foreign policy and business strategies of states and companies alike in 2022, along with a range of financial and work-based impacts.
Professor Hadfield starts by exploring two key areas; first, the “long tail” effects of COVID, and, second, the more recent but increasingly intense impact of the war in Ukraine. Taken together, the impact on states, regions and key markets is profound, from supply-chain queries to cost-of-living increases. COVID-19 has shifted from pandemic to epidemic in terms of health responses, but its impact on business continues in myriad ways — not all of them expected. “Pandemic recovery” has become the watchword for companies large and small, with post-COVID strategies designed variously to shift back to business as usual, offer some readjustments or revolutionise entirely new approaches. For others, the collapse of key supply chains, which have sent unit prices skyrocketing, compounded by stagnant services, suggests new frictions and poses questions about either domesticating or merely future-proofing the basic mechanics of supply and demand.
Next, Professor Hadfield takes stock of the war in Ukraine, from European and energy security volatility to food insecurity. She explores the impact on key commodities and widening asymmetries between collapsed and sanctioned producers and what it means for consumer nations and organisations with no plan B.
In geopolitical terms, the stakes couldn’t be higher: the future of Europe hangs in the balance. What impact has the conflict in Ukraine had on the role of NATO, the EU’s own security and defence ambitions, the radical overhaul of German defence spending, and the the French presidential election, not to mention future east–west relations with Russia?
Finally, Professor Hadfield examines a range of important post-Brexit shifts, from regional spats that accompanied the implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement involving the EU as well as key member states, like Ireland and France, to the future of UK–EU and UK–US relations as each partner struggles to identify its new post-Brexit identity.
10:30 am – 11:00 am | Networking break |
11:00 am – 11:45 am | Rethinking total rewards and the future of work
Chetna Singh
SVP, Global Head Total Rewards, SAP
11:45 am – 12:30 pm | How to define benefits that will improve employee wellbeing |
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm | Lunch |
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm | Breakout sessions
Breakout 1 - Rewards trends
David Wreford & Patrick Gutmann
Breakout 2 - Executive remuneration in times of uncertainty
Peter Boreham
Breakout 3 - Pay Equity
Lea Lonsted & Lucye Provera
Breakout 4 - Mobility/remote working
Yvonne Traber & David Osborne
Breakout 5 - Pay for skills
John Langenuis & Paul Habgood
Breakout 6 - HR digital transformation and the rewards function
Eric Chuet
Breakout 7 - Demystifying total rewards in emerging markets
Puneet Swani & Javier Tabakman
2:30 pm – 2:35 pm | Break |
2:35 pm – 3:20 pm | Implementing a skills based reward model in the fintech industry
Ieva Polakovska
Head of Compensation & Benefits, Klarna
3:20 pm – 3:45 pm | Networking break |
3:45 pm – 4:30 pm | The impact of reward in divestments
John Beadle
Global Head of Performance & Reward, ABB
4:30 pm – 5:15 pm | Linking executive incentives to environmental and social objectives
Peter Boreham
UK & European Practice Leader (Executive Reward), Mercer
Graham Kavanagh
Global Head of Rewards and Mobility, Carlsberg Group
Andrew Pilbeam
VP, Head of Total Rewards, Ericsson
5:15 pm - 5:30 pm | Wrap up day 1 - Intro day 2 |
Evening | Networking event |
9:00 am – 9:10 am | Welcome day 2 |
9:10 am – 9:55 am | Keynote - Work without jobs: how to reboot your work operating system
Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA
Global Leader, Transformation Services, Mercer
9:55 am – 10:40 am | The total in total rewards – enhancing the employee experience
Andrew Pilbeam
VP, Head of Total Rewards, Ericsson
10:40 am – 11:00 am | Networking break |
11:00 – 12:00 pm | Breakout sessions
Breakout 1 - Rewards trends
David Wreford & Patrick Gutmann
Breakout 2 - Executive remuneration in times of uncertainty
Peter Boreham
Breakout 3 - Pay equity
Lea Lonsted & Lucye Provera
Breakout 4 - Mobility/remote working
Yvonne Traber & David Osborne
Breakout 5 - Pay for skills
John Langenius & Paul Habgood
Breakout 6 - HR digital transformation and the rewards function
Eric Chuet
Breakout 7 - Demystifying total rewards in emerging markets
Puneet Swani & Javier Tabakman
12:00 pm – 12:05 pm | Break |
12:05 pm – 12:50 pm | What is a living wage and why paying it is good for business and employees?
Ronan Maher
SVP People & Organizational Performance, Yara International
David Smeets
Senior Manager Global Total Rewards, Yara International
12:50 pm – 1:00 pm | Wrap up day 2 and event close |
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm | Lunch |
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John Beadle Global Head of Performance and Reward, ABB |
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John is Global Head of Performance and Reward at ASEA Brown Boveri (ABB), located in Zurich. ABB is a Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation specialising in robotics, electrical and automation technology.
John’s portfolio includes board and executive rewards, employee rewardss (for example, grading, variable pay, share-incentive planning), benefits, international mobility and HR M&A.
He has more than 20 years of experience in rewards and human resource management in the financial, consumer goods, information technology and pharmaceutical industries. He has held a wide variety of international HR roles for GSK, HSBC, IBM, Reckitt Benckiser, Rio Tinto and Standard Chartered Bank.
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Eric Chuet Head of Digital Solutions, Europe and UK, Mercer |
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Leading Mercer’s Digital Solutions practice for Europe and the UK, Eric has P&L responsibility over finance and HR digital transformation business across the region.
Eric joined Mercer in 2018 through the acquisition of everBe, a company he co-founded in 2012. Previously, Eric was the Operation Director of NorthgateArinso (now part of Alight) in France. Eric holds a degree in engineering.
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Patrick Gutmann European Leader Industries and Networking, Career, Mercer |
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Patrick leads the Industries and Networking Team in Mercer’s European Career business, servicing clients by combining industry-specific services and research with networking activities. Patrick is focused on data-backed decision-making, helping HR and the business to leverage pay information and workforce metrics data.
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Paul Habgood Partner, Transformation, Mercer |
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Paul is a recognized thought leader in workforce transformation and building Skills based organizations. He has more than 25 years experience in Human Capital Consulting across many industry sectors including Financial Services, Life Sciences, Aerospace / Defence, Energy, FMCG and High Tech. He has led enterprise wide workforce transformation projects that have realized £100m+ in value to clients and resulted in successful reskilling and upskilling strategies.
Paul was trained in Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) by the Human Capital Institute and is passionate about skills based workforce planning as a foundation for organisations to transform. He also has a background in Talent Acquisition and Contingent Workforce Management having started his career in recruitment and recruitment outsourcing.
Prior to Mercer, Paul worked at IBM as an Offering Leader, developing new methods and technologies including Agile Talent Acquisition, Dynamic Resource Management and SWP Tools.
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Amelia Hadfield Head of Department of Politics, University of Surrey |
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Amelia joined the University of Surrey in January 2019 as Head of the Department of Politics, and Chair in European and International Affairs. Previously she worked as Director of the Centre for European Studies (CEFEUS), a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at Canterbury Christ Church Uni (2013-2018), after positions in Brussels at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Institute for European Studies, where she directed the Euromaster degree, as well as the Educational Development (EDU). Amelia is a long-standing Jean Monnet Chair in European Foreign Affairs, allowing her to successfully obtain Erasmus+ funding for the University of Surrey’s Centre for Britain and Europe (based in the Department of Politics), establishing it in 2020 as a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Amelia’s researching, teaching, consulting & postgrad supervising covers a wide range of areas on EU foreign and security policy, as well as new forms of EU-UK relations. These include Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, EU-US and EU-Canada relations, EU-Russia relations, EU Neighbourhood Policy, EU Development policy (with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa), as well as Arctic & northern governance issues. Additional areas of interest include foreign policy analysis, international and diplomatic history, the role of sovereignty in political history, International Relations theory, international political economy, public policy analysis, the Commonwealth and EU education policy. Amelia is regularly called upon as a guest speaker, external supervisor, research partner, consultant and media pundit on areas of EU foreign affairs, and of late, EU-UK relations. In January 2021, Amelia was appointed Dean International of the University of Surrey, leading the International Engagement Office in supporting the strategic goals of the university on partnership with other universities and networks world-wide, enhanced cutting-edge research cooperation, as well as staff/student mobility.
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Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA Global Leader, Transformation Services, Mercer |
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Ravin is a senior partner and the Global Leader for Mercer’s Transformation Services practice. He is a recognized global thought leader, futurist, and author on the future of work and workforce transformation. He has led multiple research efforts on the global workforce, the emerging digital economy, the rise of artificial intelligence and the transformation of work. Ravin has led numerous research projects for the World Economic Forum, including many of its groundbreaking studies on the transformation of work and the global workforce. He is a regular participant and presenter at the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings in Davos and Dalian/Tianjin and is a member of the Forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment.
Ravin has been a featured speaker on the aforementioned topics at conferences in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America. He has also been featured and quoted extensively by leading business media, including CNN, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Fortune, FT, The Nikkei (Japan), Les Echoes (France), De Telegraaf (Netherlands), South China Morning Post and Dubai One TV, among others. Ravin was also an advisor to and featured prominently on PBS’s widely acclaimed documentary series The Future of Work. Ravin is a frequent guest lecturer at universities around the world, including Caltech, Oxford University, Northwestern University, New York University and the University of Southern California.
Ravin was named to the Thinkers 50 Radar Class of 2020. He has also been recognized as one of the top 25 most influential consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine, one of the top eight future-of-work influencers by Tech News and one of the top 100 HR influencers by HR Executive. He is the author of the books Transformative HR (Wiley, 2012), Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment (Wiley 2015), Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach to Applying Automation to Work (HBR Press, 2018) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Work Without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System (MIT Press, 2022). Ravin has authored more than 200 articles, including 15 for the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review.
Ravin holds both a Bachelor of Business Administration and an MBA in finance and is a CFA® charterholder. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). Before joining Mercer, Ravin was a managing director and global business leader at Willis Towers Watson for 26 years and a consultant with Accenture’s strategy consulting practice.
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Graham Kavanagh Global Head of Rewards and Mobility, Carlsberg Group |
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Graham has been Global Head of Rewards and Mobility for Carlsberg Group, the world’s third-largest brewery company, since 2018. He is responsible for all aspects of employee rewards and mobility for the Group’s 40,000 employees across all markets. The role has focused on linking the rewards agenda to the Group’s purpose-and-performance-driven culture. A particular focus in recent years has been the inclusion of the Group’s ambitious environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda — Together Towards Zero — into the executive reward structures.
Before joining Carlsberg, Graham spent 10 years in various rewards roles at Maersk, the world leader for integrated container logistics and supply chain services, most recently as Global Head of Rewards.
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Lea Grubb Lønsted (Lonsted) HR Transformation, Pay Equity Leader, Europe and UK, Mercer |
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Lea is a principal and part of Mercer’s HR Transformation team, where she serves as Pay Equity Leader for Europe and UK. She joined Mercer in 2019 as Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Consulting, supporting Danish and international companies in building more diverse and inclusive workforces.
Besides working with clients from a broad range of industries (energy, pharma and life sciences, finance, technology, and manufacturing), she supports clients in the non-profit sector (arts, human aid and intra-governmental). Leveraging her experience in the non-profit sector, she has represented Mercer and MMC in several AmCham and European Commission fora and is part of Mercer’s advisory team for the World Economic Forum’s Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators.
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Ieva Polakovska Head of Compensation & Benefits, Klarna |
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Ieva is the Head of Compensation & Benefits for Klarna. Ieva believes in an innovative yet pragmatic approach to compensation topics. Ieva has grown the Comp&Ben area in Klarna from a single-person job to a team of 20+, implemented agile working throughout the entire company while creating a skills-based pay approach to support it. Ieva has an extensive background in compensation and benefits in the financial and tech sectors as well as human resources consulting experience. Ieva holds a master’s degree in organisational psychology.
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Lucye Provera Global Pay Equity Solutions Manager, Mercer |
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Lucye is a principal based in Milan, Italy, working with Mercer’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion Consulting Team and is the Global Pay Equity Solutions Manager.
Lucye has more than 15 years of international consulting experience working with clients across Mercer’s career, pay equity and DEI solutions offerings, using data and analytics to design and implement business-centric solutions.
Her extensive consulting experience includes working with companies on pay equity and gender pay disclosure, diversity and inclusion strategy and policy reviews, total rewards, executive remuneration and incentive design, pay for performance, performance management, and HR transformation.
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Chetna Singh Senior Vice President, Global Head Total Rewards, SAP |
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Chetna is a global HR professional with 23 years of human resource and compensation experience in high-tech industries, financial services and startups across Asia, North America and Europe — a leader who has lived and worked across three continents.
Chetna is a highly passionate and results-driven strategic leader with extensive experience in partnering with board members and senior executives to drive business outcomes by harnessing cognitive diversity.
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Puneet Swani Career Business Leader, AMEA and Pacific, Mercer |
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Puneet is a senior partner and the leader of Mercer’s Career business for Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. During his 23+ years of consulting, Puneet has provided advice to leading local and multinational organisations across more than 25 countries in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. He has worked extensively in the areas of talent engagement and management, total rewards, workforce analytics, talent assessments and proctoring, HR and workforce transformation, and cloud implementation areas. Puneet has in-depth exposure to multiple industries across the region. He has also advised organisations on HR audits, managing people issues in mergers and acquisitions, and compensation outsourcing. Puneet is an experienced facilitator and instructional designer who designs and delivers HR workshops and training for clients. He holds a postgraduate diploma in management.
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Javier Tabakman Partner, Latin America Career Leader, Mercer |
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Javier is a partner with Mercer and the Career Business Leader for Latin America, responsible for all information and consulting business within the region. He advises large multinational and national enterprises in rewards, talent strategy and transformation. Before joining Mercer, Javier acted as CHRO for Pampa Energia, the largest energy group in Argentina, with assets in oil and gas, electricity and construction. He developed his career in several HR managerial positions with Citibank, Reckitt Benckiser and Roland Berger & Partners.
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Yvonne Traber Global Mobility Product Solutions Leader, Mercer |