Australia CHRO Executive Summit

Exclusive to Governing Body members and select guests, this dinner is a can’t-miss opportunity to connect with your peers prior to tomorrow’s Executive Summit. Please join your colleagues for an evening of good food, wine, and lively networking.

Ever since the onset of COVID-19, technology has become even more essential in responding to uncertainty and creating a more adaptive, agile, and composable organisation. Gartner research reveals that even amid the current cost constrained environment, where one-third of HR leaders plan for budget cuts this year, 90% still plan to either maintain or increase their investment in technology. It is becoming increasingly important for HR leaders to plan for their technology investments with more caution than in years past, taking into account issues such as employee attrition and declining employee productivity.

In this session, you'll learn how to:

• Make a comprehensive HR technology strategy and maximise technology investments
• Employ technology with a more human-centric mindset for a better employee experience
• Bring greater value to the HR function and the entire organisation

Though the conversation around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been ongoing for decades, many organisations have still yet to fully champion its ideals. While more and more organisations strive to offer equal opportunities to the workforce at large, true diversity cannot be achieved without a culture shift. The first step is for organisations to recognise that their current culture is out of sync with its vision, purpose, core values, and strategic objectives. Leaders play a critical and often underestimated role when it comes to establishing an inclusive and equitable workplace and organisations must ensure diversity amongst their leaders to foster a truly inclusive culture. After all, how can anybody reasonably believe that you prioritise Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion if your leadership team is entirely homogenous?

In this session, Rebecca Nash, CPO, AMP talks about AMP's incredible journey to accelerate the representation of women at senior levels. She will cover:

• Why a cultural transformation is imperative for a truly inclusive workplace
• Why diversity in leadership is important and how to drive better outcomes through purpose and values
• How to develop our leaders’ understanding of inclusive leadership capabilities and how to best demonstrate and assess these capabilities

The pandemic has forever altered how we all work and organisations are confronted with a workforce that is exhausted and overwhelmed, questioning what work means, and thinking through their options. This has put added pressure on CHROs to understand how they can meet employees’ expectations for what they want in a job. It turns out that people want growth opportunities, to be able to create impact, and to find meaning, purpose and personal connection at work. Employees increasingly want to bring their authentic selves to work, and it is the responsibility of HR leaders to deliver an employee experience that enables them to do so.

Join this session to learn:

• How to accelerate organisational agility by tapping into employees’ whole selves
• How to pursue internal opportunities that align with employees’ personal values, passions and interests
• How to inspire your workforce by prioritising ESG

The availability of emerging technologies has profoundly altered and augmented work as we know it. In the face of changing workforce dynamics spurred by technological innovation, how can CHROs prepare their organisation and people?

Join this session with your peers to discuss:

• Forming a strategy that anticipates future workforce supply and demand
• Leveraging strategic workforce planning for roles that may be transformed or fully replaced by technology
• Closing the skills gap to unlock employee potential and improve business outcomes

Connect with like-minded peers in a one-on-one setting through Evanta’s Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Employees across the globe yearn for more fulfilling and purposeful roles, better suited to their personal lives and individual values. The ensuing ‘Great Reshuffle’ represents a paradigm shift in company culture, as organisations largely reconceptualise their traditional mission statements.

Inevitably, talent retention has emerged as a critical challenge amongst HR professionals, and EVP surfaces as a top agenda item. Moreover, to account for talent shortages and to keep up with emerging digital skills, organisations need to upskill their current workforces, and use data to shape talent acquisition, recruiting and retention, and improve employee engagement.

Ultimately, organisations that can successfully capitalise on these evolving conditions will have a decided edge. But what immediate steps should HR leaders take in order to do so?

Join this session to discuss key ideas around:

• Flexibility as a hygiene factor for employees and a must-have to help retain talent
• How adopting a skills-based approach is crucial for an organisation’s long-term success
• How to cultivate a company culture that fosters a sense of belonging and fulfilment amongst employees

In 2022, HR leaders play an increasingly critical role in their organisation’s application of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives. Drawing on people-oriented skills, HR leaders have the power to promote sustainable policies, not only centered on the well-being of individuals, but also on the broader environments in which they reside.

To ensure these policies are implemented successfully, it is crucial to establish a clearly operationalised approach to – and a shared understanding of – the sustainability paradigm. So, which immediate actions should an HR leader take in order to amplify the journey towards sustainability in the workplace?

Join this session to discuss valuable takeaways on:

• Why sustainability is becoming increasingly more strategic within the HR leadership role
• What does sustainability mean in a heavy carbon emitter?
• Bringing people on the journey of transformation
• A case study on workforce transition in Collie

Amid a massive talent shortage, organisations have boosted wages to try to attract and retain workers, and whilst pay will always be a factor in attracting talent, it turns out that it’s far from the only motivator. Employees want employers to recognise their value and foster connections on a human level. Rather than simply increasing wages to win the War for Talent, HR leaders should focus on improving the Employee Value Proposition by creating a human-centric culture and experience. This should embrace the shift in a candidate-driven market to deliver employees exactly what they need in their day-to-day lives to make a meaningful difference.

Join this session to learn how to:

• Lead with purpose by embracing the employee-employer relationship and nurturing your change-makers
• Attract and retain talent by improving your EVP and showing you appreciate your people, without the expense of a company-wide pay rise
• Develop personalised rewards that embrace individual choice

HR technology now touches every part of employees' day-to-day work including their career path, and impacts how they feel about where they work. Organisations must account for this as they foster a new value proposition centered on the human deal they enter into with their current and future employees. HR technology plays a major role in creating a connected experience for all employees.

In this session, HR leaders will learn:

• How to leverage human-centric technology to enhance productivity and drive greater ROI
• How to use digital tools to help simplify workflows and improve processes
• Build a digital workplace that enables positive employee engagement and increased collaboration

As staffing shortages, turnover, and burnout present existential threats across the enterprise, understanding how employees think and feel has become increasingly crucial for any organisation’s success and survival. 

In the new era of work, the need to transform employee experience (EX) strategies and better align EX & customer experience (CX) programs to elevate HR as a business-critical function has reached heightened levels of importance. As employees expect more frequent, contextualised, and personalised experiences in the new era of work, traditional methods of isolated and periodic employee listening have become redundant. To effectively attract and retain talent, and provide business leaders with real-time data-driven insights to inform their decisions, HR leaders must re-conceptualise how to effectively measure and enhance the overall experience of their employees to effectively drive critical business outcomes. What ideas and innovations are your fellow CHROs considering? What immediate steps can HR leaders take to drive change?

Join this session, alongside Dr Crissa Sumner, Head of Employee Experience Solution Strategy AU/NZ at Qualtrics to discuss how to:

• Revamp your Employee Value Proposition (EVP), in line with evolving employee expectations & changing psychological contracts
• Measure KPIs beyond engagement & empower managers in your organisation to improve employee engagement with real-time insights, innovative action planning tools & better level technology to drive real-time alters & actions through integrated workflows
• How to leverage advanced analytics to gain new insights to personalise the employee experience & drive engagement, productivity & retention whilst connecting data across employee journey listening posts; and combining your EX & CX data

The war for talent is getting increasingly intense and will continue this way if HR leaders are not prepared to think differently about the future of the talent marketplace. In today’s fast-paced digital economy, constant innovation and reinvention are keys to survival, and simply adding more people to the mix is no longer a viable option. Creating desirable career opportunities for employees within your organisation is essential to prevent attrition and progressive organisations go one step further and help employees fully realise the opportunities available across the organisation.

So, what must organisations do to maximise the potential of internal talent, and set themselves on the right course to innovate and thrive?

Join this session as HR leaders discuss:

• Internal mobility strategies to address building skills required now and for the future in an organisation
• Creating more agility in organisations, allowing resourcing to become more fluid
• How to drive cultural change around talent mobility where employees own their development

In recent years, the need to adopt Agile methodologies and processes has emerged as a top priority across organisations. Accordingly, we have seen that this requires a significant shift in culture and mindset across the enterprise. Yet, despite these considerations, many HR leaders remain entrenched in the long-established view of HR as a support mechanism, serving in the background of this transformation, rather than actively leading it. However, like any other cultural transformation across the enterprise, it is pivotal for HR leaders to be at the forefront – serving as active drivers in the move toward the Agile organisation. But what immediate steps can HR leaders take to transform existing HR strategies, and adopt Agile methodologies?

Join this peer-led session with Trudie Harriman, People Director - Retail Ecosystem at Woolworths Group, to discuss:

• How HR leaders can become fluent in Agile Operating Models and Ways of Working
• How to cultivate organisationally Agile ecosystem models, rewarding adaptability
• How HR leaders can apply Agile methodologies to their strategic objectives

The events of the last few years have increased levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns in the workplace. Despite the fact that mental health issues are so prevalent, they are still considered to be "reactive" in many organisations. Mental health education and awareness in the workplace not only have the power to reduce stigma but can also improve organisational culture and change the entire mental health approach to "proactive". HR leaders should seize the opportunity to advance their organisation’s commitment to employees’ psychological and emotional well-being.

Join this session with HR leaders to discuss:

• What does the future workforce look like and what are the key opportunities to improve workplace wellbeing?
• What are the business benefits of mental health awareness at work?
• How to empower leaders to promote mental health within their organisations

As organisations have been pushed to digitalize at the speed of light within the past few years, HR leaders are redesigning strategies so that data and analytics are at the core of their decisions. Despite the fact that they have now started to use people analytics more effectively to provide better business outcomes, organisations still lack the ability to embed data analytics into day-to-day HR strategies, which ultimately help define a corporate plan to foster talent and build long-term value.

Join this session to learn:

• How can data make a difference and help with better decision-making?
• How to unlock the power of data and combine and correlate different data sets to transform it into actionable information
• Understanding the risks of using data and best practices for young players to create a meaningful change

Right now, the degree of uncertainty and change is off the charts. Leading now requires more from each of us and perhaps more from all of us? In this inspirational and practical session Matt Church, founder of Thought Leaders and author of ten great leadership books will explore the topic of leading now. Matt believes that we are all leaders and that historically we have asked for three things consistently from our leaders: to replace fear with confidence, confusion with certainty and to mobilise us in pursuit of a better future. This session explores how all leaders are key to creating cultures worth belonging to and achieving work worth doing. Especially now!