Welcome & Conference Opening Remarks

Transcription:

Eric Silverman (00:10)

What's up, buddy? How are we doing?

Ed Ligonde (00:13)

Good. How are you doing?

Eric Silverman (00:14)

I'm doing great.

(00:15):

How's everybody doing? I'm going to joke that I'm Colin Jost and this is Michael Che. We were told many times that we should do an entire SNL News Desk skit. Anybody familiar with SNL? Anybody know the skit? So it's interesting. We prepped countless hours, days, weeks. The problem is we started doing a little more research. We dug in deep and we realized fairly quickly—it took a minute—that their jokes tend to be, I don't know, a little risqué, a little colorful, maybe more off-color, or maybe pointed right at color.

(01:14):

And I also heard a rumor that there may be just a few HR people here. So with that in mind, we decided to do a hard pass. Welcome, everybody, to the 2025 Benefits at Work Conference. I'm Eric Silverman. This is my partner in crime for the second year in a row. If anybody was here last year, you saw him, the one, the only Ed Ligonde. Everybody give him a round of applause. Come on, guys. All right. In full transparency, we both have our Meta Ray-Ban glasses recording right now. So everybody wave, say hi. I think—I don't know, I own my own business, I'm tiny, I don't have an HR department yet, anybody looking for a job?—I think I'm supposed to tell people that. So you've been warned, you've been told. All right, little hint

if you're not sure if anybody's wearing these cool glasses, the light will be on, and therefore you know you're being recorded. So you can literally say something to them, or you can duck, run, hide, whatever you want. Totally up to you. Ed, what are we doing

Ed Ligonde (02:18)

Today? I'm so excited to be here again, second year in a row. First of all, Eric and I have been part of the advisory council for gosh, five, six years or so. I don't know why they keep asking us back, but here we are again for year two of MCing it again. So really, really excited to be here and to see a lot of familiar faces and a lot of new faces, too. Plus, who doesn't love Vegas at the end of the day, right? So thank you all so much for coming out. I also just want to give you guys a shout out for taking time out of your busy days, your families, the travel, to be here and to learn, to connect, and just to be together at the end of the day. I'm sure a lot of you would probably rather be out at the craps table or something like that, but I'm glad you're here with us. Get some coffee. We have a full day packed to learn a little bit about benefits.

Eric Silverman (03:15)

I'm so pumped to be back here. I've actually been on the board for more than a decade, and I've loved seeing the transition of EBN over the years, getting more and more hyper-focused on the HR community. And this year is especially no different. In fact, it's better than ever. And why do they keep inviting us back? I don't know, but I'm happy to be here. I'm excited. Was anybody here last year? Not here physically, but in San Diego last year? All right, good. So a few dozen, perfect. And then a bunch of new folks. Raise your hand if you're new to the EBN conference. Fantastic. All right, well, you're in for a treat, and I'm really excited to meet you. Please don't be shy. You can tell I'm pretty shy. Try to get me out of my shell. See me in the hallway. Please come up.

(04:00):

Say hi. If you want to be recorded, just say so. If you don't, just say so. I'll ignore it. All right, let's do some housekeeping. Okay, that's our job as MCs. Everybody knows at the beginning of a conference, everybody has to talk about housekeeping. First and foremost, I just want to talk about the big elephant in the room. There are no bathrooms here. We're on a budget. So if you notice right over here to my right, to your left, the bathrooms are closed today. So if you look under your chair, everybody has a bag. In your bag, Depends, a little surprise for you. I wish I was joking. Go ahead, take a look. Half of you looked. I saw you. I have it on video. It's proof. No, there are bathrooms. Don't worry. They should be wrapped up pretty soon, fixing whatever they were doing.

(04:46):

They are, I believe... I want to say, I'm getting mixed up. I want to say they're at this end, but if I'm wrong, it's that end. If I'm wrong again, just figure it out. Come on. We're adults, we're professionals. We'll do this here. Also, 99% of you, we were told, did not scan in when you got here. So please, in the back of the room, there are a few iPads. Please, please, please, for tracking purposes, we want to see how many people came to each session. Please go ahead and scan and sign in technically before you leave for the next session later this morning. Ed, what else

Ed Ligonde (05:15)

Is on the notes list? Yeah, I just want to give a massive shout out to all the sponsors as well, right? You're wearing them around your neck, you're seeing tons of their logos around this stage. You saw the sizzle video with tons of them, as well. Without them, we wouldn't have bathrooms, right? Without them, we wouldn't have those bags. Just kidding, obviously. But they're sponsoring your food and they're obviously giving us an opportunity to connect together at a much more affordable price as well. So please try not to avoid them. Go ahead and visit their booths, check them out, listen to a conversation, and bring back a ton of swag for your families because that's always good stuff for the kids as well. Now, tons of networking time is available, too. That's one thing that's changed the last few years. You're going to have tons more time to be able to connect together, get out of your shell, meet people.

(06:02):

I'm going to try to take my own advice this year and meet a lot of new people as well because that's why we come here. We come to learn, we come to connect and grow. And a lot of times I've found that I learned the most, not only in the sessions, but when I'm having lunch next to someone I didn't know, when I go out to dinner with someone that I didn't originally know from a different part of the country. They're doing things a little bit differently than I am, but it helps create the types of things I'm doing today. They always say the best ideas are really the culmination of a million other ideas as well. So keep that positive energy up and let's keep it up all day and all day tomorrow as well. My turn. You wanted to talk, right?

Eric Silverman (06:41)

Always. Give me a mic, I will find you. All right, if you have any challenges at all throughout the entire conference, hunt me down, hunt Ed down, hunt any of the event staff down. We'll be hanging out in the hallway or in the back of the room, or in the Solutions Pavilion, vendor hall, whatever you want to call it. So if you need anything, let us know. There are professional development credits being made available. So please remember to scan in, like I said earlier, do so at every single session that you attend throughout today and tomorrow. If you have not already downloaded the event app, please do so. It'll make your life a lot easier. And go ahead and log in. It should not be complicated, even I figured it out, and that's not easy. And let's see, we are going to have the Excellence in Benefits awards for many of you in the room that have won an award. I'm so excited to meet you and congratulations in advance. That will be later this late afternoon. So please help us celebrate the award winners and be here accordingly. Again, it will be on your agenda for specific times and such, and I'm confident it'll be right here in this room. And I don't know what else.

Ed Ligonde (07:54)

Has anybody public spoken before? You've been on stage? How fun is it to speak to a room where there are like four people, five people, right? I've done it before. You would prefer that. I would prefer that. This is incredibly scary right now. No, all kidding aside, we really want to support the speakers, too, right? They worked hard to build the content, the presentations, and to try to give you some lasting material that you can take home and put into your day-to-day practices as well. So please try your best to attend as many sessions as possible. Keep the rooms as full as possible, and I think it's going to be a great experience for everyone. Tons of different topics around mental health, around AI, around just how to do business better together, how to fix healthcare as well. And I think we're going to leave learning a lot of great stuff, right?

(08:42):

All right, who's ready for our first speaker? Come on, give me some more. Let's go, let's go. I'm super honored to introduce our keynote speaker. I'm sure you're done listening to Eric and his whole pink vibe going on over here. Newton Chang, who's the director of health and performance at a little company you might've heard of called Google, right? So super excited to have him on board. He's got some really sweet kicks on as well. So the shoe game up here is pretty sweet. So without further ado, Newton Chang.