The case for EX: How HR and internal comms win budget — together

The business case that wins isn’t just well-built. It’s well-aligned.

You’ve done the work. You know employee experience drives retention, productivity, and performance. You can probably recite the research. But when you walk into the room and make the case — something stalls.

The strategy lands differently than you expected. Leadership nods, but the budget doesn’t follow. And somewhere between your vision and the final decision, the story gets fragmented.

Here’s what’s actually happening: The bar has never been higher. In an environment where AI investment, operational efficiency, and margin pressure are all competing for the same dollars, EX has to earn its place at the table with a cleaner, more unified case than ever before.

That means HR and internal comms can’t tell two separate stories. They have to tell one.

In this session, Keri Higgins-Bigelow — practitioner, founder of livingHR, and a strategic partner to PE-backed and high-growth leadership teams — joins Sloan Kendall, VP of Partnerships at Blink, to break down what it actually takes to build a business case that sticks. Not just one that’s logically sound, but one that the business believes in — and puts its budget behind.

You’ll leave with a clear framework for aligning HR, internal comms, and C-suite leadership around a single, compelling narrative for EX investment.

You’ll learn how to:

• Build a shared narrative that connects employee experience directly to business priorities — including the metrics CFOs and boards are tracking
• Define clear ownership between HR and internal comms without losing momentum or fragmenting the message
• Identify the highest-impact EX initiatives that resonate across functions and leadership levels — including how to prioritize when AI and operational investment are competing for the same budget
• Navigate executive pushback with a more unified, credible case — from getting the CHRO and CEO aligned to speaking the CFO's language

This session is for you if:

• You've been asked “what’s the ROI?” one too many times
• Your ideas get nods, but not budget
• HR and internal comms are telling parallel stories instead of one
• You know employee experience matters — you just need a stronger case to prove it

Why this session is different:

Most EX conversations focus on ownership. This one focuses on alignment.

The organizations winning budget for EX right now aren’t doing it with better data alone. They’re doing it with a unified story — one that HR, comms, and leadership all believe in and speak from. And they’re doing it at a moment when the competition for investment dollars is real.

This session shows you how to build that story, together.