Driving Productivity and Workforce Optimisation with People Data and AI

This opening sets out why productivity, cost and talent pressures are forcing organisations to rethink how they plan, design and run their workforce. It introduces the four pillars that shape the next two days and explains how delegates can use the agenda and roundtables to focus their learning and make clearer decisions.

A candid keynote on the pressures shaping workforce decisions in Europe. Hear how leading employers combine People Analytics, Strategic Workforce Planning and AI-enabled productivity to deliver more with existing teams, and what HR leaders must address now to retain credibility with the CEO and CFO.

See how integrated workforce platforms convert fragmented data into real-time insight for staffing, scheduling, skills deployment and cost control. This session shows what is technically possible today, and what data quality, governance and change foundations must exist for these tools to genuinely support Workforce Optimisation.

How one organisation built a scenario planning model that blends demand, skills, attrition and automation to guide hiring, mobility and investment. Learn which inputs matter most, how to keep scenarios usable for leaders, and how HR, Finance and the business aligned on trade-offs.

A practical case study showing how one organisation used skills, performance and risk data to design responsible workforce reductions and redeployments. Learn how they protected critical capability, supported managers and maintained trust while meeting financial targets.

Many organisations track dozens of HR metrics but cannot show how they affect financial performance. This session outlines a straightforward workforce performance model used jointly by HR and Finance. It shows how to select meaningful metrics, link them to business outcomes, validate assumptions with the CFO, and support CSRD-grade reporting.

A practical Q&A on how senior practitioners balance planning, right-sizing and workforce metrics to deliver value. Hear how they handled resistance, closed data gaps and prioritised investment, and identify which techniques can be adopted quickly in your own organisation.

A cross-functional executive panel sharing how AI, automation and analytics are shaping productivity, cost decisions and workforce planning. Learn where AI is genuinely adding value, what Finance, HR and IT still need from each other, and how to navigate governance, skills and risk constraints.

A candid look at one organisation’s first year of copilot deployment across HR and Finance. Learn how they selected use cases, prepared data and prompts, trained users, governed risk, and measured adoption and value. Gain a realistic playbook for scaling AI assistants without creating new compliance or trust issues.

A focused Q&A exploring practical issues in AI deployment: how to design copilots, manage governance, navigate change fatigue and measure meaningful productivity gains over time.

Many organisations struggle with fragmented HR systems, inconsistent definitions and integrations that fail under change. This session shows how one enterprise built a stable people-data backbone that supports analytics, AI and CSRD reporting. Expect practical lessons on ontologies, lineage, ownership, refresh cycles and vendor control.

How one organisation unified people data from 40 countries and built a product-style People Analytics engine. Learn the architecture, operating model and governance that enabled real-time decision support, and how cross-functional ownership and prioritisation changed hiring, budgeting and attrition decisions.

A focused Q&A with two speakers on how to win support for data foundations, engage the right stakeholders in the right order, and phase delivery without losing momentum. Designed to give senior leaders practical next steps for strengthening people-data infrastructure.

A reflective close to Day 1, drawing out the signals, tensions and priorities that emerged across planning, right-sizing, AI productivity and data foundations. The panel will surface where there is alignment, where uncertainty remains, and what matters most in the next 12–18 months.