14 years as a futurist working with global brands has taught me that almost every engagement with a company has one common outcome. Each foresight exercise is different, but every leader involved realises that their organisation needs to be more agile to face what's coming. And while some of that agility can come from systems, the majority comes from people. Learning Agility is the human dimension of agile organisations. The ability of leaders to learn from experiences and then apply that learning to novel situations. 

Key takeaways:

• How agility can grow from people and human capability, not just processes
• What leaders can learn to stay effective in a changing landscape
• How you can transfer insights to new, unfamiliar situations and face what comes next

As intelligent systems take on the administrative complexity of global employment, the role of the HR professional is shifting, from process manager to strategic architect. But this transformation only holds up if the underlying infrastructure is trustworthy. 

Key takeaways:

• what it means to build on top of a compliant, AI-ready employment layer
• discover how lean HR teams are managing global workforces they couldn't have scaled before
• what 'technical fluency' actually looks like for modern HR leaders operating across borders.

Menopause is a hot topic. It’s also a completely natural life stage affecting millions of working women - yet it remains one of the least understood and most stigmatized workplace experiences. This presentation presents key findings from Benenden Health’s “Missing From the Workplace” research, which recently surveyed 2,000 UK women aged 40–65, and 500 HR professionals, to gain an understanding of women's experiences, and compare to employer understanding and the support they offer.

Key Takeaways:

• discover why the Menopause creates significant barriers for women in the workplace. 
• learn how inaction has real consequences for wellbeing, performance, retention and organisational culture.
• find out how HR can lead meaningful change by implementing practical, evidence‑based support that helps women thrive at every stage of life

AI is transforming HR, from hiring to retention, but knowing where to start or scale can be tough. In this 30‑minute session, we’ll cut through the hype with real examples of AI in recruiting, engagement, and workforce planning. Learn what’s working, how to overcome adoption challenges, and how to lead AI initiatives without a tech background, while keeping HR human and future‑ready.

Key takeaways:

- practical, real‑world examples of how AI is being applied across recruitment, engagement, and workforce planning.

- common challenges HR teams face when adopting AI — and actionable ways to overcome them.

- how HR leaders can drive AI initiatives effectively, even without a tech background, while maintaining a human‑first approach.

The Employment Rights Act is set to cost UK employers billions. Are you ahead of it or firefighting? This strategic session is designed for HR directors and business leaders who need more than legal awareness. You need a plan.

Rising employer costs are forcing hard conversations - but the organisations getting this right aren't just cutting back. In this open discussion, we’ll explore how smarter approaches to incentives, benefits and reward - from salary sacrifice and EV schemes to total reward strategy - can offset rising costs, strengthen your employee proposition, and turn legislative pressure into a recruitment and retention advantage.

This discussion will give you the strategic tools to reduce financial exposure while building workplaces resilient enough to compete for talent, regardless of legislative demands.

Key takeaways: 

• A clear picture of where your greatest cost and compliance risks lie
• Practical ways to use incentives, benefits and reward to absorb pressure and drive retention
• Concrete steps to protect your talent pipeline without blowing your budget
• A framework for turning legislative change into long-term competitive advantage.

HR leaders are under pressure to modernise their function, deliver greater value to the business and make better workforce decisions, yet the people tech market is increasingly complex and noisy.

This session cuts through the hype to focus on the technologies that are genuinely delivering results for UK organisations. Drawing on real implementation experience, it explores how AI, automation and modern HR platforms are being used to improve efficiency, insight and employee experience, and where organisations are still getting it wrong.

You’ll leave with clearer priorities, stronger questions to ask your suppliers, and a more confident approach to shaping your people tech roadmap. 

Key takeaways:

• which people technologies are genuinely improving retention, performance, productivity and decision-making
• how to assess whether your organisation is truly ready for AI in HR
• common pitfalls in HR tech implementations and the change management lessons to learn now
• where to invest now, and what can safely wait.

Disconnected tools. Fragmented comms. An employee experience that feels anything but seamless.

Sound familiar?

Your people don’t need more tools. They need a single place to find answers, stay connected, build skills and feel part of something, without switching between a dozen different tabs to do it.

Dojo built their business on making transactions seamless. Fast, frictionless and always on. Now they’re applying the same thinking to their people and have transformed their employee experience.

By bringing communications, knowledge, company policies, learning and culture into one digital front door with Thrive, they’ve created a single destination where employees can find the answers they need, when they need them — all in the flow of work.

No switching between tabs. No missed messages. No fragmented experience.

The result? Less friction, stronger engagement and an employee experience that actually works.

If you’re an HR leader managing the experience across a stack of disconnected tools, this session is for you.

Key takeaways

• create a single destination for learning, comms and knowledge to help employees find answers faster
  
• simplify the digital workplace experience to strengthen culture and connection
  
• reduce friction and improve engagement through a more connected employee experience.

Drawing on her expertise as a biological anthropologist, author and broadcaster, Prof. Alice Roberts will examine how diversity - across biology, culture, and lived experience can be a powerful asset. She will connect insights from human evolution and anthropology to today’s challenges, offering a fresh perspective on how we can harness difference to drive innovation, resilience, and performance.

The session will explore the dynamic relationship between people, environment, technology, and culture, revealing how these forces shape behaviour, decision-making, and organisational outcomes. 

Alice will also share her expertise in translating complex ideas into clear, compelling communication and how to engage with empathy and communicate with impact.

This session explores the tension between quick AI productivity gains vs long-term workforce capability, and whether strategic deceleration could be the answer.

Key takeaways:

• productivity tradeoff. How short-term gains masks long-term capability gaps.
• ways to measure skills loss and overall long-term productivity gains.
• how to build employee commitment to upskill
• strategic deceleration. Examples of how intentionally slowing down for meaningful human oversight and stretch tasks can strengthen mastery and dignity.

Not every employee has the same needs. We take a look at our data on how gender, sexuality, and neurodiversity influences employee needs – and the gaps this causes in wellbeing and benefits.

Key takeaways:

• the key to inclusive engagement
• the core people challenges of 2026
• how to address the different wellbeing needs of diverse populations
• six top tips to drive engagement for every employee

Discover how HR teams can link wellbeing programmes to productivity, retention, and business growth. This session provides practical strategies to secure budget and maximise the return on your wellbeing investment.

Key takeaways:

• dive into the metrics that matter to draw clearer lines between wellbeing programmes and their impact on productivity, retention and business growth
• build a compelling story for budget holders to secure investment and demonstrate the strategic value of employee wellbeing
• share practical strategies to maximise the return on your wellbeing investment and drive long term organisational success.

Inclusive leadership is much more than being ‘open-minded’, it’s a commitment to creating equitable, respectful and empowering workplaces for all employees. But how can leaders effectively showcase commitment to inclusivity? 

Key takeaways:

• discover how to lead with authenticity and transparency to build trust and accountability
• embed psychological safety whereby people feel seen, heard and valued
• making EDI a central business priority, aligning it with your organisation's core values and actions.

Pay reporting can be treated as a compliance task – published, parked and forgotten. When treated this way, organisations miss the opportunity to use the data to understand how work, reward, progression and access to opportunity actually operate in practice.

From April 2026 GB employers will be encouraged to voluntarily publish gender equality action plans and from April 2027 it will become manadatory. Organisations will be required to choose actions that support gender equality and menopause support at work. The organisational challenge is not producing the data, but turning mandatory reporting into business-relevant insight and tailored action. Join us for an interactive discussion to support you to identify and build the core components of an equality action plan that translates reporting requirements into practical, evidence-led action.

Key takeaways:

- How to develop an action plan blueprint to support future action plan requirements

- How combining pay reporting with wider people analytics can paint a detailed picture of the current state of play of equality within an organisation

- How to ensure action plans do not become another ‘tick box’ exercise, by defining clear priorities, ownership and measures of success

As AI becomes embedded in everyday HR practice, human-centred skills - empathy, emotional intelligence and ethical judgement - are more essential than ever. The challenge is understanding how technology can enhance, rather than replace, the human experience.

Key takeaways:

Learn how HR teams can design a practical, scalable tech toolkit that automates routine processes and frees valuable time for what truly matters, culture, connection and employee wellbeing. 

Data from over 3,000 leaders and teams show that teams are focusing on developing their Change Readiness based on the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) world we are in, but how do they take the next step in performance and how can their leaders help them be effective and connected? 

Key takeaways:

• our latest data on team and leader effectiveness and the most impactful development areas
• the rise in relational energisers within leadership - and the different impact through seniority levels
• our recommendations for HR/L&D leaders to help support their teams and leadership.

 This panel explores case studies and learnings on how organisations:

• do job design to raise performance without burnout
• implement ethical AI governance to scale AI use safely
• support employees to up-skill and be future ready

Despite record low unemployment, worker confidence in job security remains low, driving down engagement and productivity. Join this session for a deep dive into the findings from the People at Work 2026 study, covering 40,000 workers across six continents to understand how this sentiment influences business strategy.

Key takeaways:

• analyse the impact of job anxiety on workforce engagement, stress levels, and productivity in a climate of economic uncertainty
• evaluate the latest findings from ADP Research to understand how UK workers are faring compared to global trends and shifting work practices
• assess how worker sentiment influences leadership planning and identify ways to stabilise the talent pipeline amid rising uncertainty.

Sickness absence is at record levels, with clear consequences for productivity, morale and organisational performance. Latest CIPD/Simplyhealth research highlights the scale of the challenge facing employers. But while many organisations are strengthening absence management processes, fewer are addressing the underlying causes of ill health across the working-age population.

For people professionals, this creates a clear organisational risk and opportunity. The challenge is not simply how to manage absence more effectively, but to shift from a reactive approach to a preventative wellbeing strategy. One that improves the health of the working-age population through improved job quality, work design and health risk management, while continuing to support employees who experience genuine ill health - delivering more sustainable workforce health and performance over time.

Key takeaways:

• why absence management alone is not enough, and how prevention reduces both absence and long-term health risks
• what effective preventative wellbeing strategies look like in practice, including early intervention, workload management, and support for mental and physical health
• how to align preventative approaches with fair, consistent absence management support, sustainable attendance and performance.

Employee career development is rising up the boardroom agenda as organisations and HR leaders tackle the challenge of engaging and retaining talent. Research shows how employees strongly value growth and development, and organisations that actively connect with workers and support internal career development, see greater employee commitment and retention.

Key takeaways:

• discover how to empower your employees to drive internal career growth and what HR can do to support this
• understand how employers can engage and support internal career development to keep your workforce engaged
• utilise career development as a tool to motivate and retain talent as the workforce landscape evolves.

Most organisations have deployed AI, but few have transformed how work gets done. The gap isn’t technology; it’s collaboration. In this session, Alicia Lenart shares how Atlassian is closing the gap between AI investment and business value by treating AI as a people transformation, not just a technology deployment. Drawing from Atlassian’s 2026 State of Teams research, the session will illustrate how real impact comes from rewiring how work gets done, combining human judgment with AI execution in a continuous loop.

Key takeaways:

• How AI value is constrained by leadership, behaviours, and explicit norms
  
• Why you must start with trapped knowledge and workflow design, not technology
  
• How to build the conditions for a human + AI loop: connected knowledge and visible work - required for AI to act as a teammate
  

As working lives lengthen, organisations face a growing strategic challenge: how to keep experienced talent productive, engaged and contributing at pace. The opportunity is significant to keep experienced talent thriving – maintaining productivity, protecting critical capability and accelerating knowledge transfer. Yet CIPD research suggests that older workers are less likely to access development opportunities, even as many say they have skills that could be put to use in more demanding work.

This session explores the organisational gain of ‘age-inclusive reskilling’ and what that looks like in practice, reframing later careers as a stage where people can still grow, adapt and contribute meaningfully. We’ll examine how to create the means, space and culture for lifelong learning, and how multigenerational approaches – including mentoring, reverse mentoring and second-career pathways – can refresh skills and confidence as technology reshapes work.

Attendees will explore:

• how to reframe later-career development as a business opportunity – protecting productivity, retaining critical capability and accelerating knowledge transfer through age-inclusive reskilling
• practical ways to make lifelong learning a reality for older workers by creating the means, space and culture to learn.

In a world of constant disruption, trust has become one of the most critical, and fragile, assets in organisations. In this session Petra will tackle some of the biggest and most pressing trust challenges facing senior HR leaders today, particularly during periods of organisational change.

Drawing on her extensive experience working with leaders under pressure, Petra will explore why trust so often erodes during transformation, restructures, and cultural shifts - and what HR leaders can do to rebuild it in a way that is authentic, sustainable, and measurable. Petra will challenge traditional change management approaches, unpack the human behaviours that undermine trust, and share practical insights to help HR leaders influence from the top and support leaders through uncertainty.

Key takeaways:

• a deeper understanding of why trust breaks down during change
• practical strategies to rebuild and sustain trust
• new perspectives on the role of HR as a guardian of trust
• actionable ideas to support leaders and organisations through uncertainty.

Most companies treat engagement and performance as separate ideas. That’s a mistake. Sustainable high performance needs an engaging culture and performance confidence; for people to feel connected to the company and their work, plus belief in future success. Measure those two and you get a clear, forward‑looking read on whether your culture will deliver results. We’ll show you a simple way to measure both, identify where you are today and take practical steps to move your culture forward.

Key Takeaways:

• understand the psychological link between culture and performance 
• categorise your organisation's current culture using our framework
• understand what a holistic measurement strategy combining engagement and performance confidence really looks like

This session provides a deep dive into the mental health frameworks that drive long-term ROI. We move beyond individual "self-care" to examine the systemic changes required to mitigate workplace stress, prevent burnout, and ensure that mental wellbeing is treated as a critical business metric.

Key takeaways:

• design policies (e.g. right to disconnect and protected focus time) that integrate recovery and early intervention into the working week
• identify and address organisational stressors such as workload and job control to reduce stress and prevent burnout
• embed wellbeing as a core business metric, linking it directly to performance and ROI.

Organisations are under increasing pressure to deliver more, at greater speed, as expectations rise and change accelerates. Teams are being asked to perform continuously, yet high performance does not happen by accident. Without intentional design and day-to-day leadership, short-term gains, while often welcomed, can come at a cost, including burnout, reduced innovation and increased operational risk.

Sustainable high performance is a shared organisational outcome, but it is shaped daily by leaders and enabled through people practices. This session examines the challenge for business leaders and people professionals: how to create the conditions that allow teams to perform at their best over time - sustaining results without eroding capacity, capability or long-term performance.

Key takeaways:

- what sustainable high performance looks like in practice, and the signals leaders should watch for when pressure is tipping into burnout, exclusion or silence

- which measures matter most for gauging sustainable high performance 

- the leadership behaviours that support performance, and the practical interventions HR can lead across work design and capacity"

Generative AI is transforming employee relations, leading to grievances that are often lengthier and more complex. While AI can offer advantages in putting together formal complaints, it critically lacks the necessary human context, creating challenges for HR. This session will focus on how to navigate today’s complex, AI-generated grievances. Focusing on strategies to understand:

• what informal measures promote direct, fast resolution as a first step?
• how can managers be skilled to navigate and digest AI-generated complaints?
• how can formal guidelines ensure proper employee use of AI and highlight the associated risks?

This session shares how the Department for Work and Pensions built Generative Artificial Intelligence for Learning (GAIL) without losing the people who design the learning. 

In this session, Phil and Vicki talk honestly about why speed alone wasn’t the goal, how involving designers from day one shaped the product, and why agreeing a tight scope was critical to success. You’ll hear how they introduced GAIL in a way that values judgement, creativity and professional pride, not blind automation. 

Alongside practical lessons, we’ll share the moments that challenged our assumptions and changed our approach. Expect a grounded, people‑first story of AI in practice, what worked and what surprised the team.

Key takeaways

• Creating a bespoke AI solution that can manage sensitive material
  
• How involving designers from day one improved the end result
  
• How to retain the people who design the learning alongside AI solutions
  

As AI adoption accelerates, HR leaders face a defining question: what should be automated, and what must remain human? This session will give examples of how organisations are making principled decisions about digital enablement, managing the cultural ripple effects of automation, and protecting the human elements that drive trust, creativity, and performance.

Key takeaways:

-Gain practical insights into building high-performing workplaces where technology amplifies, rather than replaces, human potential

-Deploying AI and automation to increase productivity

-Using tech to redesign the employee experience

This session explores how to sustain organisational success by building a continuous, positive employee journey. It focuses on the key drivers of retention (internal mobility, career development and manager effectiveness) to boost engagement, reduce voluntary turnover and strengthen the internal talent pipeline.

Key takeaways:

• understand how clear career development and skills building pathways reduce attrition and deliver ROI by lowering recruitment and replacement costs
• strategies to integrate DE&I into organisational systems to drive trust and maximise employee effort at scale
• equip managers to drive retention through effective coaching, feedback and performance focused development conversations.

In this panel session HR leaders will explore trust as a core driver of performance and productivity. Using real organisational examples, the discussion will show how trust influences engagement, decision-making, retention, and resilience during change - and why it must be built into leadership behaviours and systems, not treated as a standalone wellbeing initiative.

Key Takeaways:

• how trust directly impacts performance, productivity, and engagement
• the leadership behaviours and systems that strengthen trust at scale
• practical ways to link wellbeing investment to measurable business outcomes

CHROs and Talent Acquisition leaders are under pressure from every direction: AI is accelerating at breakneck speed, economic signals are uneven, skills are shifting faster than job architectures can keep up, and the workforce continues to reset expectations in real time. Meanwhile, hiring teams face growing pressure to deliver a seamless experience, protect culture, and respond to sudden surges or slowdowns — often with flat budgets and fragmented tech stacks.

Most TA models simply were not built for this level of unpredictability.

When volatility becomes the norm, the question shifts from “How do we keep up?” to “What helps us stay steady when everything moves at once?” Talent Elasticity provides that clarity— offering a practical way to see where your model stretches, where it strains, and where resilience must be intentionally reinforced. We’ll explore how adaptive organizations stay steady through disruption while still delivering on what CHROs and TA leaders value most: internal mobility, experience quality, AI transparency, and strong business partnership.

No more heroics. No more duct tape. Just deliberately engineered resilience that bends without breaking.

Key takeaways:

- gain a clear view of the five dimensions of Talent Elasticity and how each one supports priorities like organizational design, internal mobility, AI adoption, and experience quality

- identify the pressure points that most often fail during surges, slowdowns, restructures, or AI‑driven change — and understand why they surface when they do

- see how real‑world stress scenarios expose the moments where flexibility, governance, and experience must work in concert to build a more resilient talent engine

Embedding an effective EDI strategy isn’t just a nice to have but a business imperative in today’s workplace. Showing a strong commitment to EDI can enable you to attract and retain talent, drive innovation and create a sense of belonging. Join this session to discover practical steps to building and implementing your EDI strategy.

Key takeaways:

• what does an effective EDI strategy look like? 
• how do you embed EDI practices into every level of the business?
• how can you track and measure the progress of your EDI objectives?
• what is the business impact of implementing an effective EDI framework?

AI is no longer just a tool employees use occasionally. A new generation of “agentic AI” is emerging, capable of reasoning, taking action, orchestrating workflows and becoming an active collaborator in day-to-day work.

For HR leaders and knowledge workers, the question is no longer simply: “How do we adopt AI?”, it’s: “How do we work alongside it effectively, responsibly and strategically?” 

In this session, Steve Elcock explores what it means to be a modern knowledge worker in the era of agentic AI, where competitive advantage increasingly comes from how individuals and organisations capture knowledge, guide AI systems and create continuous learning loops between people and technology.

Drawing on practical examples and emerging thinking around AI-assisted work, Steve will explore how HR leaders can move beyond experimentation and begin building AI-enabled ways of working that genuinely enhance human capability.

Rather than focusing on hype or future speculation, this session will examine:

• What agentic AI actually means in practice for knowledge workers
  
• How AI is changing the relationship between people, knowledge and decision-making
  
• Why personal and organisational knowledge systems will become increasingly important
  
• The role HR can play in shaping safe, human-first adoption
  
• How to balance productivity, governance and trust in AI-enabled workplaces
  
• Practical ways to begin working more effectively with AI today

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how the role of the knowledge worker is evolving, what skills and behaviours will matter most in the next wave of AI adoption, and how HR can help organisations adapt with confidence.

In an era when AI and other breakthrough technologies seems to make ‘anything possible', it is even more important to  anchor on first principles when it comes to designing and delivering learning strategies. Whether this is for a single offsite for a team, or an entire learning strategy for an organisation, we will get the most from our new technologies by starting with how the brain truly learns.

This science-rich yet practical session will help talent and learning professionals to radically increase the effectiveness of learning - perhaps even by 10 times - while meaningfully lower costs.

Specifically, we will explore how to:

• Leverage first principles for learning
• Make more evidence-based choices on learning modalities such as in person versus other forms
• Maximise the potential of AI for learning
• Know when and how to involve humans in a learning process
• Design learning strategies that truly scale but still impact deeply
• All without reducing headcount on your talent and learning team

Talent challenges are increasingly interconnected, so the strategic approach needs to match. This session helps identify opportunities, align priorities, and optimise the end-to-end HR ecosystem to strengthen agility and turn disruption into action. HR faces increasingly complex challenges that are systemic - spanning culture, technology, processes, and talent. Traditional approaches often address symptoms rather than root causes.

Key takeaways: 

• how to diagnose talent gaps
• practical strategies to build a future-ready workforce
• connect initiatives across the workforce, and where to consider prioritising actions.

HR is moving beyond standalone tools to connected ecosystems. This session explores how organisations can design people systems that simplify work, enable better decisions, and create experiences that truly support how employees work today.

Key takeaways:

• HR Systems are no longer enough the shift from managing processes to nurturing people requires more than software - it demands a connected ecosystem here every HR touchpoint works together seamlessly.
• people-first design drives business outcomes organisations that design work around their people - not the other way around - see stronger engagement, better retention, and higher productivity. The future of HR is intentional, not reactive.
• technology should enable, not replace, the human element. The most effective HR ecosystems use automation and AI to eliminate friction, giving HR teams the bandwidth to focus on what truly matters - culture, growth, and the employee experience.

What if the most powerful financial wellbeing levers aren't the ones employers usually pull? Drawing on a new programme of lived experience panels run in partnership with Aston University's Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing, alongside a survey of 1,242 employees, Rachel Harte shares fresh insight into the role of pay timing, dignity and informal borrowing in workplace financial wellbeing — including a surprising finding about financial satisfaction. Expect honest reflections, new evidence, and practical takeaways for HR and reward leaders who want to move beyond the payslip.

Key takeaways:

-pay timing as an operational lever - how flexible pay influences shift uptake and retention, and what that means for recruitment cost and workforce planning.

-dignity as a design principle and why informal borrowing from friends and family is the most common alternative to flexible pay, and how privacy and autonomy belong at the heart of any financial wellbeing strategy.

-the ecosystem effect -  why no single tool moves the dial alone, and how pay flexibility, saving and education combine to move employees from surviving to securing.

AI is removing large parts of traditional HR work faster than HR is redefining its role. Without clear choices, technology ends up shaping HR by default. This keynote shows HR Directors how to take control by redesigning their operating model now. It focuses on what must stay human, where ownership sits, and what HR should stop doing to drive real impact. AI removes work. Strategy comes from deliberate decisions.

Key takeaways:

- learn how to reshape your operating models before it is defined by technology

- identify what must stay human to add the most value

- gain a clear view on how AI is used to support, not lead, in strategy

Ask any HR leader what actually moved the needle in their career, and the answer is rarely a software update. It's a mentor. A trusted partner who picked up the phone when things got complicated. A collaboration that unlocked new opportunities. This session puts people back at the centre, exploring how the most effective HR practitioners today aren't the ones with the best tech stack, but the ones who've built the strongest human infrastructure around them. That includes the right EOR partnerships, the right internal collaborators, and the right framework for treating global hiring not as a compliance exercise, but as a genuine strategic lever. With the EU Pay Transparency Directive and AI compliance regulations reshaping the landscape for UK teams, knowing who you're building with matters as much as knowing what you're building.

Key takeaways:

- Gain a clearer sense of why over-reliance on platforms leaves HR teams under-resourced for the moments that matter most and discover what to do about it

- Understand what "human-centricity" actually looks like inside a global people strategy 

- Identify the partnerships and collaborations that genuinely accelerate team impact

Digital innovation is reshaping how employee volunteering works. In this fireside chat, the tech team at GoVo will explore how technology is making volunteering more visible, inclusive and impactful, while also reducing the friction that often limits participation.

The session will look at the key barriers to access, activation and measurement, and how data and insight can help employers improve engagement. It will also explore what’s next, including AI, skills-based volunteering, personalisation and integration with workplace systems.

Key takeaways

• How data and digital tools can remove the barriers to volunteering participation and make impact measurable for employers
  
• What's next for volunteering technology, from AI and skills-based matching to workplace integration and personalised development pathways
  

AI coaching tools can help employees deliver on business outcomes through personalised, adaptive learning at scale, creating a more agile, skills-aligned workforce. The tools can support employees with real-time guidance, targeted development pathways, and give feedback tailored to their, and their organisations, objectives. 

Learn how AI can support L&D professionals with:

• analysing performance signals
• diagnosing skills gaps
• mapping learning recommendations directly into organisational priorities.

The role of HR has expanded significantly in recent years, in part shaped by major shifts in the external environment and rising expectations from organisations, employees and wider society. Yet the perceived value of the people profession sits under the spotlight of scrutiny. While the growing remit has also prompted questions about what organisations really need from HR, where the profession adds the greatest value, and whether some responsibilities have expanded beyond its most effective role.

So, standing at a crossroad, join this panel as they debate the future direction of the profession. Should HR double down on strategic influence and broader organisational impact, or rethink how responsibility for people management is shared across the business.

Key takeaways:

-what do modern organisations need most from HR, and where can the profession add greatest value

-which aspects of HR’s remit should evolve, be strengthened or devolve to others in the organisation

-how can the profession build credibility, challenge negative perceptions and articulate its value more clearly in a changing context 

This session explores how organisations embed inclusion, diversity and equity as a core cultural standard, moving beyond compliance to create trust, belonging and stronger business outcomes.

Key takeaways:

• evidence based strategies for linking belonging initiatives directly to measurable gains in employee retention and performance
• cultural standards, systems and leadership behaviours drive trust and discretionary effort at scale
• practical actions to address bias and build an equitable, high performing workplace.

This session focuses on how managerial behaviour shapes day-to-day wellbeing, motivation and engagement within teams. It explores how psychological safety, recognition and autonomy support employee confidence, innovation and healthy ways of working.

Key takeaways:

• build trust and psychological safety through inclusive management and open team dynamics
• use meaningful, ongoing recognition to strengthen motivation and connection to purpose
• support wellbeing through autonomy and compassionate, practical conversations.

Effective performance management is essential to driving business performance - with leaders sitting at the heart of this. Explore how leadership and performance management go hand-in-hand in driving business outcomes.

Key takeaways:

• effectively communicate objectives and targets to enable employees to achieve business objectives
• understand what motivates your employees and empowering them to tackle decisions that are new, big and challenging
• foster cultures of continuous learning to encourage skill development and innovation.

TUPE compliance is non-negotiable, and managing the people transition minimises risk and preserves value. This session will guide you in managing this process, focusing on how to support employees and position yourself as a strategic HR leader. Discover how to ensure a seamless transition.

Key takeaways:

• gain knowledge on legal compliance and risk mitigation 
• how to manage the M&A process and identify affected employees
• the practical steps to transferring contracts, terms and continuity of employment.

Benefits provided to employees play such a huge part in a total remuneration package, it's imperative that HR functions are aware of the changes being made to payrolling benefits in kind, which is being mandated from April 2027.

Payrolling may be in the title of this UK wide change, but HR functions, systems / technology, and the data held by employers will have a big role to play in the successful role out of this policy mandate.

Join this session to know:

• What the changes are which you need to be aware of

• What proactive steps you can take to get ahead of the curve in data gathering, and software requirements

• How you can ensure your workforce are aware of the changes.

You've been asked to prove the people function drives the business. And like most HR leaders, you've learned to change the subject, because the data to answer that question has never really existed.

Not because of effort or budget. Because learning, skills and performance have always been three separate problems. Owned by different teams. Bought from different vendors. Measured in different systems. Never designed to speak to each other.

That design was a choice. And AI is exposing it as the wrong one.

In this session, Nelson Sivalingam, CEO of HowNow and author of Learning at Speed, makes the case that the next decade of HR isn't about better tools in each silo. It's about the silos collapsing, and what becomes possible when they do.

You'll see what it actually looks like. A missed performance signal that triggers development in the flow of work. Skills that surface from real output, not self-assessment surveys nobody finished. Impact measured in pipeline, ramp time and retention, not engagement scores.

Key takeaways

• A diagnostic for spotting where your people stack is faking integration
• The three signals every HR team should be ingesting from the business but almost none are
• A clear answer to give your CEO when they ask whether HR drove the number

If you're tired of defending the people function with proxy metrics, this is the session.

Join Tim Harford OBE, renowned Economist, BBC presenter, Financial Times columnist and best selling author for a sharp, insightful look at the forces reshaping the world of work. 

Blending economics, psychology and human behaviour, Tim explores how innovation happens, what crises teach us about leadership, and how to build resilient, adaptable organisations. He cuts through noise and misinformation to reveal how better use of data and a smarter relationship with AI can transform decision-making, culture and performance.