Blog Post

The 2019 NHRG conference this year was hosted by Arizona Public Service Palo Verde Generating Station and took place at the Kimpton Hotel in downtown Phoenix Arizona.

Planning for the NHRG event began in mid 2018 and culminated in the gathering of some 150 nuclear Human Resource professionals and high-level executives from across both the United States and Canada.

NHRG 2019 included a wide range of topics to help empower attendees.

General NHRG topics included:

• New build updates (presented by Vogtle)
• Small modular reactors (presented by Nuscale)
• Networking opportunities (built into schedule)
• Center for energy workforce development updates (presented by CEWD)
• Decommissioning lessons learned (presented by Entergy and Exelon)
• Leadership principles for success (presented by General Todd Canterbury Luke Airforce Base)
• Human resources legal updates (presented by APS)
• Future of NHRG (presented by Accelerant Solutions).

• Industry challenges (presented by APS CNO Bob Bement)
• Nuclear Energy Institute updates (presented by NEI)
• Leadership development and diversity (presented by APS)
• Judgments, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions (presented by Mindspring)

NHRG workshops and breakout sessions included:

Additionally, there was a post NHRG conference team-building bowling and dinner event that resulted in great relationship building outside the environment of the formal event.

• Logistics
• Workforce planning strategy
• The Evolution of People Health Committees and Knowledge Management
• Recruiting and Training Labor Relations Professionals
• Emerging Human Capital Trends Impacting Utility Industry
• Legal Update Impacting Rewards
• Labor Law
• Organizing Activity
• Knowledge Retention Programs and Best Practices
• Data Analytics and Visualization
• Towers Job Matches Nuclear Pay Practice Report
• Non Nuclear Job Matching
• Nuclear Job Matching
• Compensation Round Table
• Learning at the Speed of LEAN
• Strategy to Measure Proficiency
• Power BI – Microsoft Tool Application and Usage for Data Analytics
• USAA Knowledge Base Case Study: Improving the KM Architecture
• SOUL – Smart Open Universe of Learning

In addition to the NHRG event being chalk-full of value-driven general sessions and workshops, the event also included cushion for scorecard discussions, feedback sessions, networking, website ideas, plus delta’s, and closing remarks.

Because there were a variety of sessions and different roles filled during the conference, the takeaways were quite varied. Here are some of the questions and feedback notes captured from the post conference survey that was sent out to attendees in case you are considering attending the 2020 NHRG:

Describe in your own words, any content in the Conference/Breakout Sessions that you look forward in applying at work.

“In the Total Rewards session, the benchmarking exercises, as always, were super helpful and useful. Additionally, I really enjoyed the legal update and analytics discussions. Finally, I also learned a lot from the round table discussion.”

“There was a lot of information relative to my job.”

In your own words, what did you find as the most valuable part of the Conference/Breakout sessions?

“Networking, sharing lessons learned”

“Benchmarking Ops progression (Total Rewards)”

“Benchmarking of scorecards, building industry relationships”

“The round table/Market is always valuable. But many of the general session presenters were especially good this year.”

General Feedback:

“Much better general session this year than last year where it felt like vendor sales pitches. Appreciated the content and forum for us learn from each other.”

The overall feedback from the conference was highly positive, with many requests to bring back keynote speakers for a second go in 2020’s NHRG. Additionally, the format of the schedule was appreciated, with the general sessions preceding the breakout workshops. Going forward it’s hard to imagine the next NHRG being anything other than the value-driven event it was this year, which makes it a must-attend conference for nuclear HR professionals in the upcoming year.

Other Articles That Might Interest You:

4 Elements of a Great Nuclear Training Organization

Learn More About The NHRG (Nuclear Human Resources Group)

Interested in Attending the Next NHRG?

If you are interested in joining the collaboration of the current 300+ NHRG members make sure you click below to WATCH THE LIVE REPLAY of the SOUL NHRG WEBINAR!

See you at next years event!