I understand from my colleague in London, Yazdi Bankwala, COO of Sejahtera Leadership (SLI) & Global Sejahtera said that “The CIPD Annual Conference & Exhibition (ACE) that took place on 4 - 5 November in Manchester, brought together HR and people leaders to address modern workforce challenges, productivity constraints, and shifting economic landscapes. The event's specialized insight stages and streams homed in on 4 defining pressure points for the profession: (1) The Employment Rights Act; (2) Digital Transformation & AI Governance; (3) Skills, L&D, and Productivity; (4) Employee Engagement & Culture. It concluded with a call for greater ambition & accountability across the profession. The consensus among delegates was that while government policy and economic headwinds play a role in market performance, HR professionals must actively steer workplace design, technology adoption & capability building to secure long-term business resilience.”
Inputs from Yazdi was timely because I will be attending the Asia HRD Congress 2026 on 12-13 November at the Millennium Hilton Bangkok, Thailand, under the theme “Beyond Agility: Powering Advantage in the Age of Intelligence”. The Congress offers a valuable platform for exchanging ideas, gaining practical insights from distinguished speakers & building meaningful connections with leaders and professionals committed in advancing leadership, talent development & organizational excellence. I am interested to learn more about “Will AI make us more productive (eventually)?”
Let's say people are saving 10 to 20 % of their time via AI. Where's that time going? It doesn't just get put into a box saying “We don't need to hire any more people.” What happens, of course, is that we've all got too many things on our to-do lists anyway and we just sort of reallocate time between task. All those biases around what gets incentivized, the things I just like to do, feed into how I choose to reallocate my time on a day-day basis. I'm citing the well-trodden example of electrification: how this took 20-30 years to show up in organizational & microeconomic productivity.
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