Agenda/Program

The 2026 Agenda is developed to reflect on the most pressing challenges faced by people professionals. We are working on finalizing the agenda, in the meantime review the elective tracks and masterclasses:

DAY ONE | 26th May

HR Leadership in the AI Age

Move beyond tool adoption to strategic governance. Define the C-suite’s role in ethical deployment, data privacy, and organizational redesign. This track equips leaders to integrate algorithmic intelligence with human judgment for sustainable competitive advantage and risk mitigation.

AI-Ready Workforce Skills and Capabilities

Identify critical skills gaps created by automation. Move from static competency models to dynamic, demand-driven skill ecosystems. Prioritize adaptive learning architectures and rapid capability deployment to ensure business continuity and minimize displacement costs.

DEI & AI – Inclusion Reimagined for the Digital Era

Address algorithmic bias as a core enterprise risk. Explore how automated systems can either dismantle or reinforce systemic barriers. Develop frameworks to audit decision-making for fairness, ensuring diversity goals remain central to digital transformation strategies.

Creating Stakeholder Value Through Human Capability

Link intangible assets to tangible market value. Quantify the impact of leadership, talent, and organization on investor confidence and customer outcomes. Shift the narrative from HR as a cost center to a driver of financial performance and stakeholder return.

Meaning, Purpose and the Future of Work

Operationalize purpose beyond the mission statement. Align individual contributions with organizational goals to drive retention and productivity. Analyze how clear value propositions impact performance in hybrid environments, ensuring work remains relevant and engaging for top talent.

Freedom to Flourish

Dismantle bureaucratic friction to unlock productivity. Focus on autonomy, psychological safety, and removing structural barriers to innovation. Review policies that hinder agility and design ecosystems where high performers can execute without administrative drag.

Balance hyper-personalization with data privacy. Use predictive analytics to design frictionless workflows while maintaining human connection. Evaluate the trade-offs between automated efficiency and the high-touch moments that define organizational culture and retention.

Leading Through Chaos – HR as Strategic Force

Position HR as the stabilizer during market volatility. Develop agile response mechanisms for geopolitical, economic, and technological disruption. Focus on continuity planning, leadership resilience, and maintaining workforce focus amidst external uncertainty.

Reimagining HR With Human-Centered Experiences

Apply design thinking to core HR processes. Shift from compliance-driven workflows to user-centric solutions that mirror consumer experiences. Audit current systems for complexity and redesign them to serve the employee first, improving adoption and satisfaction.

DAY TWO | 27th May

AI in the Office: Friend, Foe, or Fellow Teammate?

Define the operational relationship between human talent and digital agents. Establish protocols for collaboration, accountability, and workflow integration. Address workforce anxiety by framing AI as an augmentation tool that handles repetitive tasks to elevate high-value cognitive work.

Unleash Potential: Performance and People

Modernize performance management for agility. Replace annual reviews with continuous feedback loops and outcome-based metrics. Align individual KPIs with shifting business priorities to maximize output and identify high-potential talent earlier in the cycle.

Talent Strategy That Wins

Align talent acquisition with long-term business objectives. Analyze labor market trends to secure critical capabilities before competitors. Build robust succession pipelines and retention frameworks that protect intellectual capital and ensure leadership continuity.

Culture as a Strategic Asset: Driving Business Through Values

Treat culture as a measurable business lever, not a soft perk. Align behavioral norms with strategic execution. Diagnose cultural risks in M&A and transformation efforts, ensuring values drive decision-making and bottom-line results.

Work Redesigned: Flexibility, Mobility, and Purpose

Architect sustainable flexible work models. Move beyond “return-to-office” debates to outcome-based location strategies. Optimize real estate costs while enhancing global mobility and cross-border collaboration to access the best talent regardless of geography.

Redefining HR Strategy for Business Success

Elevate HR from a support function to a business architect. Integrate people strategy directly into the corporate operating model. Focus on organizational design, change management, and capability building that directly facilitates revenue growth and market expansion.

MASTERCLASSES

Building Your Garage Band Culture: Why Teams Beat Rock Stars

Masterclass Leader: Stan Slap, Founder & CEO, Slap Company

Overview

Competing for “rock star” talent is expensive, fragile, and often damaging to culture. This masterclass challenges the myth that elite individuals drive sustainable performance. Instead, it shows how high-performing organizations build garage band cultures — teams defined by shared ambition, discipline, learning, and commitment to the whole. Led by Stan Slap, the session offers a clear, practical blueprint for creating cultures that consistently develop talent, outperform star-driven models, and stay resilient under pressure.

Key Takeaways:

  • Why star-centric hiring weakens culture, commitment, and long-term performance
  • What defines a true “garage band” culture — ambition without ego
  • How to build collective excellence instead of glorifying individuals
  • The leadership behaviors that turn setbacks into strength
  • Practical steps to embed optimism, accountability, and continuous improvement
Organizational Change Management 2026: Leading Transformation in a Post-Agentic AI and Geopolitically Volatile World

Masterclass Leader: Alfonso Merino, Global Chief HR Officer, Grupo Alonso

Overview:
Change is no longer episodic — it is the permanent operating system of modern organisations. This masterclass reframes change management as a core leadership capability, combining behavioural science, agentic AI, and geopolitical readiness. Participants will explore how leading organisations reduce change failure, decentralise change ownership, and build resilience without burning out their people. The session moves beyond classic change models to show how transformation can become regenerative, not destructive.

Key takeaways

  • Treating change as a continuous operating system, not a project
  • Using neuroscience and AI to personalise the change experience
  • Designing organisations ready for geopolitical and regulatory shocks
  • Shifting from resistance to distributed change ownership
  • Measuring success through adoption, energy, and organisational vitality
Getting Unstuck: How Improve and Org Psych Create Collaboration Over Competition

Masterclass Leader: Amanda Austin, Adjunct Professor, Southern Methodist University

Overview:
When organisations feel stuck, collaboration often collapses into competition. This masterclass blends improvisation principles with organisational psychology to help teams break rigid patterns, rebuild psychological safety, and move forward together. Drawing on real-world experience across global organisations, the session is highly practical and experiential. It is not about performance or entertainment — it is about giving leaders concrete tools to unlock trust, creativity, and momentum when progress feels blocked.

Key takeaways

  • Improv-based techniques to strengthen psychological safety
  • Org psychology tools to reduce unproductive competition
  • Practical exercises applicable to HR and leadership teams
  • Methods to unlock collaboration under pressure
  • Real examples of impact in corporate environments

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