Get real about AI’s negative impact
The conversation about AI’s impact has not been honest, argued David Reed, chief knowledge officer for the information services provider DataIQ, in the opening keynote session. “People do not talk enough about the net reduction in headcount that is likely to result from adopting AI and automation,” he said.
As well as jobs, the typical career progression route is also under threat thanks to AI, Reed added, warning that, as AI advances, there will be less junior roles available for the incoming workforce. Businesses will require more specialists, and may need less people at team leader organisational levels; employers will experience a lot more talent churn, and it will be harder for younger workers to get meaningful employment, Reed predicted, referring to data from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report.
As the workforce is pushed into being more agile, HR and employers will need to focus on transferrable skills, as well as AI literacy, according to Reed. If you’re wondering where to start addressing this problem, start by improving data literacy, urged Reed, as it’s a good foundation towards understanding AI. Data literacy can be improved by introducing AI apprenticeships or by mandating free online training courses, he suggested.
Look beyond the underperforming manager
Laura Weaving, CEO of the managerial insights provider business, Perform, gave the second conference-wide keynote of the morning, encouraging HR leaders to take a different approach to supporting underperforming managers.
To tackle inattention blindness – where someone is so focused on something that they can’t see something else in front of them – “we might offer an underperforming manager some form of behavioural insight, to help them see where their strengths and blind spots are,” said Weaving, “but that’s where it stops. What we fail to do is give them insight into their team.
“If you’re only giving [the underperforming manager] self-awareness, they’re only getting half of the coin. Always ask: are they managing each team member in accordance with their strengths? Driving managers to understand the motivations of their team is the quickest way to turn around underperformance.”
In her interactive and engaging session, Weaving also presented behavioural traits that can prevent managers from building high-performing teams, for example ‘the avoider’, who avoids conflict and difficult conversations. Tackling this type of manager involves giving that person low-stakes exposure to a difficult conversation, to build up their resilience and their feeling of safety, Weaving argued.
Read more: HR Minds Summit 2025: What you missed from day one
Connect with what truly makes you happy
Emma Bell, head of people services for the logistics firm Wincanton, gave a personal talk, encouraging HR leaders to look after themselves by reconnecting with what makes them happy.
Bell shared her own story of how she overcame mental ill health, and offered tips that had helped her along the way to finding her reason for being: “Write down what you truly love,” Bell advised. “And get serious about how you can get more of that into your role.
“Try and find an extra few hours in your working in your working week where you're doing things that give you a fire in your belly. You don’t have to make big changes – just start.
“I appreciate that people have different levels of autonomy over their diaries, but what helped me was documenting all the things in my day – mainly work, but out of work as well – that gave me a feeling of pure elation. Once I developed an idea of what I did and didn't get energy from in my day, I started to think: how can I get more of the stuff I do love into my diary?”
Bell explained that, at work, she encouraged her peers to write down the tasks they enjoyed the least. By doing this, she discovered that some of her peers loved doing tasks she hated – so they swapped.
“The energy that I've been able to bring back into my work means that the things I don't love so much don't feel as difficult, because I've got more balance in my diary to do [more] stuff that I love,” she said.
Beware the bad boss personas
Consultant and author Debra Corey presented 10 types of bad boss personas – categorisations of leadership styles that drain employee productivity. Among them was: “‘The avoider’: the person who is a ghost to people, either with their time or their feedback; ‘the ignorer’: they just don't listen to their people; ‘the hoarder’: they're not sharing information; [and] ‘the unappreciater’”.
“People wear many bad boss personas at the same time,” Corey explained, “six, on average.” She added: “It’s not static. It changes:” People can change their leadership style depending on the day, their mood, or whether they are under stress, for example.
Her own survey-based research revealed that 99.6% of respondents had had a bad boss during their career. When she surveyed managers, 80% of them admitted to having been a bad boss.
“Train less”
Contributing to a panel discussion that focussed on different approaches to employee learning, Sebastian Tindall, director of strategic enablement for the health insurance company Vitality, explained that, within his organisation, the philosophy was to train people less.
Tindall explained that when his executive team analysed the immediacy and durability of the formal technical training they were delivering, they found that they “actually don't get a huge amount of organisational return for that investment of time”. So they chose to “minimise the immediacy piece and the technical piece, [and] maximise opportunities to invest in long-term skills,” by removing formal training and integrating informal learning.
“We're trying to make people's workflow a much more ergonomic experience, to give them the time to learn the things that are going to be good for them, and good for us in the future,” he commented.
Ten-minute learning huddles are a key part of the employee learning strategy at water manufacturing business Eden Springs, explained Kat Jones, the business’ HR director. This works well for time-limited frontline staff who are often out driving to deliver water, for example.
Jones also advocated a reactive approach to introducing employee learning, as it can be immediately applied to the relevant problem. Additionally, she praised an approach taken by one of her executive team, who modelled open and authentic sharing about what they do not yet know, and need to learn. This vulnerability can be used to filter down messages to the rest of the organisation that continuous improvement is important for everyone, Jones explained.
At Bentley Motors, HR director Nicola Johnson took a more formalised approach: buying in a third-party provider, completing a staff diagnostic, interviewing 200 leaders within the business and then implementing individualised learning plans.
“Everyone received their own development report, around their strengths, their development areas, and what they could really focus on to become even better,” said Johnson. She also gets guest speakers to come in and give talks to staff that an improve their learning, for example, she hired the musician Professor Green to speak to staff about men’s mental health.
“It's not that expensive,” she encouraged. “Some people will give their time for free because they've got such important things, authentic stories, to share, and things that they want and to help people with.”
Read more: Is your L&D training going to waste?
AI skills: Don’t presume you’re starting from scratch
In the last discussion panel of the day, Manoj Puthan, head of learning services and capability enablement for the telecommunications network business Nokia, encouraged HR leaders not to overlook existing AI capability that might be hidden among employees within the business. “A lot of organisations undermine the existing capability that they have,” he said.
“At Nokia we were very pleasantly surprised when we went through our self-assessment, to collect data. We were astonished to see the amount of people who have invested in AI capability building by themselves. There's so much out there, and people are keen and eager to learn. Maybe they're doing it silently, by themselves, and not sharing. The onus is on organisations to identify those people,” and use them as ambassadors to help upskill the workforce.
Ryan Hollas, director of people technology for the AI capability business, Arm, ended this panel discussion by offering another piece of advice; he said: “The AI train is now moving at a pace that it’s comfortable to jump on. It's not going to slow down; so get on the train, figure it out as you go along. You're not going to be on your own. Just get on the train, and start asking questions.”
