Day Two

• Moving beyond disconnected HR initiatives by creating a unified talent ecosystem that links performance management, career development, succession planning, learning, and talent acquisition through a shared skills foundation
• Creating greater transparency around career growth by helping employees understand the skills required for success in their current roles, the capabilities needed for future opportunities, and the development pathways available to get there
• Aligning hiring, assessment, learning, performance, and succession decisions around a common framework, enabling faster employee development, stronger talent pipelines, and more consistent workforce planning

• Replacing informal development conversations with structured career pathways and competency frameworks that give employees clear visibility into what growth looks like across every role in the organization
• Using AI-enabled competency mapping to standardize expectations, align job requirements, and connect performance, development, and hiring around a common framework for success
• Creating a more scalable approach to retention, internal mobility, and leadership development by helping employees understand how to progress while equipping managers to guide career conversations more consistently

• Moving beyond role-specific training by creating KCL Academy, a comprehensive development ecosystem that integrates leadership development, apprenticeship pathways, company-wide learning experiences, and long-term career growth
• Challenging the perception of HR and learning as support functions by demonstrating how targeted investment in employee development strengthens leadership pipelines, improves workforce capability, and reduces organizational risk
• Creating a culture of continuous learning through practical, scalable development programs that support retention, increase leadership readiness, and build capability across the business

Join all speakers for an interactive audience-led Q&A designed to unpack the strategies, challenges, and lessons behind their approaches to career pathways, skills frameworks, and employee growth. Ask your questions, compare perspectives, and gain deeper insight into what it takes to successfully drive change in this area.

Work alongside your peers to reflect on the ideas shared throughout this section and build a practical action plan for creating greater clarity around career progression, internal mobility, and employee development. Discuss potential barriers, exchange experiences, and identify the first steps needed to drive meaningful progress.

• Replacing traditional ratings, annual reviews, and manager-led evaluations with an employee-owned performance model that puts growth, development, and accountability directly into employees’ hands
• Achieving 99.9% participation by transforming performance management from a compliance exercise into a business-critical practice that employees and leaders actively drive and value
• Refusing to compromise culture through multiple technology transitions, preserving a decade of continuous feedback, career ownership, and open dialogue while many organizations still struggle with performance management adoption

• Challenging the assumption that performance problems are primarily people problems by applying Lean principles to uncover operational inefficiencies, administrative burden, and process waste that prevent employees from focusing on high-value work
• Reducing non-value-added activity through structured Waste Walks that identify improvement opportunities across functions, freeing teams from hours of unnecessary manual work and creating capacity for more strategic project support
• Positioning HR as a driver of business performance by partnering with operations to redesign ways of working, improve organizational effectiveness, and ensure employees can contribute at their highest level

Join both speakers for an interactive audience-led Q&A designed to unpack the strategies, challenges, and lessons behind their approaches to performance, accountability, and employee development. Ask your questions, compare perspectives, and gain deeper insight into what it takes to successfully drive change in this area.

Work alongside your peers to reflect on the ideas shared throughout this section and build a practical action plan for strengthening learning, development, and performance within your workforce. Discuss potential barriers, exchange experiences, and identify the first steps needed to drive meaningful progress.

• Challenging traditional talent competition by partnering with direct competitors to redeploy certified craft workers between projects instead of rebuilding pipelines from scratch
• Keeping critical trade talent active in the industry through structured workforce transitions that reduce attrition and protect access to increasingly scarce skills
• Proving that workforce collaboration can outperform talent hoarding by accelerating hiring, improving quality of hire, and strengthening long-term labor supply

• Challenging the assumption that wider recruiting reach delivers better outcomes by analyzing turnover data and identifying that more than 50% of early-career departures came from employees who had relocated from out of state
• Redesigning campus recruiting strategy around long-term retention by targeting universities closer to core markets and selectively expanding to regional out-of-state programs with stronger geographic alignment
• Aligning internship and graduate hiring more closely to workforce planning goals, improving candidate fit, strengthening engagement, and increasing return on campus recruiting investment

Join both speakers for an interactive audience-led Q&A designed to unpack the strategies, challenges, and lessons behind their approaches to recruiting, workforce planning, and talent access. Ask your questions, compare perspectives, and gain deeper insight into what it takes to successfully drive change in this area.

In this quick-fire session, each table will be hosted by an HR leader who will share the secrets of their most high-impact leap; you will then get the opportunity to question the host before moving on to your next table.