HR Summit and Expo Day One - 14 October 2026Wednesday, 14 October 2026 - GT (Gulf Time, GMT+04:00)

Retaining skilled talent in competitive markets is essential for sustaining organisational growth and maintaining a competitive edge. This session focuses on strategies to reduce turnover and enhance employee engagement, including transforming benefits to be more flexible, personalising engagement programs based on workforce preferences, and fostering a culture of trust and transparency. By implementing tailored retention initiatives, and aligning employee experience with organisational goals, companies can improve retention rates, boost morale, and create a loyal, motivated workforce that drives long-term success.

This session explores strategies for identifying top talent from large pools to build high-performing teams, especially in the Middle East where skilled talent is hard to find. It highlights the use of AI-powered tools to detect resume inconsistencies, competency-based assessments to validate skills, and structured multi-stage recruitment processes for thorough evaluation. By integrating advanced verification techniques and effective screening practices, organisations can enhance hiring accuracy, reduce risks, and secure talent that drives sustainable growth.

Ensuring talent strategies align with organisational goals is critical for driving business success. This session highlights approaches to integrate talent initiatives with broader business objectives, including aligning workforce planning with strategic priorities, leveraging data-driven insights for decision-making, and fostering collaboration between HR and leadership. By creating cohesive talent strategies, organisations can enhance employee engagement, optimise performance, and achieve sustainable growth.

Retaining high-potential employees requires innovative approaches beyond traditional methods, particularly in the UAE and other countries in the region where turnover is at an all-time high. This session explores strategies like personalised growth plans integrating skill-building, leadership opportunities, and cross-functional exposure. It highlights using analytics to identify motivators, fostering a culture of innovation, and implementing recognition systems to ensure top talent remains engaged and aligned with organisational goals.

Celebrating employee achievements and boosting morale are essential for fostering a positive and engaged workforce. This session explores effective methods for recognition, including implementing peer-nominated awards to reduce bias, offering spot bonuses for exceptional contributions, and creating personalised reward programs tailored to employee preferences. By integrating recognition into daily practices and promoting a culture of appreciation, organisations can enhance employee satisfaction, strengthen team dynamics, and drive overall performance.

Discover how to balance technological efficiency with human connection in HR processes. This session provides strategies to ensure HR remains people-centric while embracing automation and AI. Learn to foster trust and engagement, streamline administrative tasks, and create personalised employee experiences that prioritise empathy and care. By aligning human-centric practices with business goals, HR leaders can boost employee satisfaction, retention, and productivity, ensuring a harmonious and impactful approach to workforce management.

Resistance to AI adoption often stems from fear of change, misconceptions, and concerns about job security. This session focuses on strategies to address these challenges by shifting mindsets, fostering trust, and encouraging technology acceptance. Participants will learn how to involve stakeholders early in the process, clearly communicate AI's benefits, and align its integration with organisational goals.

Data accuracy is the foundation of successful AI implementation. This session highlights strategies to ensure data integrity, streamline data collection processes, and utilise accurate insights to drive AI success. Participants will explore the critical role of clean, reliable data in enhancing AI performance, reducing errors, and achieving impactful outcomes.

Enhancing talent acquisition through AI requires leveraging advanced tools to streamline processes and improve efficiency. This session explores strategies for automating recruitment, reducing bias, and enhancing candidate matching. By integrating AI into talent acquisition workflows, educating teams on its benefits, and aligning recruitment strategies with organisational needs, companies can attract top talent effectively while fostering a more inclusive and efficient hiring process.

Equipping HR professionals with the skills needed for AI-driven processes is crucial for successful adoption. This session focuses on effective training programs designed to enhance technical expertise, foster adaptability, and build confidence in utilising AI tools. Participants will learn how to prepare their teams for the evolving workplace, ensuring they have the knowledge and resources to seamlessly integrate AI technologies.

The CHRO role is undergoing its most significant transformation in decades and is no longer sufficient to be just "people experts". This session reveals how pioneering CHROs are earning board seats and CEO trust by proving HR's financial contribution and driving business outcomes. Learn how to transform from support function to profit center, build board-level credibility, and position HR as indispensable strategic growth driver by:

• Positioning HR as the primary catalyst for business transformation and growth

• Developing frameworks for aligning people initiatives with enterprise-wide business objectives

• Building executive influence by demonstrating HR's measurable impact on bottomline and market position

• Designing sustainable change management approaches that balance business agility with employee wellbeing

Join Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google X and bestselling author, for a transformative exploration of how HR leaders can navigate and shape the rapidly evolving future of work. In this compelling session, Mo will share insights from his unique perspective at the intersection of technology, innovation, and human potential, drawing on his experience engineering moonshot projects and understanding exponential change. Discover how HR can move beyond reactive disruption management to become proactive architects of organisational transformation in an era defined by AI, automation, and unprecedented technological advancement. Learn practical strategies for reimagining talent development, fostering adaptability, and creating human-centric workplaces that thrive amid constant change. This session will challenge conventional thinking and equip you with a visionary framework to lead your organisation confidently into 2030 and beyond.

As skills become obsolete faster than ever, organisations need systematic approaches to workforce transformation. This session examines how companies are implementing upskilling and reskilling programs that address capability gaps, reduce hiring costs, and build internal talent pipelines.

Key Learning Takeaways:

• Use AI-powered assessments to identify critical skills gaps and prioritise reskilling investments by business impact

• Design accelerated learning through micro-learning, simulations, and mentorship that delivers measurable skill development

• Create internal mobility frameworks that reduce recruitment costs while boosting retention through career advancement

As Gen Alpha begins to join the workforce, senior leaders face the challenge of uniting generations under a shared vision. This session explores advanced strategies to harness generational diversity as a competitive advantage, fostering collaboration, driving performance, and reducing friction in AI-augmented workplace environments.

Key Learning Takeaways:

• Develop sophisticated communication frameworks tailored to generational preferences, enhancing collaboration and streamlining decision-making at the executive level

• Design flexible career development strategies that align with the unique motivational drivers of each generation, ensuring sustained engagement and retention

• Adopt leadership methodologies that capitalise on generational strengths to build high-performing, future-ready teams

• Navigate generational perspectives on AI adoption and human-machine collaboration

Discover how cutting-edge technologies and personalized strategies are transforming workplace learning. This session explores how advanced visualization and gamification create immersive experiences that boost engagement and retention, while data-driven analytics enable personalized learning pathways and optimized outcomes. Learn how to shift from generic, human-centric models to truly person-centric approaches that honor individual purpose and potential, unlocking talent and building a more agile, future-ready workforce.

Key Highlights:

• Engage Deeply with Advanced Visualization & Gamification: Harness immersive tech to boost retention and shift learning from passive to active.
• Make Smarter Decisions with a Data-Driven Approach: Leverage analytics to personalize pathways, optimize outcomes, and scale impact.
• Shifting from Humna-Centric to Person-Centric Approach: Move beyond generic content to tailored experiences that resonate with individual purpose and potential

Even the best organisations can quietly lose their way. In this session, we'll explore how uncertainty, when left unmanaged, erodes decision making, weakens leadership confidence, and causes high performing teams to drift off course. Discover the warning signs and practical strategies to keep your organisation on track.

Key Learning Takeaways

• Recognise the early warning signs by identifying the subtle indicators that uncertainty is beginning to erode organisational performance before it becomes critical.
• Understand the derailment process by learning how uncertainty progressively weakens decision making, alignment, and execution in high performing teams.
• Break the paralysis cycle by discovering practical techniques to maintain momentum and confidence when facing ambiguity and change.
• Strengthen leadership resilience by building capabilities to lead effectively through uncertainty without compromising strategic clarity or team performance.
• Implement prevention strategies by applying actionable frameworks to keep your organisation on track and prevent the slow slide into mediocrity.

AI transformation succeeds when HR and IT function as strategic partners. This conversation explores how CHROs and CTOs can collaborate effectively, featuring real-world examples of successful partnerships and actionable frameworks to overcome integration challenges.

Key Learning Takeaways:

• Align AI transformation initiatives with business objectives

• Conduct joint tech stack audits to eliminate redundancies

• Build cross-functional governance for responsible AI deployment

• Create shared accountability frameworks for AI ROI

Talent acquisition stands at the epicenter of AI disruption. This session explores how leading companies are fundamentally redesigning recruitment, leveraging skills science to decode capability requirements, automating transactional workflows, and elevating recruiters into strategic, judgment-led partners.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• Deploy skills-based frameworks that transcend traditional role descriptions and credentials

• Redesign end-to-end recruitment workflows using AI to eliminate friction and bias

• Transform recruiter roles from administrative coordinators to strategic talent advisors

• Measure AI impact on quality of hire, time-to-productivity, and candidate experience metrics

Achieving substantial productivity improvements requires moving beyond experimentation to strategic execution. This session equips leaders with proven methodologies for designing AI-human partnerships that generate documented performance gains through targeted opportunity analysis, intelligent tool deployment, and accelerated scaling.

Key Learning Takeaways:

• Identify high-impact zones for 30-50% efficiency gains through AI integration

• Design AI-human models that amplify expertise while preserving judgment

• Build ROI-focused cases demonstrating quantifiable returns and competitive advantage

• Deploy rapid strategies that produce measurable results within 90-180 days

• Build governance frameworks that align stakeholders around business outcomes and maintain executive support