The nature of work is changing faster than most organisations can track. Digital workers are already being deployed across functions, and decisions about how they are designed, governed and scaled will shape the workforce for years to come. The critical question for HR leaders is whether they are at the table when those decisions are made.

This fireside chat makes the case for why the people function is best placed to own the agentic layer, and what happens if it doesn't. When workforce strategy is left to Finance, the conversation becomes one of headcount efficiency. When it defaults to IT, it risks being absorbed into existing architecture without any meaningful connection to talent or organisational design. HR has both the mandate and the context to do this differently.

In this session we will cover:

• Moving beyond systems designed to record work, towards talent infrastructure that reflects skills, capacity and potential in real time.

• Why traditional headcount models cannot meet the pace of modern business demand, and how progressive CPO and CIO partnerships are beginning to address that gap.

• What a blended human and digital operating model looks like in practice, and where to start if you are building the case internally.

For HR functions ready to move from responders to architects of workforce strategy, this is a conversation worth having early.