With representatives from 58 countries and nearly 6,000 first-time attendees, the scale of this year’s event reflected a growing desire for practical answers to very real problems.
Skills shortages, AI anxiety, concerning management pipelines and an ever shifting regulatory landscape were among the key challenges addressed.
Reassessing the leadership challenge
Several speakers pushed back on the idea that leadership is primarily about vision or charisma. Consensus was that the more useful framing is that leaders need to create the conditions for people to actually do their best work.
Petra Velzeboer pointed to clarity of purpose as the factor most easily lost as organisations scale and the one that quietly erodes performance when it goes.
Annisha Taylor reinforced this, making the case that productivity is about removing barriers, not adding pressure, and that clear expectations and fair development opportunities are what move the needle.
Economist Tim Harford offered an impactful alternative to data-driven management culture, highlighting what metrics miss and reminding the room that: “In the end, people care about people, not numbers”.
The implication for HR is practical: are you helping your managers understand what enables performance, or just measuring outcomes after the fact?
Skills investment as a strategic risk
In the workforce planning sessions, Tom Cheesewright underlined that long-term declines in training investment have left many organisations underprepared for the pace of change they’re now facing.
Orianne Wightman framed the talent dilemma as ‘buy, build, borrow or bot’, which will resonate with anyone trying to make workforce planning decisions under budget pressure.
Telisha Matthews warned that over-indexing on task-specific development risks producing teams that can execute but can’t think critically when the task changes. With AI increasingly handling routine work, that’s a gap organisations can’t afford.
Wellbeing as a performance strategy
Elliott Rae made the case for men’s mental health support, underlining that when stigma prevents people from accessing support, the costs show up in attendance, retention and engagement, not just in individual wellbeing. His message was clear: integrating good mental health support isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a key business strategy.
When it came to inclusion, speakers emphasised the everyday behaviours – curiosity, trust and psychological safety – that determine whether people actually contribute what they’re capable of, or hold back.
The secret to where we’re going to go next is in human connection, humanity and community
Questions around AI still abound
Technology and AI featured across sessions, with Andrew Stephenson encouraging practical engagement with AI tools while being clear that implementation needs ongoing human oversight, not a one-and-done rollout.
A key point was about who shapes these decisions. If people teams aren’t involved in technology adoption choices, the impact on employees and culture gets considered too late, if at all.
Richard Osman closed the festival with a timely reminder: “The secret to where we’re going to go next is in human connection, humanity and community”. It’s not a reason to resist technology but is certainly a reason to stay grounded in what HR is actually for.
Employment law readiness is a management capability problem
With the Employment Rights Act 2025 now in force, Amanda Chadwick flagged management training as one of the biggest overlooked risks.
Gaps in manager capability around areas like maternity leave and workplace conduct aren’t just a compliance headache, they’re where avoidable disputes and tribunal claims originate.
The ask for HR teams is familiar: get ahead of it, don’t wait for it to become a problem.
The big picture
Outgoing CIPD CEO Peter Cheese used his final festival address to frame this as a defining moment for the profession: “Leaders are feeling a lot of pressure, leading organisations through times of change and uncertainty. There is no manual and no one-size-fits-all solution on how to lead. It’s about adapting”.
His successor Neil Carberry was direct about what that means in practice: HR needs to be solving business problems, not endlessly circling them.
While this isn’t a new message, the combination of AI disruption, employment law change, productivity pressure and shifting workforce expectations means the window for vague positioning is closing.
The organisations that perform well in the next few years will be the ones where HR had the credibility and influence to shape how they responded.
