The 2026 agenda.

Do you know where AI is heading, or are you just reacting?

Silvio Giorgio is one of Australia’s most respected analytics leaders. He steered AI adoption at an enterprise level in some of Australia’s leading businesses, including Coles and Australia Post, long before most organisations even understood what was coming.

Now, he’s sharing what he’s learned to help you navigate one of the biggest workplace shifts in history.
Silvio will break down the three questions every HR leader should be asking right now:

How did we get here?
Where are we today?
Where do we go from here?

This is not a theoretical discussion. Silvio confronts how AI is already reshaping work inside major organisations, what that means for HR leaders, and how you can prepare your workforce for what comes next.

Your employees are already using AI. Some are using it well. Most are not. And whether you realise it or not, AI is already changing how work gets done inside your organisation.

Pete Williams has been at the razor-edge of technology ever since he founded Deloitte Digital. He’s a veteran innovator who's still in the trenches, helping some of Australia’s largest enterprises integrate AI at scale. We’ve given him 40 minutes to transform your AI awareness into sophisticated, scalable applications.

You’ll learn:

How to shift from AI training to real adoption and behaviour change.
Practical ways HR teams can use AI to improve productivity and decision making.
How to support organisation-wide rollout of AI in a meaningful, hands-on way.
Techniques to help employees integrate AI into their daily workflows.

This is not another high-level conversation about “the future of work”. It is a practical session about how work is already changing, what leading organisations are doing differently, and how you can build an AI-capable workforce that operates faster, smarter and more effectively.

As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise integration, CHROs are being drawn into conversations that were once the exclusive domain of technology and finance leaders. But where does HR leadership begin and end in the AI era?

This session examines how CHROs can assert strategic ownership while collaborating effectively on workforce transformation.

From governance and accountability through to metrics and investment decisions, we will explore how HR leaders can shape AI adoption to deliver productivity gains while protecting culture, capability, and trust across the organisation.

As organisations move from AI experimentation to enterprise integration, the focus has been on capability, productivity, and speed. Far less attention has gone to what rapid digital change does to the people expected to absorb it. Shifting workloads, eroding role clarity, increased monitoring and always-on expectations are recognised psychosocial hazards, and they are being introduced through AI adoption without ever being assessed.
This session reframes psychosocial risk as part of AI strategy rather than a wellbeing afterthought. We will explore how digital change creates new hazards, why unmanaged human risk is what stalls adoption and erodes returns, and how HR can move from cleanup crew to risk owner, shaping AI adoption that delivers real productivity gains while protecting capability, culture, and trust.

Most conversations about AI focus on potential. Far fewer explore what actually happens when an organisation tries to implement it at scale.

In this fireside chat, Janice Carey draws on her experience leading advanced analytics and AI at a major Australian retailer to unpack the realities of deploying AI in a live, complex environment. At the centre of the discussion is the rollout of a generative AI-powered HR assistant, designed to support a large, frontline workforce with real-time access to information across any device.

In this candid conversation, Janice will explore what it takes to move from pilot to production. From designing guardrails that enable safe use, to managing evolving models, building testing frameworks, and aligning teams across HR, technology, and operations, you’ll leave with a better understanding of the reality of infusing AI in HR.

This session explores how AI is changing the day-to-day reality of work across different teams, and what that means for people, performance, and potential.

Focusing on practical, real-world examples, Russell will unpack how roles are evolving, where AI is improving output, and where it is creating new challenges for employees and organisations alike.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how AI is shaping the workforce, and practical ways to better support their people as work continues to change.

AI-powered recruitment tools promise faster hiring decisions and greater operational efficiency. Yet their widespread adoption is raising urgent questions about bias, transparency, and fairness.

From algorithmic screening to automated assessments, organisations must balance productivity gains with responsible governance. This session explores how HR leaders can deploy AI in recruitment without undermining trust or excluding strong candidates.

We will examine emerging regulatory expectations, governance frameworks, and practical safeguards to ensure that technology strengthens, rather than compromises, talent acquisition.

As workforces become more distributed and AI reshapes how HR teams operate, the challenge for HR leaders is shifting—less about moving faster and more about managing global employment compliantly, efficiently, and without the infrastructure costs that used to make cross-border work prohibitive.

In this session, Nick Martin, APAC GTM Lead from Remote breaks down the operating decisions that matter: how to run payroll and compliance across borders without building internal infrastructure, where AI in HR operations creates genuine efficiency versus new risk, and what ANZ organisations need to get right to manage global teams with confidence.

Your workforce planning is already out of date.

AI is changing roles faster than your organisation can redesign them. Job descriptions are becoming less stable. Career paths are becoming less predictable. And the skills that created value two years ago are quickly losing relevance.

Seth Watts has built businesses from the ground-up in tech-driven environments. Now he’s here to show you how to prepare your workforce for continuous change instead of planning for a single, predictable future.

This session is built for HR leaders making ongoing decisions about capability, workforce strategy and organisational resilience. You’ll learn:

Which workforce capabilities are increasing in value as AI adoption accelerates
How to identify and develop skills that remain valuable in an AI-enabled workplace
How to prepare employees for more ambiguity, faster change and less predictable career paths
Where human judgment, communication and decision-making become more important as automation increases
How leading organisations are redesigning work as repetitive tasks become increasingly automated

This is a practical session about how work is already changing, what that means for capability strategy, and how you can build a responsive, empowered workforce.