2026 HR Conference: Call for Speakers Now Open!

• Wednesday, Dec. 10 – Call for Speakers Open
• Tuesday, Jan. 6 – HR Conference Registration Opens
• Friday, Jan. 16 – Call for Speakers Closes. Submissions due
• Tuesday, Jan. 20 – Speaker selection begins
• Monday, Feb. 2 – Speakers notified
• Thursday, Feb. 12 – Speaker deliverables due
• Wednesday, May 20 – Final slide deck and/or handouts due
• Tuesday, June 2 – HR Conference (Brookfield, WI & Virtual)

Each session is 45 minutes in length, comprised of a 40-minute presentation and 5 minutes of Q&A.

• Five (5) sessions available

All presentations will be done in-person and accommodation for virtual presentations will only be made in case of unforeseen circumstances.

Audience:

MRA anticipates an in-person and virtual audience of approximately 500-600 HR professionals with breakout room attendance between 100-300 people. HR professionals of all levels and areas of focus, including employee relations, HR generalists, recruiting, organizational development, training and development, and benefits attend the conference. They work for organizations large and small, in all sectors, including manufacturing, health care, retail, government, and education.

Topics below are of interest, but this list is not exhaustive. Don’t see your topic listed? Please submit your topic for consideration.

• The Art of Difficult Conversations: HR’s role in building communication skills, coaching leaders & teams through sensitive, high-stakes discussions.
• Time Management & Prioritization for HR: Strategies to navigate competing priorities, shifting demands, and the accelerated pace of modern HR work.
• Equipping Leaders for HR Fundamentals: Tools and training that help managers conduct interviews, manage performance, and stay safely within compliance boundaries.
• Leadership Development: Building impactful training and development programs that prepare leaders to effectively manage people and culture.
• Preparing for Crisis Communication: Understand the critical role HR plays during a crisis and how to develop, implement, and practice a robust communication plan.
• Enhancing Staff Communication Strategies: Modern frameworks for driving clarity, alignment, and influence across communication channels.
• Strategic Workforce Planning: Approaches for forecasting talent needs, aligning workforce decisions with organizational goals, and preparing for future skill demands.
• Rethinking Talent Strategies: Innovative approaches to attract, engage, and retain talent in a world where employee expectations are shifting.
• Modern Job-Hopping & Workplace Norms: How HR adapts when traditional expectations and operating procedures no longer apply.
• Succession Planning and Knowledge Transfer: Ensuring continuity through intentional planning for transitions, emerging roles, and organizational expertise.
• Resilience in Hiring & HR Operations: A hands-on workshop focused on building adaptable, resilient practices across hiring and HR decision-making.
• The Intersection of Pay, Culture, Flexibility, and Meaningful Work: Exploring how these elements reshape employee expectations—and HR’s strategic response.
• Engaging Gig and Contract Workers: A practical guide to integrating nontraditional talent models: legal considerations, workforce planning, and communication strategies.
• Mastering Retention Strategies: Keeping top talent by challenging conventional approaches and designing systems aligned with today’s workforce values.
• Embracing Neurodiversity in the Workplace: Breaking traditional molds to build inclusive, supportive environments where neurodiverse employees can thrive.
• HR’s Expanding Influence: Supporting people in every facet of their professional lives.
• From Tactical to Strategic HR: Balancing day-to-day operations with long-term vision.
• Considerations for the People Side of AI: How to develop & train teams; defining a responsible and effective organizational philosophy around AI.
• Harnessing Data for Impact: How HR can use data to drive decisions, tell compelling stories, and influence strategy.
• Educating Employees on Compensation and Benefits: Simplifying complex concepts to empower informed decisions.
• Emerging Benefits Trends: Exploring lifestyle savings accounts, mental health benefits, Captives, ICRAs, and beyond.
• Legal & Compliance Micro-Updates: A rapid-fire overview of emerging legal trends and compliance changes impacting HR.
• Mental Health & Total Wellbeing: Strategies to support employee wellbeing in a fast-changing, boundaryless workplace.
• Optimizing Performance Management: Reimagining performance systems to be clearer, fairer, and more aligned with modern expectations.
• Topic of your choice/suggestion: proposals must connect directly to our conference theme and rethinking norms, expanding HR’s influence, or supporting HR’s strategic evolution.

MRA accepts proposals with the following expectations:

• Speakers demonstrate exceptional, authentic expertise around proposed content.
• Sessions are educational in nature and not used for self-promotion or as a sales pitch.
• Topics are bold, challenging, and forward-thinking. Topics need to fit clearly into the conference theme to be considered.
• Sessions with creative approaches to captivate and empower learners. We encourage interactive sessions, and will give extra consideration to sessions outside a traditional lecture-style talk.
• Sessions presenting detailed steps and actionable takeaways from lived experience will be highly considered.
• An understanding of who conference attendees are and how your content will be consumed.

MRA prides itself on providing attendees with tangible ideas and compelling resources that they can take back to their workplace and readily implement. Be authentic and vulnerable and don't be afraid to speak of failure as well as success. Speakers are encouraged to dig deep to provide an engaging, inspiring, and fun delivery of the session. MRA conference attendees represent organizational and personal diversity, and we value diversity in our speakers. Speakers are encouraged to highlight diversity in your session where applicable, such as providing examples that reflect various cultural perspectives, ensuring statistics and demographics show an awareness of diversity, and presenting topics from unique and different angles. Keep in mind that knowledge sharing is the focus of all sessions, and sales pitches disguised as education will reflect poorly to conference organizers and attendees and will result in lost opportunities.

All proposals received on or before Friday, January 16 will be reviewed by the 2026 MRA HR Conference planning group. Selection will be determined by which proposals are geared toward HR professionals and best align with the conference theme and topics outlined above. Selected presenters will be notified by Monday, February 2.

Responsibilities:

To ensure that MRA has ample time to prepare materials and go through the continuing education approval process, selected presenters will be required to meet the following deadlines:

• Thursday, February 12 – Speaker headshot, bio, final session title, final session description (3-5 sentences), and 2-3 learning objectives are due.
• Wednesday, May 20 – Final slide deck presentation and/or handouts are due. These will also be provided to attendees as downloadable resources.

Failure to submit this information in the appropriate timeframe may result in removal from the agenda.

Benefits:

Conference speakers are offered the following accommodations:

• (1) Complimentary, nontransferable conference registration.
• Speaker/organization recognition as “Conference Supporters.”
• Opportunity to demonstrate expertise, knowledge, and experience, as well as to network with conference attendees.

Compensation:

MRA values the expertise and contributions of our speakers. Please note that this is an unpaid speaking opportunity. Selected speakers participate on a voluntary basis and receive the benefits listed above in lieu of monetary compensation.

Permission to Record and Distribute:

By accepting the speaking engagement, presenters grant MRA a royalty-free license to record, reproduce, and distribute their presentation and PDF resources in the future. The speaker retains copyright ownership of the presentation & resources.

MRA’s Noncommercial Policy:

The focus of MRA HR Conference sessions is strictly educational, and the organization and its attendees are critical of speakers or sessions that are self-promotional. Conference sessions should only advance the educational process and strictly will not be used for commercial sales pitches, self-promotion, or unwarranted criticism of a competitor. Any advance materials submitted that are suspect to this policy will be returned to the speaker for the appropriate edits.