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As technology reshapes service industries, the real challenge isn’t adoption, it’s preservation. This session explores how leaders can use digital tools to enhance collaboration, wellbeing and engagement while keeping service deeply human. With a human-first lens, Sarah Derry shows how thoughtful tech design builds trust, belonging and retention, proving that the future of service isn’t high-tech or high-touch, it’s both.

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AI isn’t coming, it’s already here, transforming how we work and lead. The question is no longer if we adopt AI, but who shapes its impact. If technology leads, efficiency wins. If finance leads, cost savings rule. But if People & Culture leads, we unlock transformation that makes humans more resourceful, not just more productive.
This session challenges HR leaders to set the principles for AI adoption ensuring technology serves people, enhances purpose, and elevates the human experience at work.

• Use AI to empower, not replace, human capability.
• Prioritise human value over automation speed.
• Lead AI transformation through people-first principles.

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The digital workplace sits at the intersection of technology, HR, and culture. As AI, automation, and hybrid work reshape how we work, who takes ownership? This panel unpacks how IT and HR can co-lead to design a seamless, secure, and human-centred workplace.

• Why IT and HR must share ownership of digital workplace strategy
• Using technology to enhance, not erode, wellbeing and productivity
• The digital workplace is more than tools—it’s culture, governance, and leadership

Australian employees are in a cost-of-living crunch, and businesses are having to domore with less. In this session, Greg Parkes, Founder and CEO of Auto-UX,explores how digitising novated leasing creates a zero-cost opportunity foremployers to relieve employee financial stress while also strengtheningorganisational performance.

• Why digital-first solutions and a seamless employee experience (EX) are critical to attracting and retaining a digital-native workforce (aged 18–49).
• Demonstration of the latest innovations in car benefit technology, including AI- powered vehicle selection, self-guided digital learning, predictive problem- solving, and more.
• Case study quantifying the impact of benefit digital transformation, highlighting how employers can transform a traditional perk into a strategic lever for cost- of-living relief, workforce engagement, and long-term competitive advantage.

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Participate in this interactive, guided, real-time simulation that demonstrates how data, technology, and human decision-making intersect in modern HR. This session invites the audience to apply insights, respond to evolving scenarios, and experience how technology supports strategic workforce outcomes.

Managing a large and complex workforce today requires more than traditional HR systems. Organisations are rethinking how they simplify processes, elevate the employee experience, and align people strategy with business performance.

In this session, discover how Qantas are consolidating multiple platforms into unified cloud-based HR systems and using AI to transform recruitment, development, and workforce management.

Wage compliance has become one of the highest risk areas for Australian employers, with increasing award complexity and regulatory scrutiny.

In this practical session, explore what wage compliance best practice looks like and how organisations are moving from reactive audits to continuous assurance

• How to validate pay before payroll is finalised.
• Using technology to apply awards and agreements accurately at scale, every pay cycle
• Provide accurate and clear evidence executives can rely on when regulators or boards ask questions.

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The average employee toggles between dozens of platforms each day, and the very systems meant to support productivity can end up fuelling stress and burnout. At the same time, HR and IT leaders face the added challenge of ensuring that fragmented systems still work together to meet compliance obligations. This panel explores how organisations can streamline their HR tech stacks, consolidate platforms, and use data-driven insights to reduce digital overload, while also identifying governance gaps early, before they spiral into risk, inconsistency or non-compliance.

• Reduce tool overload: Practical ways to simplify and consolidate the HR tech stack.
• Stay compliant: How to spot system and data gaps early before they become compliance risks.
• Build a healthier digital workplace: Designing tools and workflows that minimise stress and maximise adoption.

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Select a topic of discussion and engage in an interactive roundtable discussion with a group of your like-minded peers.

Put your knowledge to the test in this fast-paced quiz covering real-world trivia, key concepts, and emerging trends. Compete for bragging rights - and a travel voucher - as the top scorer takes the crown.

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HR technology rarely fails because of the platform. It struggles when leaders are overloaded, reactive and unclear during change. In this keynote, Chloe Blake explores how leader mindset and mental fitness directly shape adoption, behaviour change and ROI, and shares simple, practical ways HR can reduce friction and make change land more seamlessly.

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• Why HR-led change feels heavier than it needs to in today’s environment
• The mental fitness behaviours leaders need to reduce resistance and complexity
• Practical tools HR can use immediately to support smoother adoption and sustained behaviour change

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From AI recruiting to digital wellbeing apps, HR leaders are flooded with tools promising efficiency, fairness, and insight. But are these technologies actually improving the employee experience? or creating new challenges like tool fatigue, bias, and data overload?

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This interactive session puts these questions directly to the audience. Participants vote live on a series of real-world scenarios, explore the results together, and vote again as perspectives shift through the discussion.

• Which area of HR technology currently delivers the most real business value in your organisation?
• How confident are you that your HR technology stack is fully adopted by employees and managers?
• What’s the biggest barrier to demonstrating ROI on HR technology investments?
• How do you see AI changing HR in the next 12 months?
• When it comes to the ‘Right to Switch Off’, what’s the biggest role technology should play?