2026 Programme

Sarah Armstrong-Smith, Chief Security Advisor at Microsoft will explore what it takes to lead effectively during uncertainty and crisis. A globally recognised expert in resilience and crisis management, Sarah will share actionable insights on making critical decisions under pressure, strengthening workplace culture, and supporting people through challenging times. As a senior female leader in STEM, she will also highlight the importance of diverse leadership, ensuring every voice is heard.

Technology, demographics and regulation are rapidly reshaping work. This panel explores how jobs, skills and workplaces are evolving, and what HR and people leaders must do to prepare for the future and ensure positive outcomes for their organisations.

Key takeaways;

• assess the key shifts shaping how, where and why people work
• adapt to governance and regulation for new ways of working whilst still driving productivity and performance
• understand how roles, skills and work locations are changing and how organisations can adapt to this to still drive productivity 
• be able to attract and engage younger talent and support multigenerational and longer working lives.

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.

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. 

AI is rapidly moving from experimentation to everyday business reality, but success depends as much on people and leadership as on technology. This panel explores how organisations can apply AI in practical ways to improve productivity, redesign jobs and build skills, while engaging employees and managers to drive sustainable business success.

Key takeaways:

• understand how AI is reshaping job design, performance expectations and workforce capability
• move beyond hype to real-world AI applications that deliver measurable business value
• upskill leaders and managers - to lead through change, adopt AI confidently and reduce employee turnover.

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.

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?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is unavoidable in the modern workplace, especially agentic AI, but how organisations frame emerging technologies can change employee perception and engagement.

Key takeaways:

• What is the impact of positioning agentic AI as a digital colleague, intelligent assistant, or a straightforward tool?
• How does each positioning strategy can influence behaviour, performance and organisational culture?
• How can you introduce AI in a way that enhances collaboration, reduces resistance, and unlocks meaningful productivity gains?

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.

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?

As technology accelerates, and automation increases in many industries, the strategic value of line managers in enabling people to perform at their best remains of vital importance. This workshop focuses on how technology should support rather than replace managers’ human skills in driving individual, team and organisational performance.

Key takeaways:

• explore why capabilities such as empathy, communication, coaching and ethical judgement are increasingly critical in a tech-enabled environment
• examine the evolving expectations of line managers
• discover how well-developed human skills supported by effective use of technology directly influence engagement and sustainable organisational outcomes.

As the world of work continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, organisations are under pressure to anticipate future skills needs and ensure they have the right talent in the right roles at the right time. Strategic workforce planning isn’t just about filling current vacancies, it’s about building resilient talent pipelines that can drive long-term business success.

Key takeaways;

• explore tools and methods to anticipate the skills and roles organisations will require in 3–5 years
• build strategies for agile talent pipelines to develop internal and external talent pools that can adapt to changing business demands
• understand how to leverage workforce analytics for informed decision-making and proactive workforce planning
• ensure talent development, succession planning, and recruitment strategies are directly linked to long-term business objectives.

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.

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 takeways:

• 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.

Hear from the winners of the People Management Awards 2025 ‘Best digital/technology initiative in HR/L&D’ for their generative-AI HR platform, Prosper, celebrated as a “standout example of people-first digital innovation”.

Motivated by fragmented processes and a staggering 300,000 hours a year lost to unresolved HR queries, Lloyds Banking Group set out to radically improve the employee experience. In just six weeks, a small cross-functional team built a generative AI-enabled prototype that delivered faster, higher-quality answers, reduced clicks and significantly boosted satisfaction. With the potential to resolve 90% of HR queries and save every colleague at least 1% of their time, Prosper demonstrates how thoughtful design, strong governance and empathetic change management can transform HR at scale.

Key takeaways :

• how to simplify and ready content for AI use (AI doesn't read like a human!)
• retain the human touch in moments that matter
• use an agile approach to select, test, implement and iterate 
• the cultural shift required to embed and realise the benefits of AI.

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. 

Transformational leadership is not about having the right vision. It is about changing what people do automatically when pressure arrives. Every organisation operates with a gap between facts and truth;

Facts: constraints, pressure, limited resources, complexity, fatigue

Truth: purpose, potential, long-term impact, what must matter

Transformational leaders don’t deny the facts

They reshape the organisational response to them.

This is where transformation lives.

Key takeaways:

• Transformational leaders shift the invisible system (habits before vision), you do not transform organisations by changing strategy. You transform them by changing what people do without thinking Habits outlast leadership turnover or vision enthusiasm; colleagues get on board as you lead a change in behaviour rather than demand belief.
• Transformational leaders lead the thinking, not just the performance, most change initiatives fail because leaders challenge output, not thinking. Transformational leadership raises the quality of thought: Shift leadership conversations from: “What did you do? to What thinking led you there?” People feel respected, not managed as teams grow intellectually, not just operationally.
• Transformational leaders become the emotional anchor of change, people don’t resist change; they resist the emotional cost of uncertainty. Transformational leaders regulate factors such as fear and ambiguity ensuring consistency reigns over intensity. People follow your emotional certainty, not your title. You build trust through being predictable.

Workplace wellbeing is now a strategic priority. Rising sickness absence and health‑related worklessness demand that organisations rethink how they support employees. The Keep Britain Working review highlights the importance of proactive, people‑centred approaches that improve health, engagement, and productivity, and encourages employers to embed better people management and development practices.

Key takeaways;

• create a healthy working lifecycle: From recruitment to return‑to‑work, embedding support at every stage
• equip managers to have empathetic conversations and foster psychological safety
• use workplace interventions and rapid access to help to keep employees healthy and productive
• align practices with strategic goals and creating the right environment to sustain wellbeing improvements.

Attendees will leave with practical insights to build resilient, inclusive workplaces that enhance health, performance, and productivity.

Shifting focus from checklists to strategy, this session explores how a purpose led, culturally aligned induction supports faster role effectiveness, improves early retention and drives stronger performance from new colleagues.

Key takeaways;

• understand the concepts of a culturally immersive induction process improves early retention, delivering an immediate return on investment by cutting replacement costs
• design the journey to explicitly connect the new colleague's role to the organisational purpose, accelerating their time to full productivity
• embed culture, values and inclusion into the first 90 days, making induction the primary tool for driving immediate engagement and long term belonging.

As organisations navigate disruption, digital transformation, and evolving workforce expectations, future-ready business models are critical for sustainable success. This session explores how HR and people professionals can drive change, embed agility, and support organisations in adapting to new ways of working.

Key takeaways;

• examine emerging organisational structures, operating models, and workforce strategies that enable innovation and resilience
• lead change effectively - practical frameworks and strategies for managing large-scale organisational change while maintaining engagement and productivity
• embed a change ready culture: Developing leadership and people practices that enable continuous learning, innovation, and responsiveness to market shifts.

This session recognises the emotional and professional demands on people teams and explores how protecting their wellbeing enables focus, productivity and long term impact.

Key takeaways;

• be able to delegate ownership and resist the pressure to be the 'perfect' employee or sole culture driver, enabling HR leaders to practise self care
• implement structured peer support or clinical supervision models to provide a confidential space for HR professionals to debrief sensitive cases
• adopt professional boundaries and self-care tools - like decompression techniques - to effectively manage the emotional labour from high stress employee issues without compromising their own capacity and mental health.

As workplace skills evolve at pace, traditional training approaches often struggle to keep up. AI can help to give a clearer, data-driven view of workforce capabilities by analysing performance data, surface emerging skills gaps, and create personalised learning pathways that align with organisational goals.

Key takeaways

This session discusses how AI can boost productivity through a training strategy that:

• enables smarter and more responsive training strategies
• streamlines training design
• improves accuracy in measuring impact
• ensures development programmes remain relevant in a rapidly changing skills landscape.

Employee engagement and performance are most impactful when they are directly aligned with organisational goals. This panel explores how organisations can connect individual contributions to broader business strategy, optimise productivity, and create a culture of continuous improvement. Attendees will leave with practical insights on linking engagement, performance, and productivity to business outcomes, ensuring people strategies drive tangible results.

Key takeaways;

• implement best practice for setting clear, measurable goals that tie individual performance to organisational objectives
• explore performance management tools and frameworks that help track alignment and progress
• manage underperformance; strategies to address gaps proactively, support development, and maintain high standards without disengaging employees.

This session explores how organisations can enable sustainable work life integration for a multi-generational workforce. It examines how differing life stages and expectations shape flexibility needs, and how clear boundaries, flexible working models and visible leadership behaviours can prevent burnout and support long term performance.

Key takeaways;

• design and communicate a clear ‘right to disconnect’ approach that reflects differing generational expectations around availability
• establish and clearly articulate flexible working options (e.g. hybrid working, compressed hours, flexitime) that support varied life stages while maintaining fairness
• upskill leaders to model healthy work practices, manage workload effectively and hold meaningful capacity and flexibility conversations.

The Employment Rights Act has delivered the most significant overhaul of UK employment legislation in years. For HR, the challenge now is moving from legal awareness to practical, compliant implementation. This session will cover what you need to know, focusing on how to update operational practices to stay fully compliant under new changes to UK employment law.

As AI and new ways of working rapidly reshape the labour market, organisations must ensure their people have the skills to adapt and thrive. Success now depends on proactive AI upskilling, continuous learning, and data-driven workforce development strategies that align skills with evolving roles and business needs as well as making sure there is a people centric and ethical approach to adoption.

Key takeaways;

• understand the changing skills landscape driven by AI, automation, and the knowledge economy
• gain practical approaches to AI upskilling and real-world use cases for workforce transformation
• adopt inclusive leadership and skills-based hiring to ensure AI learning opportunities reach the entire workforce
• use AI to personalise learning pathways based on skills gaps, career ambitions, and organisational priorities
• ensure ethical adoption and people centric approach to adoption

This session focuses on harnessing cognitive differences (e.g. Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia) as a competitive advantage. It provides practical, systemic interventions for recruitment, onboarding and daily tasks to ensure the organisation benefits from this often overlooked talent pool.

Key takeaways;

• adapt recruitment and interview processes to remove unnecessary barriers, focusing on skills assessment over traditional social presentation (e.g. using work trials and structured interviews)
• implement practical, low cost adjustments such as clear communication and quiet zones to support focused work
• train managers and HR to understand neurodivergent communication, promote strengths based conversations and ensure fair performance management.

Empowering teams to adapt to change takes skill - so how can you prepare leaders to harness agility and drive performance? Discover how to support your leaders to drive change and avoid change fatigue.

Key takeaways:

• Build a culture of resilience, that values logic and learning
• Lead with openness and accountability, to promote cultures of shared responsibility
• Communicate with clarity and purpose to drive change forward, even when facing resistance and the path is not clear.

Shifting expectations, data-driven insight and business pressures are redefining L&D’s role in the workplace. In recent years, L&D have been evolving from a learning provider to help shape organisational performance. So how can L&D professionals continue on this trajectory and collaborate with leaders, aligning learning to measurable outcomes and influencing strategy?

In this fishbowl, we will discuss: 

• How much should be expected from L&D professionals as a strategic performance partner?
• What are the barriers for L&D to be more strategic and value-creating?
• What changes need to be made to keep L&D professionals in this space?

This session examines how fair pay, relevant rewards and consistent recognition drive employee satisfaction, performance and retention. It explores how transparency, tailored total reward and meaningful recognition work together to strengthen engagement and sustain contribution.

Key takeaways;

• build trust and retention through clear communication and defensible pay structures that support fairness and equity
• design flexible total reward packages that increase satisfaction by offering personalised value beyond base pay
• embed frequent, values led recognition to reinforce high performance, sustain motivation and reduce attrition.

Job design is critical in ensuring roles align with organisational goals, as well as for enhancing employee satisfaction and productivity. But how can AI be used to optimise workflows and ensure efficiency?

Key takeaways:

• automate task analysis to understand where your workforce may be falling short
• monitor workflows to predict what future skills might be needed to ensure organisational success
• emphasise the need for human differentiators, such as creativity, in optimising job design.

The workplace is changing, and some organisations are moving towards a skills-based, rather than role-based approach. But how can you identify emerging skills needs, design effective reskilling and upskilling pathways, and align workforce capabilities with long-term business strategy? 

Key takeaways:

• tools, methodologies and governance models that enable organisations to shift from role-based thinking to skills-first decision-making 
• building more adaptable, future-ready teams 
• create a sustainable talent ecosystem that supports organisational resilience and growth.

This session reframes absence management as a productivity and performance issue, addressing the root causes of short and long term absence. It shows how preventative wellbeing strategies, capable line management, and a supportive culture can boost attendance, sustain performance and drive organisational success while reducing cost. 

Key takeaways:

• analyse absence data and employee feedback to identify and proactively address the main causes of persistent absence and reduced productivity
• equip line managers to hold effective return to work and early wellbeing conversations that support sustained performance
• design holistic wellbeing approaches that integrate mental and physical health support with absence policy and flexible adjustment.

The best leaders inspire, adapt and drive transformation - but what does it take to develop these characteristics? This session will examine how to drive effective leadership and gain fresh perspectives.

Key takeaways:

• Understand new ideas around leadership in today’s world
• Know the skills leaders need today to lead effectively 
• How can leaders drive performance and business outcomes?
• Know the developmental experiences will be needed to build these skills and qualities

Compliance among managers is critical in ensuring organisations run efficiently, but how can you truly ensure they are adhering to company policies? 

Key takeaways:

• understand how to effectively communicate company policy and procedures to make them fully accessible for managers
• evaluate what training is needed to ensure managers are fully compliant with organisational policy
• gain buy-in from senior leadership and set an example from the top-down
• effectively measure and track compliance across your organisation.

Join us for an exclusive fireside chat with Richard Osman, acclaimed TV presenter, producer, and best-selling author, as he reflects on a remarkable career defined by creativity, reinvention, and resilience. This session will explore the insights, challenges, and lessons that have shaped his professional and personal journey.

Richard will share how he pivoted careers mid-life, embraced creative risks, and leveraged transferable skills, as well as how storytelling can inspire and guide teams. He will also speak candidly about living with nystagmus, navigating anxiety and stress, and the importance of supportive, inclusive workplaces that allow people and ideas to thrive.