Harrisburg keynote speaker for association conferences and employer events.
Chris Sund is a keynote speaker, Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach, and sitting executive who leads national healthcare staffing organizations. He speaks on workforce motivation, leadership, retention, and human potential for Pennsylvania associations, state agencies, hospitals, long-term care providers, schools, distribution employers, and businesses across central Pennsylvania.
Response within one business day.
Your competition for a dietary aide is not another hospital. It is a warehouse off I-81.
Most healthcare and public sector leaders in this region are still benchmarking against their obvious peers, and that is not where their support staff are actually going.
Central Pennsylvania around Harrisburg, Carlisle, and Mechanicsburg has become one of the largest logistics corridors in the country, locally known as the I-81 corridor. Cheap land and strong rail access have pulled in bulk distribution, cold storage, and manufacturing-adjacent warehousing at enormous scale, with Amazon, DHL, and FedEx all operating regional facilities. Three miles west of the city sits the Eastern Distribution Center in New Cumberland, the largest distribution facility the Department of Defense operates anywhere. Transportation and logistics has quietly become one of Pennsylvania’s largest employment categories.
Here is what that does to the labor market. Wage competition inside a warehouse corridor gets exhausted fast, because every facility watches every other facility and rates converge within cents. But those rates also converge with what a hospital pays environmental services, what a school district pays custodial and food service staff, and what the Commonwealth pays entry-level clerical. So a housekeeper at a Harrisburg hospital, a bus driver at a district, and a picker at a distribution center are, functionally, in the same labor pool, and switching between them costs almost nothing.
When pay has flattened across an entire tier of jobs, the decision moves entirely to non-wage ground. Is the schedule predictable enough to arrange child care around. Does a supervisor know your name. Is the shift bearable. Does anyone notice when you do it well. Those sound like small things next to a corridor full of capital investment, and they are the whole competition, because they are the only variables left that differ between employers.
That is the session. Not a pep talk about appreciation, but a direct case that the tier of staff most leaders think about least is the tier where every dollar of turnover cost is being generated.
Chris runs national healthcare staffing organizations and has keynoted state association conferences in eleven states, including LeadingAge Illinois and health care associations in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado.
Operator, Not Consultant
President and COO of national healthcare staffing organizations, still making the hiring and retention calls he speaks about.
Support Staff Focus
Material written with housekeeping, dietary, transport, and clerical roles in the room rather than about them.
Shift-Friendly Formats
Sessions built to run more than once in a day so second and third shift are not left out.
Groups Chris speaks for.
Harrisburg is Pennsylvania’s capital and the service center for hundreds of surrounding communities, which puts state government, a large health system, and a major logistics economy in one metro of roughly 580,000.
- UPMC Central PA, headquartered in Harrisburg with around eleven thousand employees and roughly twenty nine hundred physicians and allied health professionals, running seven acute care hospitals with more than 1,360 licensed beds across a ten-county area
- Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, about fifteen minutes away in Hershey, one of the largest non-governmental employers in the state
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania agencies and departments, the largest employer in the region, for in-service and leadership development days
- Pennsylvania statewide associations in hospital, long-term care, municipal, school board, and education sectors, which convene members and hold advocacy days in the capital
- Distribution and logistics employers across the I-81 corridor through Carlisle and Mechanicsburg, along with the Defense Logistics Agency operations at New Cumberland and Naval Support Activity Mechanicsburg
- Harrisburg School District and the Dauphin, Cumberland, and York county districts
- Regional employers including Hershey, Rite Aid, and the manufacturing and technology firms across the metro
Harrisburg employers in the same labor pool.
Healthcare is where Chris operates, but flattened frontline wages put these employers in direct competition whether they realize it or not.
Distribution and Logistics
The corridor itself, where turnover is the defining operating cost and every facility pays within cents of the next one.
State Government
Commonwealth agencies whose entry-level and clerical roles compete directly with warehouse wages.
Education
Districts staffing custodial, food service, and transportation roles from the same pool, where one vacancy can stop a bus route.
Hospitality and Retail
Employers who feel wage compression across the whole frontline tier first and hardest.
Harrisburg and central Pennsylvania venues.
- The Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Harrisburg hotel and conference space for statewide association annual meetings
- The Pennsylvania State Capitol and surrounding state office buildings for agency in-service and leadership sessions
- UPMC Central PA and Penn State Health campuses for staff, nurse leadership, and all-staff days
- Distribution and manufacturing sites along the I-81 corridor for shift-friendly all-hands sessions
- Hershey, Carlisle, Mechanicsburg, Camp Hill, and the Cumberland and Dauphin county communities
- Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Lancaster for Pennsylvania organizations that rotate their annual meeting location
Harrisburg events Chris speaks at.
Association Conferences
Statewide association annual meetings, advocacy days, and general sessions, the format Chris works in most often.
Hospital and Health System Events
Leadership days, nurse recognition events, and all-staff meetings across central Pennsylvania.
Retention and Frontline Leadership
Supervisor development for employers competing on everything except wage.
Long-Term and Senior Care
Skilled nursing, assisted living, and continuing care conferences and in-service days.
Corporate, Plant, and Distribution Meetings
All-hands gatherings, shift meetings, safety kickoffs, and employee appreciation events.
HR and SHRM Chapter Events
Human resources conferences and chapter meetings on frontline retention in a wage-compressed market.
Keynote topics for your Harrisburg event.
Every session is customized for the audience, the format, and what you are actually trying to change.
See what conference organizers and HR leaders have said after booking Chris.
Booking a keynote speaker in Harrisburg
Has Chris spoken in Pennsylvania before?
Does Chris travel to Harrisburg?
We keep losing support staff to warehouses. Can a keynote actually help with that?
Can the session run for multiple shifts?
Will this work for a warehouse or plant audience rather than an office one?
What does a Harrisburg keynote cost?
Can Chris speak virtually to a Pennsylvania audience?
Bring Chris to your Harrisburg event.
Send your date, location, and audience. You will get availability and a quote back within one business day.
info@chrissund.com · 402-212-5771 · Pennsylvania speaking · All locations
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