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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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
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
Masterclass Leader: Samir Chabane, Global Head of Employee Experience & Culture – ASTEMO
Overview:
At Astemo, Employee Experience (EX) is the foundation for attracting and retaining top talent. A strong EX signals that our company values people, creating a brand that stands out as a best place to work.
This is an immersive, interactive masterclass led by Samir Chabane, Head of EX & Culture at Astemo, to explore our 4 EX drivers to improve Engagement.
Walk through 4 activity stations representing each EX driver:
Key Takeaways:
Masterclass Leader: Shane Cragun, Managing Partner – LEADERSCODE.AI OverviewThis 90-minute masterclass designed to help leaders confront the realities of sustained pressure in today’s always-on, AI-accelerated work environment. Rather than framing burnout as a personal shortcoming, the session positions chronic stress as a predictable outcome of modern work design and resilience as a leadership capability that must be intentionally engineered. Participants examine the hidden toll of “quiet cracking,” develop stress literacy through tools such as stress signatures, the stress chain, and the distinction between eustress and distress, and adopt the diamond analogy to understand why pressure only produces excellence when the right conditions are in place. The session culminates in The Diamond Playbook, introducing a practical Mind–Body–Energy Operating System that enables leaders to regulate their nervous system, manage cognition under load, and optimize energy as their true performance currency. Participants leave with concrete weekly practices and in-the-moment interventions to prevent stress from becoming corrosive, and to act as a stabilizing, resilience-building force for others in the modern workplace.
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