In this fireside chat, Greg McCaw, Chief People Officer at BKL, and HiBob will explore what AI readiness actually means for today’s workforce, where responsibility should sit for developing it, and how People leaders can help organisations move beyond simply buying AI tools towards actually changing how people work. 

The conversation will explore: 

• Are businesses getting ahead of themselves with their expectations around AI? 
• What does being “good at AI” actually mean for the average employee? 
• Who owns AI readiness: HR, managers, employees, IT, or everyone? 
• Should AI capability start influencing performance and career progression? 
• How do you upskill people when the technology itself keeps changing? 
• What role should managers play in helping teams redesign how work gets done? 
• Where should human judgement remain non-negotiable? 
• How do you avoid creating a divide between employees who embrace AI and those who don’t? 
• What does a genuinely AI-ready workforce look like?

Men's health is becoming an increasingly important workplace issue, with many men delaying support until a serious health scare occurs. Join Benenden Health as they share exclusive new research into men's health behaviours, the impact on workforce wellbeing and productivity, and the steps employers can take to encourage earlier intervention.

As AI reshapes how candidates apply for jobs, organisations need recruitment processes that go beyond polished CVs and keyword matching. This session explores how to design hiring approaches that identify genuine capability, potential and fit, while balancing candidate experience, compliance and commercial realities.

In this session you will learn about:

• how to use the application as conversation
• implement assessments that reveal real thinking
• maximise speed, compliance and commercial necessity
• hiring for who people are becoming, not who they've been.

Learning engagement can remain low even when employees genuinely want to develop. Attendees will leave this session with a clearer understanding of why this happens. The panel will explore how barriers such as time, relevance, confidence and manager support affect participation, and how organisations can make learning feel valuable rather than obligatory. 

Delegates will learn how to:

• better connect business-critical skills with employee career goals, 
• build development into the flow of work, 
• measure success beyond completion rates. 

This session will consider where AI can support more relevant and accessible learning, while recognising that lasting engagement still depends on culture, trust and human support.

In just ten minutes, we will break down the essential components of a successful strategy, translating policy into practical, real-world execution: A quick breakdown of the most effective interventions, from transparent recruitment practices to equitable progression pipelines. Clear guidance on setting realistic metrics, securing leadership buy-in, and tracking long-term progress. Real world insights drawn from sector-leading organisations to show how theory works in practice.

The real AI transformation challenge isn't technological, it's a people challenge. For this session, AcademyAI has analysed FTSE 250 data on AI reporting and executive remuneration from The Chartered Governance Institute  to show that AI has reached the boardroom faster than the executive scorecard, and faster still than the workforce. This session introduces the concept of "AI capability debt", the gap between what AI can do and what people can do with it, and demonstrates how this debt falls differently across boards, managers and the workforce. It closes with the case for HR co-owning this transformation rather than arriving late to manage it. 

Key takeaways:

• distinguish AI adoption from AI capability Use FTSE 250 evidence to argue for closing the workforce readiness gap 
• identify the distinct capability needs of boards, managers and the workforce 
• judge whether AI initiatives change behaviour, not just completion rates 
• build a stronger, evidence-based case for HR's role in AI transformation

A case study exploring how Lancashire Teaching Hospitals moved beyond organisation-wide engagement results to create team conversations at scale within a complex NHS organisation. We will share how teams interpreted insight, heard directly from employees, identified what they could influence and took locally owned action. Attendees will gain practical lessons on connecting team dialogue with wider culture change, including challenges, learning and ideas transferable to other organisations.

L&D has the potential to be one of the most powerful levers for organisational performance, if it moves from shopkeeper to engineer – anticipating what's needed, rather than waiting to be asked. 

Building a genuinely performance-led skills strategy starts with a clear process: understanding the priority, clarifying what performance is actually required, establishing what's currently happening, and identifying the evidence to diagnose the gap. Is it a lack of ability, a lack of capacity, or both? And crucially – is a learning intervention even the right response? Getting this right builds L&D's influence and impact, by strategically aligning skills and capability planning with wider organisational performance and outcomes.

This session will explore how L&D can become the architect of organisational capability – diagnosing what's really getting in the way of performance, and building it, one clear step at a time.

Attendees will explore:

• how to follow a clear diagnostic process – from understanding the priority and required performance, to identifying the evidence behind a genuine skills gap
• how to distinguish between an ability gap and a capacity gap, and why the two require fundamentally different responses
• how to determine when the right response is not a learning or training intervention at all – and what alternatives can deliver better results

HR has a growing opportunity to demonstrate its strategic value through data-driven insights. Drawing on findings from SD Worx HR & Payroll Pulse 2026 research report, discover what the latest workforce data reveals about the changing role of HR in modern organisations.

Key takeaways:

• understand how employee engagement, retention and productivity have become critical business outcomes, not just HR metrics.
• learn how data-driven workforce insights can help HR influence strategic decision-making and earn a stronger voice at board level.
• explore practical ways HR can shift from managing processes to enabling organisational transformation and growth.

Even with worldwide unemployment at its lowest level in decades, fewer than one in four workers have confidence that their jobs are safe. This anxiety has consequences. People who fear losing their jobs are less engaged at work, more stressed, less productive, and much more likely to be spending time and energy looking for new jobs. 

Following a long stretch of higher global economic uncertainty and significant changes in working practices, how are the UK’s workers faring, and how could this sentiment influence business leaders’ plans?

Join ADP UK’s Senior HR Director Annabel Jones for a close-up look at the findings from ADP Research’s People at Work 2026 study, which surveyed some 40,000 workers across six continents.

Turn coaching skills training into everyday management conversations with a simple, repeatable ten-minute structure. Explore why coaching skills often fail to stick, learn a four-move framework with ready-to-use language, and see it demonstrated live. Leave with a practical tool to share with managers immediately, plus three questions that shift conversations from advice-giving towards ownership.

Pay reporting can be treated as a compliance task – published, parked and forgotten. Yet the data and analysis can reveal a powerful story about how work, reward, progression and opportunity really function inside your organisation.

From 2027, UK employers will be required to publish annual action plans to support gender pay reporting requirements and menopause support. But where should you start when it comes to turning mandatory reporting outputs into business relevant insight and credible action? Join us for this panel discussion, as we identify and build the core components of an action plan, and understand why combining this with wider people analytics can paint a more detailed picture within your organisation.

Attendees will explore:

• how to combine pay reporting with wider people analytics, to paint a detailed picture of the state of play of equality within your organisation
• how to identify the key actions that will make a marked difference to your organisations goals and outcomes
• how to ensure action plans do not become another ‘tick box’ exercise, by defining clear priorities, ownership and measures of success

The Employment Rights Act 2025 has reset the risk calculation for UK employers, from day one dismissal rights to the unfair dismissal cap disappearing in 2027. These decisions are made daily by line managers, most untrained in employment law. Amanda Chadwick, who has advised employers on compliance for over 30 years, sets out a practical framework for what managers can decide alone, what needs escalating, and where the real exposure sits across hiring, performance, absence and discipline.

Trade unions now have greater workplace access rights, creating new challenges for HR and managers. Using realistic scenarios, this practical session explores how to respond when a union approaches, handle employee questions and increased union activity, and ensure managers know when to escalate. The audience will consider how clear communication, confident managers and strong employee relations can help their organisation respond effectively to the changes.

The session will explore how a shared language of colour helped leaders value individual differences, recognise hidden potential and consciously adapt their behaviours to meet the needs of people and situations. Participants then applied their learning to live business challenges, contributing to stronger communication and teamwork alongside measurable outcomes. This offers a practical example of how human-centred leadership can improve both the employee experience and organisational performance.

The UK faces a workforce paradox: skills shortages continue hold back business growth, yet more than one million young people remain out of education, employment or training. This session will draw on findings from the OU's Business Barometer report and will build on the data to showcase a practical employer case study. Attendees will hear how RDT Ltd has invested in apprenticeships and graduate pathways to attract and develop talent, while preparing its workforce for an AI-enabled future.

Drawing on findings from the LSE and Office of National Statistics, research consistently shows that manager capability is one of the biggest drivers of employee engagement and performance. This session explores how organisations can develop confident, effective managers through greater self-awareness, behavioural understanding and practical leadership skills. Drawing on the STAR Manager framework and insights from The Answer is a Question, it offers practical approaches to building stronger leadership capability.

Ensuring AI is deployed ethically, transparently and with proper accountability is no longer a secondary concern – it’s foundational to organisational stability, employee retention and trust. AI is now influencing decisions once reserved for people – who gets hired, how performance is measured, how work is planned. Yet governance has not kept pace with adoption, exposing organisations to real business risks: loss of trust, reputational damage or litigation.

But governance isn’t just risk mitigation – done well, it’s the foundation for innovation, not a brake on it. Clear rules and safety guardrails build the trust employees and business leaders need to have the confidence to utilise and scale AI, rather than stumble at the first hurdle.

Join this session to explore why AI governance is not new for HR – it's an extension of the role people professionals already play in governing employment relationships. And fundamentally, why governance is the foundation for sustainable and scalable innovation.

 Attendees will explore:

• what knowledge and skills HR needs to build, and why the profession must play a pivotal role in shaping AI governance strategies
• why governance is lagging behind AI adoption, and what risk this exposes organisations to
• how clear rules and safety guardrails give organisations the confidence to scale AI safely – turning governance into a genuine driver of innovation

This session draws on Harvard Business Impact's 2026 Global Leadership Study, No Stable Ground, to explore designing organisations as uncertainty and transformation become ongoing operating conditions. The research shows competitive advantage increasingly depends on how well organisations learn, adapt, exercise judgment, and preserve trust while reinventing themselves. 

We'll examine how AI is reshaping not just technology but work, decision-making, and leadership - including the shift from leaders as "owners of expertise" to architects of inquiry, who ask better questions and strengthen collective judgment rather than simply supply answers. We'll then connect this to capability building: from episodic learning to capability in the flow of work, from static programs to agile, applied acceleration, and from AI literacy to leading and deciding with AI. 

Participants will leave with actionable approaches to building organisations that can learn, adapt and thrive through continuous change.

As AI becomes embedded in everyday work, leaders are faced with questions that have no simple answers: When do I trust AI and when do I challenge it? When should decisions be data-led versus values-led? When does empathy and human connection matter more than efficiency? 

Using Talogy's InView™ Leadership Framework, we will explore: 

• what leaders do through their Leadership Qualities 
• how they lead through Emotional Intelligence 
• why they lead that way through their Identity, values and motivations 

Together, these provide the internal anchors leaders can intentionally draw upon to make sense of complexity, navigate competing demands and adapt their approach as circumstances evolve in unchartered territory. AI has not changed the need for leaders to achieve balance; it has added another force pulling leaders in different directions, making their choice of anchor more important than ever.

Leaders need more than expertise. They need the ability to think differently, challenge assumptions and unlock new perspectives. 

In this session, you will explore:

• how to reframe challenges and ask more effective questions to unlock new perspectives and solutions
• how to create environments where people feel confident to contribute, challenge, and experiment.
• how to turn ideas into practical improvements in everyday leadership
• the 4C's approach to creativity to lead change, encourage curiosity and make better decisions when there is no obvious answer

Drawing on the Priory Nurse Development Platform and other real-world case studies, see how Breeio enables structured learning reflections, AI-guided coaching, and scenario-based decision practice. Learn how to create space for practice, reinforce critical thinking, and provide performance support at the point of need. 

Attendees will leave with practical ideas to improve decision-making, strengthen reflective practice, and drive performance, while maintaining the compliance and reporting required at scale. 

Key takeaways: 

• real-world AI results: Understand the ways in which AI is transforming compliance and employee development through access to coaching and decision-making practice 
• lessons learned: Learn from real-world project outcomes, user survey data and feedback, how AI can be safely and securely launched to provide colleagues with relevant scenarios and personalised coaching 
• future Applications: Look ahead to the evolving landscape of AI in learning and development

Employee expectations around health support are changing. At the same time, organisations are facing rising sickness absence, recruitment challenges and increasing pressure to support workforce wellbeing. 

Drawing on new research with 100 healthcare industry experts, Benenden Health will explore the key health challenges affecting today's workforce and the implications for employers. 

This session will share practical insights into how healthcare benefits can support employee wellbeing, improve productivity and strengthen organisational resilience, while helping HR professionals build a compelling business case for investment.

Agentic AI has quietly transformed the org chart into a mixed human-digital workforce, but most HR functions lack a plan. 

This session maps how to integrate agent capacity into workforce planning, establish clear governance and ownership, and maintain human accountability for every agent decision in your organisation.

This session unpacks new research into how financial background affects career progression, and why generic money wellbeing support often misses those who need it most. Financial stress costs UK employees up to £10.3bn a year in lost performance. We'll close with a video case study on a law-firm showing what employers can actually do, in practice, to close the social mobility gap through financial wellbeing. 

Leadership development is usually designed for the big moments - the strategic offsite, the crisis or the annual vision-setting. But culture is not built there. It is built cumulatively, through many small, high-pressure moments. You do not build good judgment by telling people to "be inclusive" or "create psychological safety" as slogans. You build it by rehearsing the actual ten-second moment. Repeatedly, in something close to real conditions. At Serein we having worked with over 500 founders and leaders across the globe. Delegates will discover the design principle behind scenario-based learning, and ties to our platform.

Work profoundly impacts daily energy, confidence, and well-being. Building a culture where people thrive means closing the gap between employee expectations and actual workplace reality. Insights from our 2026 Work is Health Report, surveying 4,000 global employees, reveal that while wellness is a top priority, burnout and rigid structures persist. In this session, we will explore practical strategies to foster psychological safety, sustainable workloads, and genuine support.

From January 2027, the Employment Rights Act will cut the unfair dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months. For employers, this shortens the window to identify whether a new hire is right for the role, and to act – fairly and confidently – if they're not. Get it wrong, and the cost is real: a poor hire retained too long, a good hire lost too early, and a manager left without the skills to handle it differently. 

So what makes these early conversations genuinely effective? It's about equippingmanagers to set clear expectations from day one, address concerns informally before they escalate, and give new starters a genuine chance to improve. Handled well, this builds trust and protects the business. Handled poorly, organisations risk reaching month six having achieved neither.

Join this session to explore how HR can equip managers to have effective, meaningful performance conversations in the earliest stages of employment – managing underperformance informally, confidently and fairly, before it becomes a formal problem.

Attendees will explore:

• how to set clear performance expectations from day one, and build the structure needed to support new starters through the first six months
• how to equip managers with the skills and confidence to address underperformance informally and constructively, before issues escalate into formal process
• how the reduced unfair dismissal qualifying period changes and what early performance management looks like – and what's at stake for the business if it's got wrong

How do you build a strategic workforce plan for three to five years out, when the pace of change makes even the near future hard to predict? Get this wrong, and the risks are real – weaker talent management, rising hiring costs, and reduced performance where critical skills gaps go unmet. Yet CIPD research, in partnership with Omni RMS, shows only a fraction of organisations plan strategically that far ahead, with most still relying on reactive hiring.

Much of the challenge lies in the lack of a single, reliable view of workforce capability, performance and future demand – with skills forecasting a vital tool for closing that gap. Done well, strategic workforce planning lets organisations pre-empt plausible scenarios rather than react to them, translating business pressures into the capability needed to deliver.

Join this session to get a better grip on strategic workforce planning, and avoid the pitfalls that can derail your approach.

Attendees will explore:

• what genuinely distinguishes strategic workforce planning from reactive hiring, and how skills forecasting can help diagnose talent gaps before they become critical
• what role other parts of the business must play to ensure strategic workforce planning is effective
• how the profession can shift from traditional annual workforce planning to dynamic intelligence gathering, helping businesses make better choices under constant uncertainty and change.

From 2027, unfair dismissal protection is reshaping how organisations manage new starters and ongoing underperformance. Looking beyond compliance, this discussion explores how clear expectations, strong communication and genuine employee voice can build trust, engagement and alignment throughout the employee lifecycle. 

This session explores how to put these principles into practice through:

• clear goal-setting
• well-documented conversations during probationary periods or later improvement processes
• genuine employee voice

You will learn how to empower your people team with the confidence to manage risk earlier and more consistently.

AI is already changing HR. The question isn't whether to use it, but where it adds real value, where judgement still matters, and where the human touch should never disappear. Using real HR examples, we'll explore what can be automated, what AI can support, and what should stay human, plus the risks: accuracy, bias, and trusting AI answers without checking them. You'll leave with a simple framework: automate it, support it with AI, or keep it human?

AI is increasingly used to help HR teams across recruitment tasks, from CV screening to supporting hiring decisions. While these tools can make processes more efficient, they also have implications for the way candidate data is collected, analysed and used. Led by a specialist Data Protection Officer, this session will explore the main privacy and rights risks when using AI in recruitment. It will also cover the key GDPR and emerging AI regulation requirements HR teams need to be aware of.

This session examines the challenge of engaging diverse workforces in workplace health and the role accessible health stations can play in increasing participation. It will show how the resulting workforce-level data can identify unmet needs, guide proactive intervention and demonstrate value against participation, retention and absence measures. Balfour Beatty’s case study will bring the approach to life, sharing its experience of connecting individual health checks with organisational outcomes.

People managers play a critical role in shaping employee experience, team performance and how effectively organisations respond to change. Yet CIPD data shows just over half of line managers feel they've had enough training to do the role well – and teams with highly-rated managers are consistently more willing to go beyond what's required of them, driving stronger innovation and performance.

As managers are increasingly expected to support teams through technological change, workplace conflict and shifting business demands, organisations need to move beyond one-off training and consider how people management capability is built and sustained in practice. Drawing on CIPD's line manager behaviour framework, this session will explore the core behaviours managers need to lead teams effectively through change, and how HR can reinforce these through practical tools, peer learning, training and ongoing organisational support. Examples involving AI-driven change and workplace conflict will bring the discussion to life. 

Attendees will explore: 

• what the core behaviours of effective people management look like in practice, using CIPD's line manager behaviour framework as a foundation
• how specific manager actions help build the resilience and adaptability teams need through change and uncertainty
• how HR can build and sustain people-manager capability through effective training, peer learning, practical tools and ongoing support.