On February 28, the celebrated Autodesk Gallery will open its doors to “Hack the Experience,” a collaborative competition that will challenge participants to zero in on key moments that can make or break the employee experience, and work together to generate inventive solutions. In the traditional sense, a hackathon is an event that draws together a large group of people to collaborate on software projects, but employee engagement consultancy Brilliant Ink will use the format to solve challenges surrounding the employee experience.

According to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace Report, 70 percent of U.S. employees are either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” at work – at a cost of $450-550 billion per year. With this statistic in mind, and the ultimate goal of driving better business performance, Brilliant Ink developed the concept for Hack the Experience and solicited support to host the event from some of the Bay Area’s most respected professional organizations, including the International Association of Business Communicators’ (IABC) San Francisco chapter, American Society for Training & Development’s (ASTD) Golden Gate chapter, South Bay Organizational Development Network (SBODN), and Net Impact. The industry’s first hackathon is specifically designed for professionals across the spectrum of employee engagement, including communicators, HR professionals, corporate trainers, CSR professionals, academics/students, creative thinkers, independent consultants, and partners.

“We plan to hack the workplace by challenging the industry’s best minds to come up with ideas that reshape how we look at the employee experience and move today’s employees from disengaged to top performing,” said Liz Kelly, CEO of Brilliant Ink.  

Drawing on award-winning research, Hack the Experience is designed as an interactive, daylong competition to brainstorm creative solutions that will generate higher levels of employee engagement, satisfaction and productivity. Up to 100 participants will be divided into interdisciplinary teams to develop inventive solutions to a pre-defined set of employee engagement challenges. At the end of the day, participants will present solutions to the rest of the audience, along with a panel of blue-ribbon judges, including:

• David Mann, Vice President, Learning & Internal Communication, AAA
• Erin Hosilyk, Head of Internal Communications, LinkedIn
• Pi Wen Looi, Founder and President, Novacrea Research Consulting
• Teri Jenkins Treille, CSR Reporting & Stakeholder Engagement, Cisco

Prizes will be awarded to winners, and key findings will be summarized and publicized among the business community and throughout host organizations’ respective memberships. In addition to partner hosting organizations, Hack the Experience is supported by event sponsors, including Autodesk, theDifference Consulting and Depth of Field Media.

To learn more and to register for Hack the Experience, visit BrilliantInk.net/HTExp.  The daylong event will take place from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, February 28 at the Autodesk Gallery, located at One Market in San Francisco. Follow the event on Twitter: @HTExp and #HTExp.