Event speakers are a critical part of transforming your workplace and company culture, they can be a catalyst for change and offer a different perspective to employees within a business.
Staff can benefit from motivational speakers to boost their morale and energy levels. Insightful ideas can be sparked, and specific knowledge can be provided. Perhaps the most significant gift that a speaker can give to employees is inspiration.
Various studies have found that organizational culture directly influences employee motivation as well as indirectly influences organizational performance. A positive organizational culture increases employees' motivation. In organizations with a strong culture of rewarding and acknowledging employees' efforts, motivation increases, and performance improves dramatically.
A great way to boost corporate culture is to hire a keynote or motivational speaker to inspire your audience, help direct difficult conversations, educate on certain topics to offer a different point of view and improve overall morale.
Listed below are some of the best corporate culture experts and thought leaders who can inspire, educate, and entertain your audience with a memorable speech or presentation.
In addition to developing trust and respect between employers and employees, these speakers can address topics like work-life balance, transparency, teamwork, building relationships, productivity, communication, flexible workplace policies, diversity and inclusion, employee mental and emotional health, amplifying employee voices, leadership, innovation, equity, change management, and more.
Shadé Zahrai is a leadership ‘alchemist’ known for her superhuman ability to translate the latest in neuroscience and psychology research into practical and actionable strategies that drive mindset shifts and behavioural change in a systemic way.
She’s a dynamic speaker who skillfully blends a wealth of experience in corporate and consulting Fortune 500s around the world, with her approach as a scholar-practitioner and her Ph.D. research in leadership and career performance.
She’s spent countless hours with hundreds of teams from startups to Fortune 500s, observing clear behavioural trends behind the happiest and most successful people. Now through her company, along with her Ph.D. research in career performance, she is leveraging the latest insights in high performance and leadership into commercially sound strategies for people and companies to do their best work by putting emotional intelligence and ‘humanness’ at the core.
Dr Ben Hamer is one of Australia’s few accredited futurists and is a global expert on the Future of Work.
He heads up the Future of Work market for one of the world's leading advisories and has worked at the World Economic Forum, where he led critical projects on the future of work, skills, and education. Ben is a Board Member for the Australian HR Institute, where he was appointed as the youngest Non-Executive Director in the organisation’s history and provides expert commentary across Australian media on a regular basis.
As Chief Executive Officer of Coreo, Ashleigh Morris is bold in her pursuit of systemic change.
Globally recognised as a sustainability leader in business, industry and trade, Ashleigh is regularly invited to speak at international forums, including the World Circular Economy Forum and the United Nations General Assembly. Her work captures the imaginations of leaders across broad sectors to begin the work of transforming our linear economy into a circular economy; one that serves people and nature, rather than one that people and nature serve.
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An inspirational leader and in-demand speaker, Felicity’s engineering mindset is primed to help leaders and teams reignite performance, reframe challenges as opportunities and redefine what’s possible in the future of business and leadership.
From BOSS Magazine’s Young Executive of The Year to be one of Westpac AFR’s 100 Women of Influence and the Director of four multi-million dollar businesses, Felicity has made a career out of making the ‘impossible’ possible.
In the world of engineering, Felicity skyrocketed to the top to lead some of Australia’s most innovative mega infrastructure projects for the likes of Arup, fortune 500 company AECOM and Brisbane City Council, where she delivered a $45 million dollar transport infrastructure project portfolio at just 23 years-of-age.
Taylor Dee Hawkins is Managing Director of Foundations for Tomorrow, a non-partisan NFP with the mission of future-proofing Australia’s interests and advancing the consideration of the interests of future generations in government and industry decision-making.
In 2021, Foundations for Tomorrow conducted Australia’s largest consultation run by and for youth, to identify the requirements to create a more just, equitable and sustainable future.
Matt Jones is one of Australia’s leading strategists and storytellers when it comes to the intersections of brand, business, leadership, experience, culture, technology, human behaviour and storytelling.
Matt has an eclectic background, combining economics, politics, brand experience and gin.
As one of three co-founders and the brand brains behind Four Pillars, Matt Jones connects the dots between brand and purpose theory and gritty business and delivery reality.
His storytelling is insightful, engaging, energising and (perhaps most important) highly relatable to all kinds of businesses.
A multi-award-winning entrepreneur, Justin is a vibrant and inspirational speaker. He shares the many lessons he has learned in the building of Vinomofo. Launched in April 2011 from a little garage in Adelaide, Vinomofo has grown quickly and profitably to a run rate of over $50m in revenue, 500,000 members, and a team of 100.
Justin is passionate about providing his team with a great working environment. He is experienced in cultivating positive workplace cultures and management strategies, based on the driving principles of being human. He is also a strong believer in the importance of outstanding customer service and harnessing the power of your customer base to promote your product, by developing your consumers into a community of prosumers.
Holly Ransom is a globally renowned content curator, powerful speaker and master interviewer with the belief that if you walk past it, you tell the world it’s okay.
Named one of Australia’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Australian Financial Review, she has delivered a Peace Charter to the Dalai Lama, was Sir Richard Branson’s nominee for Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List’ of Future Game Changers to watch and was awarded the US Embassy’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Leadership Excellence in 2019. Having interviewed the likes of Barack Obama, Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Branson, Billie Jean-King, Condoleezza Rice, Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and the world’s first humanoid robot Sophia, Holly fights complexity with curiosity, apathy with empowerment and fear with fact.
Kirstin Ferguson is changing the way the world looks at leadership.
As an award-winning and globally recognised leader, executive coach, company director, writer and speaker, she’s one of Australia’s most prominent leadership experts, derived from her 30-year executive career in addition to her Ph.D. in leadership and culture. Kirstin’s unique combination of skills and experience has driven her passion to inspire and educate all - because she believes everyone is a leader - to lead from the head and the heart.
Janine is a global thought leader on powerful networking, collaboration and unleashing leadership brilliance. She is passionate about building high-performing leaders and teams and bringing brilliant people together to achieve remarkable results.
Janine spent 20 years working her way across the world putting together award-winning marketing campaigns and strategies for high-profile brands like Ralph Lauren, Oroton, Jaeger, Sainsbury’s Homebase and Citizen Watches. It was whilst working as a senior leader that she learned about the power of connection and what it takes to unlock the brilliance in teams and leaders.
Sam Mostyn AO is a businesswoman and sustainability adviser, with a long history of executive & governance roles across business, sport, climate change, the arts, policy, and NFP sectors.
Sam is the President of Chief Executive Women and chair of Women’s Economic Opportunities Review. She serves on the board of Mirvac and is the Chair of Citi Australia’s consumer bank. She also Chairs the boards of the Foundation for Young Australians, Australians Investing in Women, Ausfilm, ANROWS (the Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety) and Alberts.
Ciara Lancaster is Australia's leading change fatigue and resilience expert, keynote speaker and best-selling author.
Ciara helps resilient leaders re-awaken their brilliance and optimise their performance. Her expertise comes from leading teams of 500+ through business transformation at the Big 4 and from the research uncovered in #1 best-selling book Reimagine Change, awarded a 'Finalist Medal' in the 2021 Australian Career Book Awards.
Your audience will be nodding along to the unspoken challenges in today's workplace (fatigue, change expectations and poor innovation) before being transformed by the latest human behaviour hacks and practices.
Steve Vamos has 40 years of experience in global technology and digital media. He has lived and worked in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Asia.
Steve has been CEO of ASX-listed tech company Xero since April 2018, where he leads the business’s growth and performance with a team of more than 3,000 employees. Born in the cloud, Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform for small businesses and their advisors with over 2.45 million subscribers to the platform in over 180 countries. Xero offers an ecosystem of over 800 third-party apps and 200 plus connections to banks and other financial partners.
In 2020, Xero was included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index and recognised by IDC MarketScape as a leader in its worldwide SaaS and cloud-enabled small business finance and accounting applications vendor assessment.
Julia Banks is an author, columnist and Keynote Speaker who runs her consultancy business and holds non-executive advisory roles. Julia is a former Federal MP and an experienced General Counsel, Chair, Board and Executive Director.
Julia has extensive experience in the corporate& legal sector & served as a Federal Government MP under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and then as an Independent MP.
Julia is a Keynote Speaker and regularly appears in mainstream media - radio and television- and has authored several opinion pieces in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, & The New Daily. Julia's bestselling book Power Play, Breaking through bias barriers and boys’ clubs was nominated in the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards longlist.
An established thought leader on leadership - Julia's advocacy and commentary focusses on safe and respectful cultures in workplaces, schools, sports and organisations across sectors. Julia's non-executive advisory positions include Special Advisor for Gender Equity Victoria.
Chanel Contos founded and led the Teach Us Consent campaign, which made consent education mandatory in all Australian schools and is also the Inaugural Director of the Centre for Sex and Gender equality at the Australia Institute.
Chanel started the Teach Us Consent movement with the vision of demolishing rape culture in Australia. She believes consent education should be taught earlier, holistically, and include concepts such as slut shaming, toxic masculinity, sexual coercion, enthusiastic consent, and queer sex education. As a result of the campaign, Chanel has been awarded the privilege to work closely with the Australian Government at both State and Federal levels, NSW Police, and The Australian Human Rights Commission to create educational reform and alternative reporting options for survivors of sexual assault. So far the campaign has triggered debates in New South Wales Parliament, mandated consent education in Victoria, and made consent be taught earlier and more explicitly in Queensland.
It is important to incorporate keynote and motivational speakers into your training seminars, organisational learning development and employee engagement programs to bring fresh ideas, boost drive and determination, assist in change management, improve teamwork and boost overall morale in staff.
If you need guidance or suggestions in finding the right keynote speakers for your next event, Saxton Speakers can help. Contact our expert team on 1300 799 823 to book. Alternatively, you can enquire here for more information, our roster includes some of the best keynote and celebrity speakers going around.
